Sobering Thoughts |
|
|
Comments on politics, the culture, economics, and sports by Paul Tuns.
I am editor-in-chief of "The Interim," Canada's life and family newspaper, and author of "Jean Chretien: A Legacy of Scandal" (2004) and "The Dauphin: The Truth about Justin Trudeau" (2015).
I am some combination of conservative/libertarian, standing athwart history yelling "bullshit!"
You can follow me on Twitter (@ptuns).
Archives
|
Saturday, August 30, 2008
Sarah Palin, MILE  A Republican strategist thought he was being pretty clever when he emailed me describing Sarah Palin, the GOP vice presidential nominee as a MILE -- a mother I'd like to elect. Kathy Shaidle says ditch the glasses and bun, but Kathy is uncharacteristically wrong. The way Palin looks is just fine: attractive but not perfect. John McCain had a problem with his white evangelical base who wasn't going to accept a Mormon (Mitt Romney), a pro-abort (Tom Ridge) or Democrat (Joe Lieberman) as a running mate. Mike Huckabee would have driven a half million GOP votes into the Libertarian column. Palin has not only the right views (pro-life, pro-traditional marriage), she looks like the wife many men want (smart, pretty, successful) but without being so magnificently good looking as to turn off women voters. That's the plus side on optics. The down side is that McCain looks like her grandfather, reinforcing how old he is. I don't think Palin makes much difference; vice presidents don't. Does anyone know a single individual who has voted for a ticket because of the vice presidential candidate. She probably shores up the base with whom McCain has had some trouble, but I doubt she'll bring independents on board. Unless -- and this is a biggie -- unless she can attract those who voted for Hillary Clinton in the primaries. According to a Wall Street Journal/MSNBC poll released just before the Dem convention, half of her supporters do not currently support Barack Obama and one in five say they'll vote for McCain. It is unlikely those numbers will hold -- they may be Hillary supporters but they are also Democrats and once the choice is clearly between Obama and McCain, the liberal standard bearer against the anti-choice Republican ogre, they would return home to the Democratic Party. If they are voting strictly their gender -- that is, if these women voters gave their vote entirely on identity politics rather than ideological affinity -- then McCain's pick of Palin might help the ticket maintain some of the 21% of Hillary supporters who say they now back the Republican candidate. That would be disastrous for Obama. That also seems like a bit of a stretch. All that said, this is the biggest effect of the Palin pick: the buzz on Friday and today has ben about her and not the afterglow of Obama's Thursday night speech or any positive post-convention buzz. That reduces the chances of a big bounce for the Dems. To the extent that vice president picks change the political calculus, that's a big plus. The Palin effect will be most felt in the 48 hours after the announcement she has got the pick. That said, here is the negative, and it is not inconsequential: her inexperience takes away the Republican talking point about Obama's lack of experience. Considering that this election is a referendum on whether Obama should be trusted to occupy the White House, the question of his readiness for the responsibility was always their best line of attack. McCain makes that argument more difficult. And lastly, there is the chance of a backlash if he is seen playing the gender card and making a pandering pick. It is too early to tell, but last night Larry King, who never asks really tough questions, repeatedly asked a McCain spokesman last night if Palin was the most qualified candidate for vice president. At one level, the question is silly. But no one is going to believe that the 20-month governor of Alaska is more prepared to step into the Oval Office if something happens to McCain than Mitt Romney, General Petraeus, or any number of other candidates. That is not to say that she is unqualified (see Mark R. Levin regarding the most relevant points about this line of argument), but she is clearly not the most qualified. This question might haunt McCain because it speaks to his judgement and makes concerns about his age more relevant. Overall: Palin is a good pick and one that potentially (and necessarily) helps shake up the current political calculations. (Even David Frum, who disagrees with the Palin pick, says it is obvious that McCain chose her to 'chang[e] the board of this election campaign' -- to which I add because Johnny Mac had to.) But, like most veeps, she her effects on the campaign will be exaggerated. McCain matters more than Palin and Obama matters more than Biden. She likely means more questions for McCain than the Delaware senator does for Obama. And that can't be a good. Sunday, August 24, 2008
July Interim is up Actually, its been up for a couple weeks, but I forgot to mention it. You should read my cover story, "Malthus was wrong," on why we don't need to worry about over-population. I don't fault Malthus who wrote at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution and was unlikely to see his famous hypothesis being proved wrong. But there is no reason why his disciplines need to to continue to follow his faults. I use history and economics to show why Malthus was wrong when predicting that, "Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometric ratio. Subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio." For most of history that seemed true, but productivity increased at about the time Malthus wrote his dreary "An Essay on the Principle of Population," due to the benefits of specialization and trade. Not your typical Interim fare, but an important story that counters hysterical over-population zealots who use starvation (or mere increases in food prices) to push radical population control measures that include abortion and coercive sterilization. We have an accompanying editorial on why it is wrong to use food, especially corn, as fuel at a time of rising food prices. Rebecca Walberg's review of David Frum's Comeback: Conservativsm that Can Win Again, in which he is adjudged to really miss the mark on social conservative issues. Russ Kuykendall looks at how Trudeau's pernicious influence on Canada. Rory Leishman chides Lorne Gunter for letting his libertarianism get the best of him. While Leishman agrees that Canada has too many laws in general, some "sound laws on marriage, the family and other moral and social issues that have stood the test of time and are essential to the peace, order and good government of Canada." In our lead editorial, we look at 'reproductive health' as it is commonly (mis)used and suggest that it is about neither reproduction nor health. Alex Schadenberg of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition goes into depth critiquing Bloc MP Francine Lalonde's private member's bill that would legalize euthanasia and assisted-suicide. Saturday, August 23, 2008
Sundry thoughts on Biden Great line from Mickey Kaus, quoted by Jonah Goldberg in The Corner: "Maybe when I get to Denver I'll find someone who'll explain to me why Biden is an inspired choice. He doesn't have gravitas. He has seniority. We've been waiting for him to mature for decades. Only Chuck Hagel (his chief competitor as Sunday morning gasbag) could make him look wise." It's good to know that Obama can make the New York Times house conservative happy. I'm not sure this is a compliment: Joe Biden is "a man who appears supremely qualified to be vice president of the United States." Nate Silver says that Biden is good for a two-point bump compared to other possible vice presidential candidates, mostly because he won't excite the conservative base against Obama as much as others. I agree with Noam Scheiber at The Stump (TNR's politics blog) that despite some problems that conservatives will harp on, Biden doesn't hurt the ticket: Biden, "brings three significant liabilities, but I think they'll turn out to be far less damaging than you'd expect." Those liabilities are 20-year old scandals, some criticism of his former primary opponent and past gaffes. Yesterday's news. Hope and change meets Democratic senior statesman. I don't buy it, but if Teddy Kennedy can be a senior statesman in that party, why not Biden. Obama's running mate  The agent of hope and change has picked a 35-year veteran of the Senate as his running mate. Joseph freaking Biden, for pity sake. He ran for the Democratic presidential nomination two decades ago. In 2003, Jim Geraghty revisited the reasons that Republicans will now be happy facing against the Democratic ticket. Jake Tapper does, too. This Fall's campaign might be fun after all. I don't think this pick matters. It might be a slight (0.1%) plus or minus for Barack Obama, but ultimately voters pull the lever or mark their ballot for the guy at the top of the ticket. Jennifer Rubin disagrees and makes a number of points how Obama violated the first rule of picking a running mate: do no harm. Biden's presence is an admission by Obama that his opponent's criticism is correct, that Obama isn't ready for prime time. Most people, however, will probably see Biden as addressing Obama's weakness rather than admitting it. I guess that over the next four years, assuming the Dems win, when there is a crisis at 3 AM, the phone call will have to be re-routed to the vice president's residence. Is there any doubt that Biden is on the ticket because of Russia's recent military excursion into Georgia. If we weren't reminded earlier this month that the world is a dangerous place even outside Iraq's borders, is there any question that Governor Tim Kaine or Senator Evan Bayh or some other no name would be on the ticket reinforcing the hope-and-change narrative rather than a consummate Washington insider with foreign policy experience buttressing the I'm-not-dangerous narrative? I hope, but doubt, that Obama follow John Dickerson's suggestion: "If Barack Obama is any kind of sport, he'll announce at his big rally in Springfield, Ill., this afternoon that he picked Joe Biden because he's 'articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy'." It would show that Obama has a sense of humour, which most Americans haven't seen (if it exists). The political calculus hasn't changed since Obama's staff text messaged Americans with this inconsequential pick. As long as Biden doesn't insert his foot into his mouth or exaggerate or plagiarize over the next two and half months, he will remain an inconsequential pick. Friday, August 22, 2008
'Sacred' crocodile devours Muslim seeking blessing I smell a Darwin Award. The AFP reports: "A sacred crocodile killed and devoured a 25-year-old Bangladeshi man who waded into a pond next to a Muslim shrine hoping to be blessed by the animal, police said yesterday. Rubel Sheikh and his mother travelled 50 kilometres from their home to visit the Khan Jahan Ali shrine in Bagherhat, where the attack happened. Hundreds of people visit the shrine every day to offer hens and goats to the five marsh crocodiles living in the pool. 'He went into the pond hoping to be blessed when a crocodile attacked him and dragged him into the deep part of the pond,' said Inspector Humayun Kabir. 'Normally, the crocodiles are very friendly and do not harm people.' The man's remains washed ashore yesterday." Normally crocodiles are not 'very friendly'; they may not eat visitors, but no croc is going to sit down and share pleasantries with people. Ever. A recipe for a lousy administration, Or, moralizing doesn't help From Politico: "Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) called lobbyists 'birds of prey' Wednesday and vowed to enforce a lifetime ban on lobbying for members of his administration." Says McCain, who has imposed limits on future lobbying for his campaign staff, "I would not allow anyone who worked for my administration to go back to lobbying ... They would have to make that pledge." There is a big difference between a pledge and a law, but the moralizing is a little much. Finger-wagging and endless complaining about the malign effects of those who try to influence policy through organizations of like-minded people who represent citizens in a capacity other than mere voter, is silly, childish and undemocratic. Considering that government is a confusing mess, it is no wonder that individuals, companies and organizations hire experts to cut through the red tape. That's what most lobbying is. How dangerous to democracy or society is it to present a point of view on behalf of a client? What is wrong with that? In fact, preventing such activity seems dangerous and wrong. Furthermore, what is a lobbyist or special interest? Everyone assumes that consultants for Big Oil or Big Pharma are particular evil, but what about others who ask government for favours or handouts. The American Cancer Society is among the special interest groups who feed in the public-finance trough; research grants for the ACS is no different than defense contracts for Boeing in regard to the organization's/business' relationship to the state. More importantly is that many people work in government and serve the public and then return to private business and make money, including through consulting and lobbying. By preventing such future earnings, McCain will likely be limiting the pool of qualified candidates for jobs in his administration. So his moralizing will hamper his ability to assemble the best team to lead and govern a superpower during a time of war and at a time of economic turbulence. That seems unwise, and all because of either his own self-righteousness or an appeal to uneducated populism. And people think the U.S. is a free market economy Interesting chart from a story in the Wall Street Journal on bailing out the automobile industry:  Thursday, August 21, 2008
Convention bounces Nate Silver writes (and charts) in The New Republic that since 1984, the candidate with the largest bounce out of the convention won the popular vote, even if the (sometimes dramatic) jump in polls is only temporary. As I've reminding readers and friends, whatever has happened up to now is almost irrelevant in moving independent or uncommitted voters. People start paying attention next week with the convention. The U.S. campaigns so far It's still early and most people aren't paying attention (even if they say they are), but the quotes from western Pennsylvania retiree George Timko in this New York Times piece about sums up the two presidential campaigns almost perfectly: On Barack Obama: "Who is he? Where’d he come from?" ON John McCain? "He keeps talking about being a prisoner of war back in Vietnam. Great. The economy stinks; tell me his plan." Quote of the day Justin Wolfers at Freakonomics: "Feel free to insert joke here about two-handed economists; although recognize that even an octopus couldn’t summarize the consensus within, say, sociology." Wednesday, August 20, 2008
This moment of perversity is brought to you by Muhammad's religion Al Arabiya reports: "A 16-year-old Saudi girl drank a bottle of bleach in an attempt to commit suicide to escape a forced marriage to a 75-year-old man, press reports revealed Sunday. The girl identified only as, Shaikha, said her father was forcing her to marry the old man so that he could marry his 13-year-old daughter in an exchange deal, Bahrain's Tribune reported. Shaikha described how her father took her to meet the old man and his 13-year-old in a marriage office where they all had pre-marital tests done, the Tribune quoted the Saudi Gazette as reporting. Shaikha told the paper how she begged and pleaded not to be forced into marriage but both of the men ignored her pleas." It's funny how stories of old Irish or Italian Catholic men trading daughters for marriage never make the news. Why is that? ChiComs continues to behave like commies Even with the world watching, Kathy Shaidle notes at FrontPageMag, Red China continues to suppress religious freedom, preventing missionaries from bringing into the country Bibles that were printed to ChiCom specificity. And the New York Times reports that two elderly women were sentenced to "re-education through labor" for asking for the right to protest during the Olympics. Recall that we were assured when the International Olympic Committee gave Beijing the honour of hosting the 2008 games, that China would change because it was hosting the games; that the games were a carrot to encourage better behaviour from the regime. It appears that the more things change, the more things stay the same for the 1.3 billion people imprisoned by the Chinese communist government. Genetics and geography  Genetic Future has an interesting post and amazing map on genome and European geography. Daniel MacArthur says: "[M]arkers used in this study represent sites of common variation; data from large-scale genome sequencing will generate far, far better maps. The major reason for this is that sequencing will provide information on rare, highly spatially-restricted variants - many of which will be limited to single families and thus be extremely informative about geographical ancestry." Mapping by genome bears a striking resemblance to the map of Europe, supporting biological definitions of tribe and nation. As more information becomes available, the genetic map should resemble the geographic map even more. However, due to globalization and multiculturalism, a genetic map from 2108 would probably look quite different -- if there are any distinct European countries a century from now. Biden: the gift that would keep on giving Jim Geraghty has a list of quotes from Senator Joseph Biden that could prove embarrassing to a Democratic ticket, from words of praise for John McCain ("I would be honored to run with or against John McCain, because I think the country would be better off, be well off no matter who...") to implicit criticism of the guy at the top of his ticket ("When this campaign is over, political slogans like ‘experience’ and ‘change’ will mean absolutely nothing. The next president has to act") to the just plain dumb (about Obama: "I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy"). Over at the Campaign Spot, Geraghty also notes Biden's hypocrisy in criticizing Don Imus a few years back. When I was assisting in the research of Beltway Bloopers: Hilarious Quotes and Anecdotes from Washington, D.C., the two Democratic presidential candidates for 2008 that we had the most to draw upon were Dennis Kucinich and Biden. He isn't going to stop saying dumb things and could present Obama withs some real problems. A big part of the problem with politics It's mostly surface, little substance. Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, in an interview with NRO, explains why: "I’m skeptical about the importance of individual forums and debates. We’re a long way from the kind of rigorous public debates that happened back in the 19th century between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas for hours at a time. We don’t have the attention span for really serious discussion anymore; or to put it more accurately, our news media can’t afford and don’t allow that kind of attention span." Most the rest of the interview is about Catholics and the public square (for both voters and public officials) and is worth reading. How much ice Tyler Cowen discusses issues surrounding getting the right drink-ice ratio. I like my cold drinks cold, so ice right to the top of the glass please. You can always refill it. GOP veep talk The New York Times says that some conservatives are fretting about John McCain's vice presidential pick. That's understandable. Tom Ridge is a RINO and Joseph Lieberman isn't even a registered Republican. (Question: if McCain were to die in office, who would Lieberman pick as his vice president once he was elevated to the top office? Would that person be a Republican?) Other potential running mates might not pass certain important litmus tests. The question is whether these important litmus tests are essential litmus tests. The first rule of picking a running mate is do no harm. The chances that a liberal or non-Republican would hurt the Republicans is probably 50-50. Normally that is too much of a risk. However, to win McCain probably needs to take a risk. That makes the odds much more palatable. Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Quote of the day Lisa Schiffren in The Corner: "[Obama's] autobiography (and what 47 year old doesn't need two?)..." Bob the Unserious The Washington Post has a longish article on the Libertarian presidential candidate Bob Barr. I thought this was all that one needed to know about the former Georgia Congressman: "He is seated beneath a painting of Ayn Rand..." A choice not an echo K-Lo in The Corner: "Name that pol * “Catholic.” * Supports legal abortion. * Supported Nuclear Freeze. * Opposed the MX and Trident missiles. * Opposed aid to the Nicaraguan contras Name those pols, actually. Joe Biden and Tom Ridge both fit the bill. And, bizarrely, they are currently both being buzzed about for vice president … for different parties." Self-sufficiency silliness In the Globe and Mail yesterday, Thomas Homer-Dixon and Sarah Wolfe argued in favour of self-sufficiency that both households and nations need to become self-sufficient in food production. So apparently the specialization and trade that permits the production of wealth and increases health and leisure is a bad idea. Homer-Dixon and Wolfe say: "As we specialize, we become more dependent on other people, industries and regions in the global economy. That may be fine for non-essential goods such as children's toys and kitchen appliances, but should we depend on others for life's essentials such as food? ... Taken to an extreme, the dominant economic model of specialization, connectivity and trade reduces the resilience of our communities and societies - our ability to take care of ourselves in volatile times." Isn't it interesting that conservatives and libertarians, so-called rugged individualists, support an economic system that not only encourages but requires co-operation and even dependency? And liberals, in the name of environmental protection, support an individualistic economic idea of self-sufficiency, albeit in an unrealistic and counter-productive way? Contrary to what these nattering nabobs of negativism might say, David Ricardo is still right. Boring works The New York Times says that when Barack Obama text messages his announcement regarding his running mate, the name will be Delaware Senator Joseph Biden, Indiana Senator Evan Bayh, or Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine. Bland is good because bland is safe. I'd pick Bayh who might help turn Indiana, has the right foreign policy checkmarks (Senate intelligence committee) and doesn't offend anyone. Biden could be fun to watch because he is a Democratic version of Dan Quayle. That probably makes him a less likely choice, but here's the bottom line reason I wouldn't pick him if I were Obama: Biden's foreign policy expertise highlights Obama's lack of experience on that file. Kaine could reinforce Obama's change narrative, but as a Roman Catholic who supports legal abortion with restrictions, he might pose a problem on an issue that Obama looks increasingly vulnerable on. While the Democrats can get away with choosing a pro-abortion candidate and running mate, pro-abortion Catholic public officials run into a different and more difficult set of problems. The first-term Virginia governor might also be too inexperienced and seen as not ready for the presidency. If I were Obama, there is no real discussion; the choice is Bayh. Former Georgia senator Sam Nunn would be a great vice president but a poor vice presidential candidate and New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson recently disqualified himself with his silly utterances about the UN and Russia's invasion of Georgia. Monday, August 18, 2008
CanCon Porn, Pt. II Publius at Gods of the Copybook Headings has some questions following last week's announcement that the CRTC approved a Canadian-content, all-porn pay channel: "So many questions: Is it the girls or the silicon that have to be at least 50% Canadian? Can we make a distinction? If the man is an American and the woman Canadian, does that satisfy Canadian content requirements? Naturally in such a "coupling" the missionary position would be entirely inappropriate according to CRTC guidelines - too suggestive of American imperialism. This obviously wouldn't apply to girl on girl action. Can the girls dress up as Mounties, or is this an infringement on copyright? Do the orgies have to meet affirmative action guidelines? If a black 'actress' is called a bitch and slapped during a mud wrestling match, is this a hate crime?" Joking aside, Publius has serious public policy questions: "[H]ow on earth is it the proper function of the Canadian government to tell us what type of smut we can see? How, using even the most elastic definitions, is the public interest served by ensuring that the boys and men of the Dominion off themselves while viewing only Canadian tail?" Libraries' declining popularity due to ... late fees? Alison Flood says in The Guardian that libraries are becoming less popular due to the popularity of TV the internet, and magazines but mostly because libraries charge late fees, which according to one library consultant, is 'alienating'. That might be part of the explanation, but a small one. More important reasons are probably a decreased interest in reading books in general, an increased desire by people to own the things they use and (relatedly) decreased sense of community. (Who wants to borrow some book that has been handled by someone else and has their germs?) As for the fines, Tyler Cowen suggests "higher fines for very new and popular books and also commonly used reference manuals, combined with lower fines for everything else." Against Ridge as veep In The American Spectator Online, Jeffrey Lord makes the case against former Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge being chosen as the GOP vice presidential candidate. It comes down to this: 1) He is not pro-life. 2) As a Congressman in the 1980s, he voted against Ronald Reagan more than most other Republicans. 3) He had a less-than-stellar record as governor, including out-of-control government spending (for everything from pensions to sports stadia). 4) He can't help carry the state because he has upset party conservatives. Lord quotes one angry Pennsylvania conservative: "Tom Ridge is the personification of the status quo in government ... He is not even close to being a conservative reformer." Obama lies, babies die Charmaine Yoest, president and CEO of Americans United for Life Action, goes after Barack Obama's lies about abortion (that the number of abortions under President George W. Bush have not gone down) and why it matters (it obscures the benefits of incremental changes in law that reduce abortion) and how it affects Obama (it gives him cover in opposing abortion restrictions). More importantly, Yoest calls Obama on living up to the standard he criticizes America not living up to: "Obama did stumble into the truth in answering another one of the evening’s questions. When Warren asked him to name America’s “greatest moral failure,” Obama nimbly responded without hesitation: 'I think America’s greatest moral failure in my lifetime has been that we still don’t abide by that basic precept in Matthew that whatever you do for the least of my brothers, you do for me.' The paradox was entirely lost on him. Obama appears not to recognize that his abortion stance places him squarely amongst those he castigates for ignoring the least of our brothers. And, indeed, it is a great moral failure." Gabriel interview in NYT: 'moderate Muslims ... are truly irrelevant' Deborah Solomon interviews Brigitte Gabriel, a Beruit-born critique of Islam and author of They Must be Stopped, in the New York Times: "Q: What about all the moderate Muslims who represent our hope for the future? Why don’t you write about them? A: The moderate Muslims at this point are truly irrelevant. I grew up in the Paris of the Middle East, and because we refused to read the writing on the wall, we lost our country to Hezbollah and the radicals who are now controlling it. Q: In your new book, you write about the Muslim presence in America and bemoan the rise of Islamic day schools and jihad summer camp. Is there really such a thing? A: Yes. Instead of taking lessons on swimming and gymnastics, the kids are listening to speakers give lectures titled “Preparation for Death” and “The Life in the Grave.” Q: You also lament the public foot baths that have been installed at the University of Michigan and elsewhere to accommodate Muslim students. A: I lived in the Middle East for the first 24 years of my life. Never once did I see any foot-washing basins in airports or public buildings. So why are they pushing them down the throats of Americans? Q: I can’t get upset if people want to wash their feet before they pray. A: This is the way they are taking over the West. They are doing it culturally inch by inch. They don’t need to fire one bullet." On the web, the blurb for the story calls Gabriel an 'Islamaphobe'. Sunday, August 17, 2008
Praise which isn't Former Liberal defense minister David Platt, who is planning on running again, defends his party leader as an 'idea person'. That is precisely Stephane Dion's problem. Ideas that might have currency in the faculty lounge are not necessarily those that resonate with the public. And Dion probably does have the political instincts (or the right kind of strategists) to know the difference. Fuel subsidies: increasing global oil prices, counter-productive at home Robert H. Frank writes in the New York Times: "By one estimate, countries with fuel subsidies accounted for virtually the entire increase in worldwide oil consumption last year. Without this artificial demand stimulus, world oil prices would have been significantly lower. Earlier this summer, for example, world oil prices fell by $4 a barrel on news that reduced subsidies would increase Chinese domestic fuel prices by about 17 percent. It would surely be unrealistic to expect other governments to abandon subsidies just so Americans who drive S.U.V.’s and live in big houses could benefit from lower world energy prices. But those governments might want to reconsider their policy in the light of overwhelming economic evidence that the subsidies create net losses even for their ostensible beneficiaries. To be sure, higher fuel prices produce economic suffering. The unfortunate reality, however, is that when the price of an imported resource rises in the world market, buyers must take a hit. Subsidizing fuel does nothing to reduce the inevitable suffering, and actually makes it worse. The problem is that when the price of a good is below its cost, people use it wastefully. In the case of a gallon of gasoline, the cost to a country is the value of every additional sacrifice that its use entails. That includes not just the price of buying the gallon in the world market — say, $4 — but also external costs, like dirtier air and increased congestion. The external costs are often hard to measure but are nonetheless substantial." Frank goes on to show how fuel subsidies hurt the people they are meant to help (read the example in the story) before explaining why: "Waste is always bad. Anyone who doubts it need only remember that when the economic pie grows, it is always possible for everyone to have a larger slice than before. Using fuel for activities whose costs exceed their benefits makes the economic pie smaller." Can we end the endless questions about abortion on the campaign trail? The issue was dealt with at the Saddleback debate. Here's Byron York's report: "Finally, there was the question of abortion. In the days leading up to the forum, pro-lifers had been worried that Warren was not going to include a question on the issue, focusing instead on things like poverty, AIDS, and the “new” evangelical agenda. But Warren brought it up, simple and straight. “At what point does a baby get human rights, in your view?” he asked Obama. “Well, I think that whether you are looking at it from a theological perspective or a scientific perspective, answering that question with specificity, you know, is above my pay grade,” Obama answered. “But let me just speak more generally about the issue of abortion because this is something obviously the country wrestles with. One thing that I’m absolutely convinced of is there is a moral and ethical content to this issue. So I think that anybody who tries to deny the moral difficulties and gravity of the abortion issue, I think, is not paying attention. So that would be point number one.” Obama went on to say that he is pro-choice. Even for people who agreed with him, it wasn’t a terribly impressive answer. An hour later, when Warren asked McCain the same thing, he got this: “At the moment of conception. I have a 25-year pro-life record in the Congress, in the Senate, and as president of the United States, I will be a pro-life president and this presidency will have pro-life policies.” “Okay — we don’t have to go longer on that one,” Warren said, quickly moving on. Obama had nothing to win on the question; if anything, he seemed wary of saying something that might anger his pro-choice base. But McCain had a lot at stake with this group, and his answer seemed to settle the concerns of social conservatives who have been rattled by reports that he might be considering a pro-choice running mate. While many evangelicals have softened on the issue of gay marriage, they wanted to hear a solid, clear statement from McCain on abortion. “Abortion and marriage are still pivotal issues…but I think that abortion is probably more pivotal than marriage,” Marlys Popma, the Iowa social conservative who is now McCain’s national coordinator for evangelical issues, told me after the forum. “Abortion is still very, very solid with this group, even the younger ones [who are more liberal on marriage]. Life is a real delineating factor.” To further press the case on abortion, McCain had brought along New Jersey Republican Rep. Chris Smith, one of the most forceful pro-life voices in Congress. After the forum, I asked Smith whether Obama had helped himself at all with pro-lifers. Just the opposite, Smith said. “I thought Sen. Obama’s statement in quoting Matthew 25, which is my favorite scripture since I was in high school — ‘Whatever you do to the least of my brethren, you do likewise to me’ — when as a matter of record he voted against [a ban on partial-birth abortion ]…well, I find it discouraging and disingenuous for him to talk about the least of our brethren"." Significant stat The New York Times reports on TV news trying to attract younger, politically interested viewers. I doubt that their efforts will work because the under 25 (or under 30 or under 40) crowd doesn't watch TV or read papers for their news. Anyway, I found this number noteworthy: "The median age for the three evening newscasts is 60.5." Fox News has the oldest viewers at 63.9 years old. A great idea In a column full of helpful suggestions for the GOP presidential candidate, George F. Will says John McCain should challenge Barack Obama thusly: "He should ask Obama to join him in a town meeting on lessons from Russia's aggression. Both candidates favor NATO membership for Georgia and Ukraine, perhaps Vladimir Putin's next victim. But does Russia's behavior cause Obama to rethink reliance on 'soft power' -- dialogue, disapproval, diplomacy, economic carrots and sticks -- which Putin considers almost an oxymoron? Does Russia's resort to military coercion, and its arsenal of intercontinental ballistic missiles, cause Obama to revise his resistance to missile defense? Obama, unlike McCain, believes that Russia belongs in the Group of Eight. Does Obama think that Russia should be admitted to the World Trade Organization? Does Obama consider Putin helpful regarding Iran? Does Obama accept the description of the G-8 as an organization of the largest 'industrialized democracies'? Does he think China should be admitted?" Perhaps we need a ban on cheerleading LiveScience reports: "High school cheerleading accounted for 65.1 percent of all catastrophic sports injuries among high school females over the past 25 years... The statistics are equally grim in college, where cheerleading accounted for 66.7 percent of all female sports catastrophic injuries, compared to the past estimate of 59.4 percent." (HT: Tyler Cowen) Saturday, August 16, 2008
Rich meets poor At Freakonomics, Sudhir Venkatesh relates the story of introducing billionaire Michael (who wants to set up a foundation to help the poor) and Curtis (the kind of person who would be helped). There is no doubt that Curtis' life is difficult. It cannot be easy to survive on $5,000 a year in Chicago. I was struck by the practical things the poor do to survive. Carry a rag and you can trade a service (cleaning up) for someplace to sleep. Carry cigarettes which can be bartered for use of a toilet or shower. Michael also met Lena, a 45-year-old mother. Venkatesh relates this story: "Michael offered to pay her a fee for a week of conversation. Lena said, 'How about we exchange our paychecks for one month.' Michael turned bright red." I don't think Michael is the one who should be embarrassed. As a joke, it illustrates either a lack of manners or some semblance of nastiness on Lena's behalf. But I don't think it was a joke. Rather it represents an attitude that is, at least to some degree, part of the problem. The idea that society is a zero-sum game with Michael's success being responsible for Lena's poverty. Maybe it was just a joke, but Venkatesh certainly thought it was important to note Michael turning red. At the very least, the sociologist buys into the idea (at some level) that Michael's success is related, somehow, to Lena occupying the bottom rungs of society's ladder. (HT: Tim Harford) Friday, August 15, 2008
Pro-lifers need to chill Presumptive Republican candidate John McCain has only said he might pick a pro-choice running mate. Not that he will, but that he could. I'd do the same thing and then I'd pick a pro-lifer. It's called PR. Don't provide the press and opponent opportunities to paint the candidate as small-minded or litmus-test limited. Just pretend to be open minded. It's called politics. As for whether or not pretending to be open to a running mate who disagrees on an issue as important as abortion constitutes selling out one's principles is a matter open for debate. Personally, I'll withhold judgement until he announces who the Republican vice presidential candidate will be. Actions speak louder than words. Especially for politicians. These kind of stories make me laugh CTV.c headline: "Canada to send 5 soldiers to boost NATO in Kosovo." Because five soldiers will change everything. CanCon Porn The Globe and Mail reports: "A Canadian pay-television pornography channel — which is pledging to show least 50 per cent domestic content at night — has been approved by federal regulators this week, but it must now try to convince cable and satellite companies to carry the service." The ladies at ProWomanProLife.org discuss. The adolescent in me giggled when Brigitte stated: "Insert your own bad joke here." Jason Cherniak is definitely future Liberal leader material ... As evidenced by of the inverse relation between the size of his ego and intellect. Some people feel sorry for such individuals, others (myself included) like to see them humiliated. If you are the former, read on -- Kathy Shaidle demolishes him: "Dear Mr. Cherniak, Goodness me, you really are an overly sensitive little fellow. You're going to have to grow a thicker skin if you expect to make it in politics, as you obviously do. (You wear your ambition like a suit that's two sizes too big...) I have no idea what you mean by phrases like "uncalled for." Will you be challenging me to a duel next? (Not a good idea: I scored 100% on my handgun course.) :-) There are no rules in blogging and if there were I would break them anyway. I've been doing this since you were just out of puberty, dear boy. Do not presume to lecture me on the niceties of the medium. And I have every reason to doubt your acuity, since, as the links you object to demonstrate, you: - think our rights come from Trudeau, and not God (what would Jefferson say?) - Christians believe they are obliged to kill all Jews to hasten the Second Coming, a variation on the Blood Libel - you fell for a silly email smearing the Conservatives for using clip art, yet put yourself forward as a new media expert. These are just a few of the obtuse and foolish things you have written on your blog. You can't write such things and then expect no one to remember or comment. Instead, be overjoyed that your new client's name will be all over the web yet again today, thanks (again) to me. (Do you have any idea how many readers PajamasMedia has, or how many of them will now be eager to contribute to Mr. Rotberg's defense fund, aka _pay your fee_? Of course not: you don't even know who Maureen Dowd is.) Come to think of it: have YOU blogged about Mr. Rotberg yet? Shouldn't _that_ be more important than emailing me about not linking to you? Not very selfless or savvy of you, Jason. Tsk. Makes me question your smarts once again, I'm afraid. Over 3000 more people have heard of you, thanks to my blog post yesterday, link or no link. But instead, you choose to wimper about a measly hyperlink. That's a liberal for you. So petty. So blinkered. No vision. Sigh. Anyway: thanks for putting yourself forward as a somewhat tasty morsel to "eat for breakfast" this morning, my dear. Although I must say, you could use a little more starch... You may now return to your regularly scheduled careerist party-hackery. Signed, a 'unprincipled' fighter for free speech, yours etc." Three thoughts. 1) Mr. Cherniak? 2) What politician wannabe (elected or backroom) has such a thin skin as to complain about not being hyperlinked? I hope he runs for high office some day and that Kathy is still blogging. 3) If you watched Coren last night, you realize that no one -- not even Kathy's wonderful note quoted above -- makes Jason Cherniak look foolish as much as Jason Cherniak does. Thursday, August 14, 2008
Watch Coren tonight (August 14) It's not a fair fight: Kathy Shaidle, Bob Tarantino and Nickolas Packwood v. Jason Cherniak. Cherniak gets points for courage. Time is 8 pm, on CTS. Even the dead are leaving Detroit The Detroit News reports that not only is the city losing about 5,000 people a year (Motown is half the size it was in the 1950s), approximately 200 remains are disinterred and moved elsewhere each year (and perhaps as many as 400-500 by some estimates). The News reports: "From 2002 through 2007, the remains of about 1,000 people have been disinterred and moved out of the city, according to permits stored in metal filing cabinets in the city's department of health. Looked at in another way, for about every 30 living human beings who leave Detroit, one dead human being follows. Moreover, anecdotal evidence compiled by a Detroit professor suggests the figure may be twice as high, meaning city records may be incomplete and that thousands upon thousands of deceased people have been relocated from the city over the past 20 years." To the paper, this is cause for committing sociology, saying that the flight of the dead -- "a small, though socially symbolic phenomenon" -- raises issues of race and class as white people in the suburbs remove their deceased relatives from cemeteries in the black city. Madden 09  I've been fiddling around with Madden 09 on the Wi most of the past six hours. If you like football, you'll like Madden; it is very, very cool. Franchise mode is pretty realistic. The controls are not impossible. (I'm a Wi-tard.) This will definitely distract me from blogging. And here's 20 years of Madden gaming. Although this is the first time I've bought EA Sports' Madden for any gaming system we've had, I recall the early days of these games and the praise for the realism of the graphics. Status-seeking among equals In dismissing the idea that the rich having more kids might influence the less rich to have larger families, Bryan Caplan says: "Many of the favorite things of the rich are unpopular, and the non-rich make little, no, or negative effort to imitate them. Take opera, a classic blue-blood obsession. Most people don't even pretend to like it, much less take an interest in it. I can speak from experience: When I became an opera fan in high school, my status did not go up. At all. The same goes for Hahvard accents, tuxedos, and monocles. Most people associate them with wealth, but avoid them like the plague. The lesson, I suspect, is that status is usually local status. When they pursue status, most people aren't trying to impress Brad Pitt or the Rockefellers; they're trying to impress the five or six slobs that they see every day. The best way to achieve this, strangely, is to excel in whatever this handful of slobs happens to value. Take blogging. Most people think it's a ridiculous waste of time. I can't think of any super-rich bloggers. So why do bloggers do it? To a large degree, their goal is to raise their status with other bloggers." Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Quote "Few economic statistics are facts: most require thoughtful analysis and interpretation." -- John Kay in today's Financial Times Sin City on the Atlantic David Boyd, a cab driver, is running for mayor of Halifax on a platform of bringing strip clubs and casinos to the city. Says Boyd: "It's high time this city grew up and realized we are a port city." Shaidle on Levant's heroic battle for freedom Kathy Shaidle, a co-author of a forthcoming Interim publishing book on human rights commissions, has an article in today's American Spectator Online on Ezra Levant's travails after he published the so-called Danish cartoons and found himself in front of the Alberta Human Rights Commission and facing other legal and quasi-legal battles. Most of the article goes over some well-known territory but here is the important point: "Levant credits the blogosphere with generating most of the moral and financial support he's received. Through his website and other peoples', as well as YouTube, he has leveraged the Internet in ways other HRC defendants were either too timid or too technologically unsavvy to attempt. He's using his newfound notoriety to speak out on behalf of other victims of the 'thought police,' who don't possess either his legal training or his feisty temperament. It's perhaps ironic that the 'big mouth' that's frequently gotten Levant into so many scrapes may very well help others avoid them in the future." The irrationality of the present university Nicely captured in the introduction to Charles Murray's Wall Street Journal piece: "Imagine that America had no system of post-secondary education, and you were a member of a task force assigned to create one from scratch. One of your colleagues submits this proposal: First, we will set up a single goal to represent educational success, which will take four years to achieve no matter what is being taught. We will attach an economic reward to it that seldom has anything to do with what has been learned. We will urge large numbers of people who do not possess adequate ability to try to achieve the goal, wait until they have spent a lot of time and money, and then deny it to them. We will stigmatize everyone who doesn't meet the goal. We will call the goal a 'BA'." Murray argues for certification rather than a degree. It is worth considering. But what is not debatable is that the current post-secondary system is perverse. If we would not have created it in the first place, you have to wonder why we keep it. Against politics, Or, For thinking In an addendum to post looking at how Barack Obama's tax plan affects the marginal tax rate and wondering how it affects incentives, Tyler Cowen notes: "Don't treat everything as necessitating a response to right- or left-wing talking points." This is difficult for many people with an interest in politics (although probably less of problem for those with an interest in policy). Some more thoughts on Solzhenitsyn Over at the First Things blog, they are still considering Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, this one by Robert P. Kraynak. He states: "In his famous Harvard Address of 1978, he attacked communist regimes for destroying freedom, but then he criticized Western democracies for their emphasis on legalistic rights without moral self-restraint and religious foundations. He joined forces with his fellow Soviet dissident, Andrei Sakharov, in resisting Soviet leaders, but then he harshly criticized Sakharov’s 'human rights activism' for its naïve liberalism. Solzhenitsyn also said jarring things such as, 'Human rights are a fine thing, but how can we be sure that our rights do not expand at the expense of the rights of others. . . . Human freedom includes voluntary self-limitation for the sake of others.' Statements like these led many in the West to view Solzhenitsyn as an enemy of political freedom and democracy who sympathized with such reactionary causes as Tsarism, theocracy, and authoritarian nationalism. These portraits are unfair, however, because Solzhenitsyn had a deep appreciation for political freedom and democracy, even though he insisted that political institutions must serve the highest good of developing the human soul in all of its moral, artistic, and spiritual dimensions. To remember Solzhenitsyn properly, we have to appreciate his insistence on restoring the human soul to the center of politics while viewing political freedom as the necessary and indispensable means—but only a means—to the development of the soul." Kraynak continues: "What Solzhenitsyn learned from the history of Russia and the West is that totalitarianism, theocracy, and secular liberalism have distorted the human soul in various ways. With utmost sobriety, he shows how difficult it is to achieve the right balance between God’s realm and Caesar’s realm because their demands seem contradictory: 'Freedom of action and prosperity are necessary if man is to stand up to his full height on this earth; but spiritual greatness dwells in eternal subordination, in awareness of oneself as an insignificant particle.' In other words, political freedom is absolutely necessary as a means to higher ends because it gives human beings the pride and dignity to stand up on their own two feet and to take responsibility for their lives; but attaining the highest ends requires subordination of the self to a permanent hierarchy of being in which one is merely an 'insignificant particle'." The worth thing is worth reading. Something to think about John Podhoretz at Contentions: "[P]rimaries are largely conducted among voters who want their preexisting questions answered and don’t care so much about the responses of candidates to issues of the moment." I'm not sure this is true, but it seems likely to be true. It would explain the ideological nature of many primary campaigns. It would explain the Obama phenomenon as an answer to those who wanted a non-Hillary Democratic presidential nominee. That said, I'm not sure that general elections are really about the candidates' position on issues or voters' interest in actual policies. David Frum's mistakes On Monday, David Frum noted on his NRO blog: "In my recent Wall Street Journal article on conventions, I described Dwight Eisenhower as the first non-incumbent to win on a single ballot. Not so, as reader Dewie Gaul points out: In 1944 Tom Dewey was nominated on the first ballot. In 1936 Alf Landon was nominated on the first ballot. In 1928 both Hoover and Al Smith were nominated on the first ballot. In 1908 both Taft and Bryan were nominated on the first ballot. In 1904 Alton Parker was nominated on the first ballot. In 1900 Bryan was nominated on the first ballot." That's not some small oversight -- Frum missed just under half the election cycles in the first half of the 20th century. In some years, both candidates were nominated in on the first ballot, in others just one. But overall, about a third of non-incumbents won on the first ballot. Last week, Frum drew attention to an article he wrote for the "first issue" of CJC, a right-of-center Canadian online journal that has been up and running for a full year. The edition in which Frum's article appears is the e-publication's fifth. Interesting but flawed economics quiz The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation has a 20-question test here. Not surprisingly I'm a strong supply-sider. The problem with this (and similar) tests is the wording. In some cases there is little room for nuance and in others the questions impose an unnecessary equivocation. Consider question 5: While the federal government can influence the short-term business cycle, it can't do much to get the private sector to become more productive. * Strongly Disagree * Moderately Disagree * Neutral * Moderately Agree * Strongly Agree Perhaps it doesn't matter in the ITIF's scheme of things, but might not it matter whether government's influence is positive or negative? Or question 9: Markets get it right almost all the time. * Strongly Disagree * Moderately Disagree * Neutral * Moderately Agree * Strongly Agree I don't like that 'almost' in the question. With a strongly/moderately agree/disagree reply, why the need for the 'almost'? I'd have less problem with 'most of the time'. Imagine the person who answers that he moderately agrees that markets get it right almost all the time. Anyway, if taking these kinds of tests is something you have fun doing, you'll have fun doing this test. Tuesday, August 12, 2008
This reiterates what I wrote eight hours ago George F. Will in the Washington Post: "Vladimir Putin, into whose soul President George W. Bush once peered and liked what he saw, has conspicuously conferred with Russia's military, thereby making his poodle, 'President' Dmitry Medvedev, yet more risible. But big events reveal smallness, such as that of New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson. On ABC's 'This Week,' Richardson, auditioning to be Barack Obama's running mate, disqualified himself. Clinging to the Obama campaign's talking points like a drunk to a lamppost, Richardson said that this crisis proves the wisdom of Obama's zest for diplomacy and that America should get the U.N. Security Council 'to pass a strong resolution getting the Russians to show some restraint.' Apparently Richardson was ambassador to the United Nations for 19 months without noticing that Russia has a Security Council veto." Russia's flexing of military might should remind Americans that despite the dearth of real debate on the issues, their election matters because the world will not stop doing what it does just because an unserious candidate is poised to win the White House. The world is too much with us to let a rank political amateur like Barack Obama inhabit its most powerful office. I said the events in Georgia should remind American voters. It probably won't because Russia's near abroad is too distant from the imaginations of most Americans. The world is a dangerous place, about to be made more dangerous due to the actions of American voters this November. Obama: more pro-abortion than NARAL Barack Obama voted against a state version of the Born Alive Infant Protection Act when he was a member of the Illinois Senate. The Corner and the National Right to Life Committee have the details. As Yuval Levin explains in The Corner: "[T]he National Right to Life Committee has uncovered proof that Obama in fact voted in committee against even the version of the Illinois Born-Alive Act that did include exactly the same “neutrality clause” as the federal bill. On March 12, 2003, when the bill was being debated, an amendment was added that inserted the neutrality language of the federal bill verbatim into the Illinois bill. Obama voted for the amendment (that’s the vote on the left-hand column on this committee vote record), and then voted against the amended bill (that’s the vote on the right on the same document). All the Democrats on the committee (which Obama chaired) followed his lead, and the bill was defeated. This was, again, legislation that in the same form had by then passed unanimously at the federal level. Even NARAL did not oppose it." Obama's explanations are looking progressively weaker, and less persuasive. Couple, 36, get married in Star Wars-themed ceremony Story here. The groom said having guests dress up as the creations of George Lucas "created a sense of unity and excitement." Too bad the wedding couldn't do that without the appeal to pop culture. Here's the thing that really struck me: the bride wasn't even dressed up like Princess Leia from Return of the Jedi. She appears to be dressed like Chewbacca. Something to think about Bryan Caplan: "Most people would say that we live in a world in which we are not slaves to government. It could be that, or it could just be that our masters are somewhat diffuse and dysfunctional." Bill Richardson does not deserve to be Obama's veep or Secretary of State Reacting to the Russian invasion of George, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, a man often assumed to be on the shortlist of Barack Obama's vice presidential candidates and potential secretaries of state (including by me), said on the weekend: "My view is that the United States--if we had a stronger relationship with Russia, we could exercise strong diplomacy to stop this effort against Georgia. We should immediately go to the United Nations Security Council, condemn Russia's action, and then get the Security Council to pass a strong resolution getting the Russians to show some restraint, and possibly at the same time generate some U.N. peacekeeping troops. The problem, though, is that we don't have the kind of influence and strength in our relationship with Russia to persuade them." Is Richardson suggesting that if the United States were more engaged with Putin's Russia that we could convince Moscow to cooperate with the U.S. in an attempt to use the UN to thwart Moscow's foreign policy initiatives? Maybe. (Probably.) At OpinionJournal.com, James Taranto offers slightly different observation: "Reuters notes that this was the council's 'fourth meeting on the subject since late-night Thursday.' No doubt there will be many more meetings, all equally productive. After six decades' experience, it should be clear that the U.N. is incapable of doing much to combat international aggression, especially when the aggressor is a permanent member of the Security Council. When men like Richardson act as if they expect otherwise, they are engaging in a sort of idol worship." Richardson served at Turtle Bay in the Clinton administration; he should know better. That he refuses to acknowledge the dysfunction of the UN and inability of that organization to deal with international crises, betrays either complete ignorance or his utter ideological stubbornness. Neither suggests Richardson is qualified to serve in any role affecting foreign policy in a future Democratic administration. Richardson's comments and the mentality Taranto diagnoses are both reflective of a strange belief among pro-UN liberals that the organization can magically solve problems if only the United States had a better working relationship with other countries. The idea of competing national interests or even the bias of the UN structure or the limits of its resources never enter the equation. What I'm reading 1. Traffic: Why We Drive The Way We Do (and What It Says About Us) by Tom Vanderbilt. Traffic is much more informative and entertaining than Tim Falconer's Drive, probably because Vanderbilt is more honest about his ambiguity about the automobile. 2. "Barack Obama's Lost Years: The senator's tenure as a state legislator reveals him to be an old-fashioned, big government, race-conscious liberal," by Stanley Kurtz in the August 11 Weekly Standard. 3. "Ranking the Top 10 Markets for Relocation or Expansion," by Maury Brown at BizOfBaseball. In-depth and intelligent, the one issue he doesn't really address is how relocation or expansion would affect the current divisional alignment. 4. "The Truth Will Not Set You Free," by Richard Just, a review of ten books about Darfur in the August 27 New Republic. The subtitle says it all: "Everything we know about Darfur, and everything we're not doing about it." 5. A couple of 2008 NFL preview magazines: Athlon Sports Pro Football and The Sporting News Pro Football '08. Monday, August 11, 2008
Some things don't need a poll A Rasmussen poll suggests that 73% of Americans find Starbucks coffee over-priced, while 6% disagree. I guess I'm a glass-is-half-full-with-indirect-potable-reuse kind of guy This isn't as disgusting as it sounds: "A day after mopping, I gazed balefully at my hotel toilet in Santa Ana, Calif., and contemplated an entirely new cycle. When you flush in Santa Ana, the waste makes its way to the sewage-treatment plant nearby in Fountain Valley, then sluices not to the ocean but to a plant that superfilters the liquid until it is cleaner than rainwater. The 'new' water is then pumped 13 miles north and discharged into a small lake, where it percolates into the earth. Local utilities pump water from this aquifer and deliver it to the sinks and showers of 2.3 million customers. It is now drinking water. If you like the idea, you call it indirect potable reuse. If the idea revolts you, you call it toilet to tap." The whole story is in the New York Times. Jindal for keynote David N. Bass of the John Locke Foundation makes the case for grooming Louisiana GOP governor Bobby Jindal as the Republican future. That process, says Bass, should begin at the Republican convention next month. Jindal is the anti-Obama: he has Obama's charisma but unlike the empty shell of the Democratic presidential candidate, he has principles rather than slogans around which voters can rally. And highlighting Jindal at the convention is not only for the future. As Bass notes, it shows America that the Dems don't have a monopoly on youth. While its probably too late to help John McCain, it is not too late to begin fixing the Republican brand. Sunday, August 10, 2008
Pop culture pandering Reuters has one of those regular features that run during elections in which candidates attempt to bond with voters by claiming to share a common interest in music or television. John McCain says he likes Abba (plausible) but also Usher (I don't believe it). Barack Obama claims to enjoy Frank Sinatra, Bob Dylan, Sheryl Crow and John Coltrane. That's quite eclectic, but where is the pandering to country and western fans? I've expressed my disbelief at such pretenses to pop culture affinity by politicians before. During one of his many leadership bids, Tony Clement said he liked U2, but my guess is that way back in 1985 he heard that one of the cool kids listened to U2 and has been pretending to like their music ever since. But apparently the Harpers do enjoy AC/DC. Still, colour me cynical. I'd say check their iPods, but they're probably prepared enough to put some tunes on they'd never listen to. Friday, August 08, 2008
Why are American conservatives such big fans of the Pledge of Allegiance? Cato's Gene Healy in 2003: "From its inception, in 1892, the Pledge has been a slavish ritual of devotion to the state, wholly inappropriate for a free people. It was written by Francis Bellamy, a Christian Socialist pushed out of his post as a Baptist minister for delivering pulpit-pounding sermons on such topics as "Jesus the Socialist." Bellamy was devoted to the ideas of his more-famous cousin Edward Bellamy, author of the 1888 utopian novel Looking Backward. Looking Backward describes the future United States as a regimented worker's paradise where everyone has equal incomes, and men are drafted into the country's "industrial army" at the age of 21, serving in the jobs assigned them by the state...Bellamy's book inspired a movement of "Nationalist Clubs," whose members campaigned for a government takeover of the economy. A few years before he wrote the Pledge of Allegiance, Francis Bellamy became a founding member of Boston's first Nationalist Club." (HT: Alex Tabbarok) Quote of the day "Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it wrongly and applying unsuitable remedies." -- Groucho Marx (Via The Mackenzie Institute's July 2008 newsletter) I'm F***king Obama I think this has been around for a while, but it is freaking funny. It is, of course, a riff on this. Don't touch that program Yesterday, Gerry Nicholls had a column in the Toronto Sun that mostly takes on Canada's taxpayer-funded national broadcaster but he makes a very important prediction about the next election and "what politicians won't talk about". "No party, for instance, will talk about cutting back on the size of government, which is so big right now that the entire city of Ottawa actually has sunk three inches under its weight. Politicians are afraid to talk about cutting government because they know every government department has some special interest group ready to wage a jihad in its defence." One of those special interests is voters. They like big government. They want to be taken care of or know that the state is there if they need to be taken care of. While nearly everyone gripes about the CBC and few people actually watch it, most people probably want it around as a prophylactic against the encroaching American cultural juggernaut. Likewise, most Canadians probably support the CRTC regulating the telecommunications industry. Many Canadians want government to come up with programs to 'protect the environment' believing that it will get them off the hook for (supposedly) harming the planet. Employment insurance is necessary to address people's anxiety about economic uncertainty; welfare to address the worries of mothers with dumb or lazy adult children. Politics is about addressing citizens' anxieties and usually that means more government programs. I'm not happy about that, but this understanding helps explain why libertarianism (read, somewhat simplistically, a belief in smaller government) is politically unpalpable. At one time, conservatives could count on the Conservative Party, and its predecessors, on at least giving lip service to reducing such unnecessary and wasteful spending. But the Conservatives care about that really large interest group: voters. Spending is always necessary and never wasteful when there are votes to be bought. Here is an axiom for the size of the state: The size of government is directly tied to the insatiable appetite of a country's citizens for more in good times and the anxieties of voters when the economy and society appear to be headed in decline. Thursday, August 07, 2008
The stimulus didn't work Last year, Martin Feldstein supported the economic stimulus plan implemented earlier this year (dressing it up as a tax rebate) but wrote yesterday in the Wall Street Journal that the facts we now have indicate that it didn't work: "Tax rebates of $78 billion arrived in the second quarter of the year. The government's recent GDP figures show that the level of consumer outlays only rose by an extra $12 billion, or 15% of the lost revenue." Barack Obama is now offering a $1,000 rebate to offset increasing fuel costs. He should heed Reagan's former economic advisor and the most recent consumer spending figures and resist increasing the federal debt to bribe voters with a non-stimulating rebate. Fred Smith for veep? Jim Geraghty has an article at NRO on Fred Smith, the founder of my favourite company, Fed-Ex. Geraghty makes the case for choosing Smith as John McCain's running mate. But Geraghty also notes the reasons for not choosing Smith: "While Smith’s life story and hands-on experience managing a large, successful corporation in the era of globalization would be a lovely addition to any future administration, Smith’s potential flaws as a running mate are clear. He has never held elected office, nor sought it, which would complicate the 'experience' charge used against Obama. He speaks with a light Tennessee lilt, and comes across as brainy and soft-spoken in interviews. But it remains unknown whether that style would be effective on the campaign trail. Could he be an attack dog? How would he handle a slick jab from, say, Sen. Joe Biden in a debate?" These are all true, but I think there are three other reasons. 1) He undermines McCain's signature issue: foreign policy experience, and would seem to validate the common criticism that the presidential candidate himself is personally uninterested in, or unqualified to address, economic issues. 2) CEOs do not make great presidential/vice presidential candidates. They are use to being the boss and are generally politically tone deaf. And as Geraghty acknowledges, by definition, they are untested on the campaign trail and are therefore too much of an unknown. 3) His links to the Cato Institute. Every unpopular libertarian idea ever espoused by anyone associated with Cato will be (unfairly) linked to Smith. The wishful analyses by libertarians notwithstanding, their philosophy is not politically popular today. That Smith would probably make a good vice president -- or an even better cabinet secretary or advisor -- is irrelevant. He wouldn't be a very good vice presidential candidate. Rightly or wrongly -- and I would argue the latter -- the candidate considerations probably reign supreme when choosing a running mate. Monday, August 04, 2008
It's days like this that I wish William Buckley was still alive "One word of truth shall outweigh the whole world." -- Russian proverb quoted by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in his 1970 Nobel lecture Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn -- the novelist described by the London Times as the "towering moral witness" against Soviet oppression -- has passed away. Would have loved to read WFB's obit. There is something substantially different between columns written while a subject is alive and another when it is a remembrance of a great man or friend who has just passed away. Anyway, here are the National Review editors, and two WFB columns (from 1975 and 1976). There is also the Daily Telegraph obit, Christopher Hitchens' column, and the New York Sun's editorial. But better than anything written about Solzhenitsyn is the stuff he wrote himself. His three-volume The Gulag Archipelago or Cancer Ward or The First Circle are worth reading and re-reading. A shorter (and earlier) novel is One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. All three exposed the brutality and inhumanity of the Soviet system. After the release of the Gulag, many French leftists abandoned their support of the Soviet Union; unfortunately American communist-sympathizers in the faculties of the academia were unmoved. This would counter Solzhenitsyn's comment from his Nobel lecture that "the convincingness of a true work of art is completely irrefutable and it forces even an opposing heart to surrender." I once had a history professor who called Solzhenitsyn "a liar" and "American propagandist" and who claimed that the Gulag was an "American fiction." Not everyone was moved by the truth of his fiction. I would suggest you read his (in)famous 1978 Harvard lecture (which will probably be the jumping off point of The Interim's obit next month) or his 1970 Nobel lecture. The Harvard lecture and some of his later-life grumpiness in which he criticized western culture and seemed to validate Vladimir Putin's autocratic rule led to many in the West to abandon him as a Cold War hero. But his time in the Gulag won him the moral authority to speak against the materialistic excess of the West and, occasionally, to get it wrong on the big issues; he was right enough when it really mattered. As the New York Sun said: "It was his steadfast belief in good and evil, and his conviction that he was destined to play a part in the struggle between them, that made Solzhenitsyn's one of the emblematic lives of the 20th century. With his passing, we have lost one of our last links to the era of Soviet tyranny and the struggle to defeat it. Solzhenitsyn did not play the same kind of political role in that struggle as some of the other giants of the 20th century with whom his name should be remembered — Pope John Paul II, Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher. But as a writer and witness, his contribution was no less crucial." ADDENDUM: Bryan Caplan says: "[T]hree and a half decades after the publication of The Gulag Archipelago, it looks like we'll never see the Russian analog of the Nuremberg trials. But if any writer can make future generations of Russians look on the Soviet era with the horror it deserves, it's the man who stared down the Soviet Union at the height of its power - and outlived it by 17 years." |