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).

 
Best. Political. Ad. Ever.

Dale Peterson is running for the Alabama Agriculture Commission and yet his ad has nearly 1.4 million hits. It's a darn entertaining ad. Take a look:



As David Weigel says, "It's like the Axl Rose lyrics in 'One in a Million' came to life and ran for office."
posted by Paul Tuns at 10:37 PM

 
An important Angus Reid poll

The results:

Current federal decided vote:

Conservatives: 35%

Liberals: 27%

NDP: 19%


Confidence in national federal leaders:

Layton: 30%

Harper: 29%

Ignatieff: 13%


Hypothetical support in an election between the Conservatives and an NDP-liberal combination:

Harper versus a combination led by Michael Ignatieff:

Conservatives: 40%

Combination led by Michael Ignatieff: 34%


Harper versus a combination by Bob Rae:

Conservatives: 38%

Combination led by Bob Rae: 38%


Harper versus a combination led by Jack Layton:

Conservatives: 37%

Combination led by Jack Layton: 43%

A few observations. It is possible that the Layton-led coalition is more popular precisely because it will never happen. There might also be some cancer-related sympathy support. I think we can fairly easily dismiss this scenario because unless the NDP were to come to the table with the greater number of seats, the Liberals are never going to agree to give them the prime ministership. If you read Brian Topp's book, How We Almost Gave the Tories the Boot: The inside story behind the coalition, even minor cabinet posts were going to be a problem for many Grits so a Prime Minister Jack Layton seems highly unlikely. (Thank God.) I'd add that knowing the pettiness of the average Liberal, they probably would refuse to join a coalition led by the NDP if the socialists were to win more seats; their ego just wouldn't allow it.

A more importantly finding in this poll, especially for my conservative friends who too easily write off Rae as a Liberal leader: note that a Bob Rae-led coalition fares significantly better than an Ignatieff-led coalition (tied with the Tories rather being six points behind). Rae is an adept and articulate politician -- much more so than Ignatieff.

Lastly, note the the hypothetical NDP-Liberal coalition doesn't do as well as the Liberal and NDP do apart and that the Conservatives do better when facing a coalition. The dynamic if the coalition is clearly an option is more than simply adding the sum of its (apparent) parts.

As would be expected, NDP strategist Brian Topp looks at the exact same numbers and comes to a different conclusion.
posted by Paul Tuns at 2:32 PM

 
Great CATO book forum

Matt Ridley talks about his new book The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves moderated by Brink Lindsey, with comments by Robin Hanson.

The world is getting better and better. People are getting richer. Living standards are improving. The planet can feed more people. And all these developments are possible because human beings are a species that trades. My favourite example of material progress is how a 19th century French aristocrat was special because he had people make him clothes and cook him dinner -- just as an average middle class tourist to France would today. And, by the way, that average middle class tourist has an iPod and travels in comforts unimaginable by that aristocrat.
posted by Paul Tuns at 1:56 PM

 
Grits can't replace Iggy ... but The Hill Times won't explain why

This is an awful article by Harris McLeod in The Hill Times. Entitled "Liberals can't remove Ignatieff before next election, even if they wanted to," the story offers one explanation of why the Liberals got into this mess (coronating Michael Ignatieff in a hurry instead of running a proper leadership contest after the failed coup in December 2008) but doesn't offer much explanation as to why Iggy can't be replaced now. Technically, the Liberal membership can't boot Ignatieff out of his job as leader because there isn't an official leadership review until after the next election. McLeoad explains this in one paragraph.

Of course, they could pressure Ignatieff to resign, an idea that is not entertained in the article at all. And if the party was successful in pressuring Iggy to go, the Liberals could replace the current leader by anointing a new one sans a leadership contest, and that might not be so bad. I think there is only one person who might be able to turn Liberal fortunes around: Frank McKenna. He is rumoured to only to want the job if 1) there is no leadership contest and 2) his leadership is what is necessary to save the Liberal Party. It won't happen because 1) Iggy won't want the embarrassment of never facing the voters (which could be less embarrassing than facing them, but ...) and 2) there are other Liberals interested in the leadership of the party that would resist being pushed aside twice. Not that you will read about any of this in The Hill Times because it ever digs this deeply in their news stories.
posted by Paul Tuns at 6:48 AM

 
Samuelson on defining poverty up

Robert J. Samuelson has a column in the Washington Post pointing out how the Obama administration is not being helpful in its additional definition of poverty:

The "supplemental measure" ties the poverty threshold to what the poorest third of Americans spend on food, housing, clothes and utilities. The actual threshold -- not yet calculated -- will almost certainly be higher than today's poverty line. Moreover, the new definition has strange consequences. Suppose that all Americans doubled their incomes tomorrow, and suppose that their spending on food, clothing, housing and utilities also doubled. That would seem to signify less poverty -- but not by the new poverty measure. It wouldn't decline, because the poverty threshold would go up as spending went up. Many Americans would find this weird: People get richer but "poverty" stays stuck.

That sounds like Canada's flawed poverty measure, the low-income cut-off, which is hotly disputed.

Not that the existing definition of poverty captures what people would think of as poverty, either:

[T]he poor's material well-being has improved. The official poverty measure obscures this by counting only pre-tax cash income and ignoring other sources of support. These include the earned-income tax credit (a rebate to low-income workers), food stamps, health insurance (Medicaid), and housing and energy subsidies. Spending by poor households from all sources may be double their reported income, reports a study by Nicholas Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute. Although many poor live hand-to-mouth, they've participated in rising living standards. In 2005, 91 percent had microwaves, 79 percent air conditioning and 48 percent cellphones.

posted by Paul Tuns at 6:40 AM

 
Steyn on modern policing

Mark Steyn commenting on Michael Coren's take on Blazing Cat Fur being assaulted by Palestinians/Muslims at a counter-demonstration when Benjamin Netanyahu spoke in Toronto this morning:

"This is PC policing: There are identity groups who merit the solicitude of the constabulary, and there are the rest of you who don't."

posted by Paul Tuns at 9:55 PM

 
Margaret Thatcher does the 'Dead Parrot' sketch



(HT: Cory Doctorow at BoingBoing, who is not so impressed)
posted by Paul Tuns at 9:52 PM

 
'Has American Pop Music Displaced Local Culture?'

That's the title on a Stephen Dubner post at Freakonomics that looks at a new paper, "Pop Internationalism: Has a Half Century of World Music Trade Displaced Local Culture?" by Fernando Ferreira and Joel Waldfogel. However, the headline is misleading because the paper's authors seem to say that local culture does just fine. Reminds me of great Intercollegiate Studies Institute lecture by Tyler Cowen in 2008 about globalization and music in which he describes how local music often absorbs foreign influences. The result is a music that changes but is not replaced by foreign music.
posted by Paul Tuns at 9:32 PM

 
Three and out

3. Yesterday Roy Halladay pitched a perfect game, the 20th in MLB history and the third in two years. It is the first time since the first perfect games were thrown in the same week in 1880 that two perfect games have been pitched in the same year. (Dallas Braden threw a perfect game on May 9.) And yet, as Joe Sheehan points out, several numbers and observations indicate that Halladay had a substandard day. Really. As Sheehan notes: "Halladay wasn't quite his usual strike-throwing, grounder-inducing self. In a year in which 68 percent of his pitches have been in the zone, just 63 percent were Saturday night. He had seven three-ball counts, after having just 44 in his first 10 starts. Halladay worked from behind on half the hitters, something he usually does about a third of the time. A ground-ball machine, allowing fly balls on less than a quarter of balls in play, Halladay allowed a number of deep flies and one hard-hit liner to center. A pitcher whose location is almost never an issue hung breaking balls late in the game to Gaby Sanchez and Cody Ross, neither of whom could make Halladay pay for the mistake." Yes, Halladay is that good: a game in which he gives up no hits, walks or errors might not be the best of the this season.

2. Has the perfect game become devalued as Joe Posnanski suggests? I don't think so. It is not something less special because there have been three in the past ten months. Twenty in 130 years is still a rarity, even if it appears to be more common. There is a very good chance that we'll go a half decade before the next one. Well, maybe not while Halladay is still on the mound.

1. I was watching the St. Louis Cardinals-Chicago Cubs game yesterday and saw another pitching gem, this one by Carlos Silva of all people. The Cubs acquired Silva in the off-season in a swap of troubled players, with OF Milton Bradley heading to the Seattle Mariners. Silva signed a big contract after a slightly above average campaign in Minnesota in 2007 but immediately began to suck in Seattle (ERAs of 6.46 and 8.60 with a combined 5-18 record). This year, Silva is 7-0 and yesterday he struck out a career high 11, allowed just two hits and walked no one. (His previous career high was eight in 2004.) It is great to see a player bounce back from the adversity of the season like Silva had last year and be a candidate for the comeback player of the year.
posted by Paul Tuns at 4:44 PM

 
Peaceful Muslim assaults blogger taking video of peaceful demonstration



The person who was assaulted blogs at Blazing Cat Fur, who writes about the incident here. Michael Coren discusses the assault. FiveFeetofFury has a write-up of the incident. By the way, the peaceful Muslim is Ali Mallah, the Vice President of the Canadian Arab Federation, and a member of the Canadian Union of Public Employees and Canadian Labour Congress.
posted by Paul Tuns at 4:36 PM

 
Weekend stuff

1. Bart's Blackboard: Archive of Bart Simpson's Chalkboard Writings is pretty well what the title says it is: all 400+ of them. HT: Aaron Cohen, who writes at Kottke.org: "There's an electrical outlet in front of Bart's knee in every season except season 1 and season 21. This might only be interesting to me." No, that's interesting to many people, but according to the screen captures on the website Cohen links to, it is obvious that the outlet isn't there in the last part of season 20, either.

2. The Wall Street Journal has an article and slide show on the Colosseum.

3. Insomnia cures from Mental Floss.

4. From Wired, an article and video on "Designing Bridges to Be Drivable After Quakes."

5. Listverse has "11 Brain-Twisting Paradoxes." Back in university we treated these paradoxes as very serious philosophical quandaries.

6. The Boston Globe's Big Picture blog has photos taken by the Cassini spacecraft of Saturn and its moons. Pretty amazing stuff, especially 6, 10 19, 24, 26 and 28.

7. From the Universal Record Database -- a YouTube for various strange records -- I found the "Fastest Time To Name All James Bond Movies In Chronological Order": 9.9 seconds. If that doesn't impress you, what about "Most Balloons Shot From 30 Yards Away While Facing Opposite Direction And Sitting On Top of A Ladder."


posted by Paul Tuns at 2:05 PM

 
Andrea Mrozek demolishes stereotypes about pro-life

Here at ProWomanProLife, a website that itself violates the preconception of who and what is pro-life.
posted by Paul Tuns at 10:05 AM

 
Three and out

3. The Hughes Rules. Like The Joba Rules but without the publicity. Some people mock the treatment of young pitchers and suggest that today's athletes are fragile. Valuable investments might be a better view.

2. The Chicago White Sox are struggling -- 21-27, being outscored by about 30 runs --and there is heat on skipper Ozzie Guillen and general manager Kenny Anderson. I'm not sure how responsible they are, however, for the situation as described by Tim Marchman: "I'd like to see the team that can sustain play that bad from four of its six most important players." Sure, as Marchman also says, the team wasn't built with much margin for error, but that is beside the point when starters Jake Peavy and Gavin Floyd, OF Carlos Quentin and SS Alexei Ramirez are all playing at below replacement level. How was Anderson to make contingencies for that?

1. Patrick Sullivan has an article at Baseball Analysts entitled, "Kevin Youkilis: Better Than You Think." It's true. To take just one measure, Wins Above Replacement, Youkilis is the fifth best player over the past two-plus seasons (2008, 2009 and the 2010 season to date) right between Hanley Ramirez and Mark Teixeira. Evan Longoria and Justin Morneau both rate behind Youkilis as does his team-mate and 2008 MVP Dustin Pedroia. WAR may not be the metric you'd want to use, but it says a lot about Youkilis that he rates so highly.
posted by Paul Tuns at 10:02 AM

 
Obama's Horse Feathers

From George F. Will writes about President Barack Obama's problematic (to say the least) and gimmicky (to understate the matter) proposal to control spending:

Obama's Reduce Unnecessary Spending Act confirms the axiom that the titles of bills, like the titles of Marx brothers movies ("Duck Soup," "Horse Feathers"), are utterly uninformative. The act would aggravate a distortion of the Constitution that has grown for seven decades, enlarging presidential power by allowing presidents to treat spending bills as cafeterias from which they can take what they like and reject the rest.

Under Obama's proposal, presidents would list dubious spending, then Congress would have to accept or reject, by a simple majority, his entire list, which could not be filibustered. This might, or might not, be constitutionally problematic.

It certainly would not reduce deficit spending: Under the president's proposal, if Congress kills the projects on the president's list, the budgetary allocation would not be reduced, so legislators could dream up new things on which to spend the money.

posted by Paul Tuns at 9:54 AM

 
New York Times decries Obama's incompetence

The paper of record never uses the I-word but it's pretty obvious that is what they are complaining about in an editorial condemning the White House's handling of the Joe Sestak affair. The editorial asks:

Why would the White House, using former President Bill Clinton as its agent, offer Mr. Sestak a job on the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board for which he was ineligible as a sitting House member? (It takes about 30 seconds to Google those rules, approved in 1993 by President Clinton himself.)

There is actually nothing wrong with the White House involving itself in political campaigns; the problem is that the White House does so incompetently. The editorial doesn't need to use the word incompetence when it describes a pattern of "flail[ing] ham-handedly [which] winds up bruising only itself."
posted by Paul Tuns at 9:48 AM

 
How capitalist is Red China?

From the New York Times earlier this week:

Of the 22 Chinese corporations listed on the Fortune Global 500, 21 are controlled by China’s central government or state-run banks.

That's not even crony capitalism.
posted by Paul Tuns at 9:46 AM

 
Confessions of a sports fanatic

Today I purchased the first 2010 NFL season preview I've seen on the magazine stands: The Pro Football Weekly-Yahoo! Sports guide. I will delve into it over the weekend. I'll devour three or four previews by mid pre-season. I usually read a division's worth of preview a day -- that's a limit that sates my appetite for football before training camp opens in late July and leaves enough magazine to ride out the long stretch from now 'til players arrive in training camp in some 50 days.

With baseball and the French Open in full-swing, gearing up for the NFL season, and the World Cup just around the corner, my wife is quite happy that I don't watch hockey anymore, although it is tempting: I grew up a Chicago Blackhawks fan but lost interest in the NHL after the 'Hawks lost in the Stanley Cup to the Pittsburgh Penguins in 1992. I gave serious thought to watching the Stanley Cup, but I don't really care -- at least not with the Yankees facing the Cleveland Indians for four games this weekend, Roger Federer and Venus Williams making to the next round, and getting ready for the World Cup. (We bought two of our children Netherlands soccer shirts tonight and part of my weekend will be preparing for the World Cup pools I'm in.)

So if I'm not blogging about the banalities of Canadian politics or the crisis facing the euro over the weekend, you'll understand why.
posted by Paul Tuns at 10:03 PM

 
Robin Hood is not a socialist

John Robson's latest must-read concludes thusly:

Against him, eternally, Robin Hood is a conservative hero in every way. Dedicated to the rule of law, brave, resourceful, cheerful in adversity, loyal to his friends and his sweetheart, chaste before marriage, a true Catholic, and faithful to the spirit of the Second Amendment in taking up arms against tyranny. He's even a die-hard constitutional monarchist.

In short, he's ours and you can't have him for your nasty left-wing causes, no matter how bad your accent or your temper.

posted by Paul Tuns at 8:59 AM

 
Three and out

3. The New York Yankees have faced some of the top teams in baseball over their past 13 games and have suffered numerous injuries to key players including their starting CF Curtis Granderson (who should return this weekend) and starting catcher Jorge Posada (who returns if all goes well in mid-June) and went 6-7. That really isn't all that bad. Despite the losing two week stretch they are 28-19, tied for the second best record in baseball (with the San Diego Padres of all teams). Unfortunately for the Bronx Bombers, the best team in all of 'ball is the team they are staring up at in the AL East, the Tampa Bay Rays, while the Boston Red Sox are only two games behind them after going 8-2. But considering their recent schedule and injuries, they are in good shape. Their Expected W-L record (based on runs scored and allowed) is 29-18, also good for second overall, so they haven't been particularly lucky or unlucky and are performing about where they should. According to the Baseball Prospectus metric "Third Order Wins" that adjusts for strength of schedule, the Yanks are actually the best team in baseball, 0.4 wins ahead of the Rays. Perhaps only the Yankees could go 6-7, shake the dirt of their uniform and say all is well.

2. I mentioned in the first point that the Padres are tied for the second best record in the Majors. They are the best in the NL and lead the NL West by two games. San Diego's Expected W-L is identical to their 28-19 record, and just slightly ahead (0.7 wins) of their Third Order Wins. They are winning on the strength of their pitching which is the best at run prevention in all of MLB. (The team is sporting a 2.66 ERA in the month of May.) Geoff Young at Hardball Times says this is unsustainable because while the hitting is about what most people expected (with a pair of pleasant surprises offsetting mild disappointments elsewhere in the lineup) and they lead the league in steals and base-stealing percentage, both starters and relievers are "pitching way over their heads." A simple stat should explain: Jon Garland is an about average innings-eater who currently sports a 2.38 ERA. It is doubtful that his ERA will be much better than 3.50 at year's end, and that's with half his games being played at pitcher-friendly Petco Field. All that said, they finished strongly last year and I was tempted to pick them as a 500 team in my pre-season preview (I didn't, but I was tempted). So while they aren't a 596 team as their current record indicates, they do look like a 500 team and if they went one game over 500 (58-57) the rest of the way would let them complete the 2010 campaign with 86 victories, which is probably a little low to capture the NL West but which will keep them in the race until near the end. That has to be considered a major victory for the Pads.

1. The New York Mets shut out the dominating hitting team that is the NL East division-leading Philadelphia Phillies for three consecutive games. It doesn't mean anything -- three games doesn't tell us anything about the state of the Mets pitching staff or the Phillies batting order -- but it is nice for Mets fans to see their team exact a bit of revenge on their division rival that has won the division for three consecutive years and looked ready to repeat with ease. The Phillies probably will still be playoff-bound so ignore the pundits who will say that being swept and shut out by the lowly Mets portends something much more perilous for Philly; the Phillies led the NL in runs scored before their series with the Mets and its not like the whole team just forgot how to score runs.
posted by Paul Tuns at 8:54 AM

 
Not all incumbents are in trouble

Stephen Moore on Senator Tom Coburn (R, OK) in the Wall Street Journal:

It's on almost no one's radar screen, but Oklahoma is hosting a Senate race this year—a race, but not a contest. In a year when many incumbents are supposedly in deep trouble, Republican Tom Coburn faces not a single challenger from either party. "He's easily the most popular politician in Oklahoma," says Stuart Jolly, director of the Oklahoma chapter of Americans for Prosperity. "No one will run against him, because no one can come anywhere close to him."

One obvious reason is Mr. Coburn's unrelenting battle against the same status quo (e.g., earmarks) that voters this year have decided they are sick of. It began when he first arrived in the Senate and Democrats immediately slapped him with an ethics complaint for continuing to practice medicine, which Dr. Coburn said he would do partly to avoid becoming too attached to his Senate salary and perks.

And here's the kicker: Coburn doesn't charge patients. But that matters less than the fact he is Oklahoma's representative in Washington, not Washington's representative to Oklahoma.
posted by Paul Tuns at 6:57 AM

 
Environmentalists share some blame in Gulf oil disaster

From Charles Krauthammer in the Washington Post:

There will always be catastrophic oil spills. You make them as rare as humanly possible, but where would you rather have one: in the Gulf of Mexico, upon which thousands depend for their livelihood, or in the Arctic, where there are practically no people? All spills seriously damage wildlife. That's a given. But why have we pushed the drilling from the barren to the populated, from the remote wilderness to a center of fishing, shipping, tourism and recreation?

Not that the environmentalists are the only ones to blame. Not by far. But it is odd that they've escaped any mention at all.

posted by Paul Tuns at 6:47 AM

 
Explaining the income gap between men and women

I found the argument made by Mirco Tonin and Michael Vlassopoulos at VoxEU to be novel and thought-provoking, but I'm not near being convinced. Tonin and Vlassopoulos promise to present "evidence from a recent field experiment suggesting that women are motivated by concern about the social cause pursued by their employer, while men are not. This may provide new insight into the gender earnings gap." They explain:

We find that women's effort is positively affected by an environment that induces warm-glow altruism, while there is no additional impact due to pure altruism. In particular, in the treatment condition eliciting warm-glow altruism, women increase their productivity between the two sessions by an additional 10% compared to women in the control group.

On the other hand, we find no statistically significant differences in productivity changes between the control and any of the treatment groups for male subjects. This unresponsiveness suggests that pro-social preferences are less relevant for men than for female workers in our sample.

I think that there are a lot of factors that explain the income gap between men and women from education, to professions chosen, to full-time versus part-time work, to time taken off from work to bear and raise children, plus a hundred other factors of which institutional and personal discrimination are but one small part. It is notable that when key factors are equalized (for example same educational background in the same profession for the same number of uninterrupted years) the gap is reduced to just a few pennies on the dollar. So at best, the Tonin-Vlassopoulos thesis that women seek more "warm-glow altruistic" work environments is just one more piece of the complicated puzzle of the so-called earnings gap. It may explain why they are more likely to enter professions that are lower paying; their compensation is less the salary than a socially optimum work environment.
posted by Paul Tuns at 12:33 AM

 
What I'm reading

1. Geekspeak: How Life and Mathematics = Happiness by Graham Tattersall

2. Parliamentary Democracy in Crisis by Peter H. Russell and Lorne Sossin

3. The 2010 Human Opportunity Index 2010 from the World Bank

4. The Special Report on Water from the May 22 edition of The Economist

5. "Worth Every Penny: A Primer on Conservation-Oriented Water Pricing," from the Polis Project for Ecological Governance out of the University of Victoria

6. "A Better Brew for Success: Economic Liberalization in Rwanda’s Coffee Sector," a Mercatus Center study by Karol Boudreaux
posted by Paul Tuns at 11:53 PM

 
Is Stephen Harper a social conservative?

My thoughts on the question as related to Marci McDonald's book over at Soconvivium.
posted by Paul Tuns at 3:00 PM

 
Bob Rae reminisces fondly about the 1985 Ontario Liberal-NDP accord

Either Bob Rae is incredibly tone deaf about politics or he knows exactly what he is doing when he posts a long piece about the Liberals and NDP coming together to oust the Progressive Conservatives in Ontario 25 years ago. I think Rae is a brilliant politician, not to be underestimated, so I'm going to guess he knows what he's doing by fanning the flames of coalition talk. He's setting the stage to justify a potential working agreement between the federal Liberals and NDP. There is a different set of circumstances, different characters, and a different time and understanding of how government does and should work, so I'm not sure the situations are analogous, but that's beside the point. Rae is beginning to make the public case for bringing back the failed 2008 coalition.
posted by Paul Tuns at 2:11 PM

 
Simmons apologizes for McMahon comments

NRO notes that a disgruntled Republican apologized for saying that Linda McMahon can't win in the general election. Rob Simmons wasn't being a great team player when he said his primary opponent couldn't win a general election because of her affiliation with professional wrestling. Why should he apologize for saying something he probably truly believed and which is probably a correct analysis? What a coward.
posted by Paul Tuns at 9:14 AM

 
Sounds like Iggy is scared to face the voters

The Globe and Mail reports on C-9, the government's omnibus bill, a budget bill that includes non-budget items:

Bill C-9 is a confidence matter that could bring down the government if it is defeated. For that reason, the Conservative government has stacked it with measures that the opposition is unlikely to support – none of the political parties wants to go to the polls at this juncture.

The decision to lump all of these policies is an “abuse of power” on the part of the government, Mr. Ignatieff said. “But the issue is whether you trigger an election,” he said.

I don't like omnibus bills so I agree with criticism of the tactic of lumping dissimilar legislative items in one bill. But Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff is sounding like a guy whose personal disapproval rating is twice that of his approval rating and who leads an opposition party trailing the governing party by 10 points. If I were in Iggy's shoes I'd huff and puff and back away from an election, too.
posted by Paul Tuns at 6:43 AM

 
Why Ron Johnson should be the next senator from Wisconsin

From George F. Will's column on Ron Johnson, likely Russ Feingold's opponent this November:

"The most basic right," Johnson says, "is the right to keep your property." Remembering the golden age when, thanks to Ronald Reagan, the top income tax rate was 28 percent, Johnson says: "For a brief moment we were 72 percent free."

You have me at property. The rhetoric is perfect.
posted by Paul Tuns at 6:37 AM

 
Will former WWE chief be a liability?

NRO's Robert Costa reports that former Rep. Rob Simmons (R., Conn.) is not a fan of Linda McMahon, former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment. Simmons, who has suspended his campaign to become the Republican Party's senate candidate in Connecticut, has a valid criticism regarding the desirability of a McMahon GOP nomination:

McMahon’s biggest hurdle, he says, is her WWE past. “While she was there, they had a mentally-handicapped character, Eugene, who they thought was humorous. I find that whole issue, and how it was handled by [McMahon], severely disappointing.” While [Dan] Blumenthal has “exposed a character flaw,” McMahon has “countless entertainment products that she’ll have to defend, especially when Democrats make them known to the public in coming months.”

posted by Paul Tuns at 6:34 AM

 
'The Balanced, the Unbalanced, Social Media and Talk Radio'

That's the title of Kathy Shaidle's excellent article at the NewsReelBlog. Just read it.

You should also read the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism's study on New Media, Old Media which is the catalyst for Shaidle's article. Key point from the overview of the Pew Center's study:

[S]ocial media tend to home in on stories that get much less attention in the mainstream press. And there is little evidence, at least at this point, of the traditional press then picking up on those stories in response. Across the entire year studied, just one particular story or event – the controversy over emails relating to global research that came to be known as “Climate-gate” – became a major item in the blogosphere and then, a week later, gaining more traction in traditional media.

In other words, the media isn't focusing on what people care about.
posted by Paul Tuns at 6:28 AM

 
Sweden is not a model for the world

Nima Sanandaji and Robert Gidehag at New Geography urge caution to those who might be persuaded by the progressive call for Canada or the United States to follow the Scandinavian model not for the usual reasons offered by conservatives and libertarians (it's socialism, expensive and liberty-wrecking) but practical:

Rather than being guinea pigs in a progressive experiment in social engineering, Swedes are a unique people with a long history. Therefore, we should question the lazy assumption that good Swedish outcomes (long life expectancies, social equality) are due to particular Scandinavian policies (the welfare state).

It's worth reading in its entirety, but this excerpt will explain that cultural factors perhaps as much as social policy and government intervention will explain what Sanandaji and Gidehag are saying:

A more reasonable view of why Sweden performs well on many social metrics has its basis in history and sociology: Swedes have for hundreds of years benefited from sound low-level institutions, such as a strong work ethic and high levels of trust and cooperation...

A Scandinavian economist once stated to Milton Friedman: "In Scandinavia we have no poverty." Milton Friedman replied, "That's interesting, because in America among Scandinavians, we have no poverty either." Indeed, the poverty rate for Americans with Swedish ancestry is only 6.7%, half the U.S average. Economists Geranda Notten and Chris de Neubourg have calculated the poverty rate in Sweden using the American poverty threshold, finding it to be an identical 6.7%.

I don't buy Sanandaji and Gidehag's argument that Swedish industriousness makes Swedish socialism possible, but as I said, the wole thing is worth a read.

In a related item, Price Fishback has a guest post at Freakonomics entitled, "Who Spends More on Social Welfare: the United States or Sweden?" Simply asking that question (almost) answers it. The short answer is that the Scandinavian countries still spend more redistributing income than America, but once you calculate the numbers in a non-standard but more honest way, "the amounts spent per person in the population are not that different." A long excerpt will explain:

People’s perceptions are driven by the standard statistic reported in the news and in the OECD database: gross public social welfare spending as a percentage of GDP. In 2003, Sweden spent 37 percent relative to GDP, Denmark 32 percent, Norway 28 percent, Finland 26 percent, and the U.S. lagged behind at 17 percent.

Yet gross transfers do not take into account the dramatic differences in tax structure in the U.S. and the Nordic countries. The Nordic countries collect income taxes on the cash payments made to social welfare recipients at rates that are four to five times the rates paid by American recipients. Then when the Nordic recipients go out to make purchases, they pay consumption tax rates on their purchases that are 4 to 5 times the rate paid by the poor in America. Furthermore, the U.S. government offers a series of tax breaks to promote social welfare that are not found in the Nordic countries. After adjusting for the differences in taxation to get net public social spending relative to GDP, Sweden’s figure falls by 8 percentage points to 29 percent, Denmark falls to 24 percent, Norway to 23 percent and Finland to 20 percent. The U.S. figure rises to 19 percent.

The difference between the U.S. and the Nordic countries is closed further when expenditures per total population are considered. Such international comparisons are more difficult to measure than shares of GDP due to the issues related to measuring purchasing power across countries. If the adjustments for purchasing power are correct, net public social expenditures by government in America in 2003 ranked roughly in the middle of the Nordic countries. Per capita net public social welfare spending in 2003 (in 1990 dollars) in the U.S. was $5,400, while Sweden’s was $6,300, Norway’s $5,900, Denmark’s $5,472, and Finland’s $4,200. Note that all of these countries are very rich — they were spending more on net public social welfare per person in society than the per capita incomes of countries with most of the population in the world.

posted by Paul Tuns at 1:10 AM

 
The Armageddon Factor

I know I've already posted it here, but my review of Marci McDonald's The Armageddon Factor is now up at The Interim along with an explanatory post at Soconvivium about why I wrote the review I did rather than something else.
posted by Paul Tuns at 11:26 PM

 
Midweek stuff

1. A website with a wonderful name -- InformationIsBeautiful -- has a map entitled "International Number Ones: Because Every Country is the Best at Something." Mozambique rates first in employed women, Belarus ranks first in unemployed women, and Canada is the number in fruit drink consumption.

2. From Wired: "Animating a Blockbuster: How Pixar Built Toy Story 3."

3. The Daily Telegraph reports that an Indonesian builder bopped a komodo dragon on the nose to escape the deadly lizard.

4. Science Daily reports that "an international committee of taxonomists -- scientists responsible for species exploration and classification -- have announced the top 10 new species described in 2009" including a fanged minnow, luminescent-bomb dropping sea worm and a carnivorous slug.

5. Forbes has a list of America's fittest (Washington DC tops the list) and sluggish cities (Oklahoma City rates worst).

6. The New York Times on vending machines that sell a lot more than pop and chocolate bars, instead opting for bikinis, beauty products and bars of gold.

7. At Slate Tom Vanderbilt asks: "Is it possible to design a better stop sign?" And here's a video of Gary Lauder's TED talk on a new sign combining stop and yield.


posted by Paul Tuns at 10:23 PM

 
Tories are 'fear-mongering again' -- so what?

Jane Taber in the Globe and Mail:

Stephen Harper’s Conservatives are fear-mongering again over the spectre of a deal between separatists, socialists and Liberals, declaring that the “coalition risk has returned to Canada.”

This “risk” includes putting Canada’s economic recovery in jeopardy and giving a policy veto to the separatist Bloc Quebecois, according to a series of talking points circulated to Tory supporters and MPs this week. A coalition, the Conservatives say, would be “recipe for disaster.”

Isn't a potential agreement, coalition or whatever among parties, including one (the Liberals) that ran in the last campaign against such a deal, fair game for their political opponents? There is enough difference between the separatists, socialists and opportunists that those who voted for or would consider voting for them might not be pleased with the coziness of the new partners and therefore the Conservatives can legitimately raise the specter of their co-operation. It is good politics and it is fair game. More importantly, as Taber highlights, the Tories say that such a coalition might harm the Canadian economy by calling into question our commitment to (relative) fiscal sanity, as well as the future of Canada itself (by allowing avowed separatists near the power-sharing partnership).

There are some things to legitimately be afraid of in politics and the unholy alliance of the NDP, Bloc and Liberals is one of them.
posted by Paul Tuns at 8:56 AM

 
(Some) libertarians figure it out: to win in the long term, you need kids

Bryan Caplan:

During the lecture, one last strategy popped into my head. In the Battlestar Galactica pilot, President Roslin's plan to save mankind is simple: "We need to start having babies." Suggesting:

6. Strategic fertility. Standard twin methods find that political philosophy and issue views (though not party labels) are at least moderately heritable. But wait, there's more: Since there's strong assortative mating for political agreement, standard methods seriously understate the heritability of politics. The upshot is that if libertarians can get and keep their birth rates well above average, liberty will actually be popular in a century or two. And even if this plan to free the world fails, it will still create a bunch of awesome people.

Strategic fertility might seem like a big burden, but as I keep arguing, being a great parent is a lot easier than it looks because nurture is so overrated. And even if I'm wrong about the power of nurture, having one extra child is probably easier than moving to New Hampshire, and certainly easier than moving to a seastead. Admittedly, if you want radical libertarian change in your lifetime, strategic fertility isn't much help. But what is?

Patri Freidman disagrees and explains that Caplan's plan is bound to fail because it treats fertility as a public good. Patri Freidman's answer, of course, is seasteading:

As an avowed natalist, I am certainly not going to object to advocating for libertarians to have more kids. I would love libertarians to have more kids. But as a strategy to promote political change, it is problematic for the same reason as education and policy activism: they are all public goods.

Having kids for your own personal happiness is, of course, a private good. But that's not what Bryan is arguing here - he's got a whole book coming out to do that. Strategic fertility is suggesting that parents have extra kids in order to achieve long-run political change. But just like educating, proselytizing, or advocating for good policies, the costs of these extra kids are born by their parents, while the benefits accrue to everyone. Thus they are a public good, and will be underproduced.

Moving to a seastead may be hard, but at least the individual immediately and individually gets the increased freedom.

posted by Paul Tuns at 8:53 AM

 
Meddler-in-Chief on LeBron James

Russell Roberts takes Barack Obama to task for even talking about LeBron James' future in basketball which earns the president Russell's monicker Meddler-in-Chief. Joe Posnanski doesn't feel comfortable with Obama twice -- not once, but twice -- suggesting James would be a fine addition to the Chicago Bulls. Of course, James would be a great addition to any team. And, of course, the president as a (supposed) fan of sports has an opinion, but precisely because of his position he should be careful expressing it.
posted by Paul Tuns at 8:49 AM

 
Avoid The Armageddon Factor

My review of The Armageddon Factor in the June Interim. The paper is out a few days late, so I was able to squeeze in a last-minute review of the book.

The Armageddon Factor: The Rise of Christian Nationalism in Canada by Marci McDonald (Random House, $32, 419 pages)
Review
Paul Tuns

If you deliberately set out to write a bad book you would have a hard time outdoing Marci McDonald, whose The Armageddon Factor is so comprehensively awful that there is no reason whatsoever to ever read it. The long-time journalist has set her sights on exposing the rise of the Religious Right in Canada and its supposed coziness with Stephen Harper’s Conservative government, but the book is so rife with errors and misleading arguments that it is completely void of merit.

The most glaring problem in the book is that there are numerous factual mistakes. There are too many to list, but to name just three, McDonald calls Ontario MPP Frank Klees a Baptist minister (he’s not), Concerned Christian Coalition founder Craig Chandler a former Alberta MLA (he has been a political candidate but he was never elected), and Jason Kenney a one-time chief of staff to Stockwell Day (he never was). McDonald claims meetings occur that the alleged participants say never happened and puts words in the mouths of people who never said them. It would be niggling to point to these errors if there were only a handful but they were so copious, counting them became a chore.

When McDonald is not getting her facts wrong, she is twisting the meaning of events and words. She implies that a letter of congratulations from Prime Minister Stephen Harper to the evangelical youth attending an Ottawa event organized by Faytene Kryskow and 4MyCanada is evidence of the close connection between evangelical groups and the government. Such “reporting” is a classic example of making a mountain of molehill when another reading of the same event might be that the Prime Minister was simply being nice to a group of key supporters (and potential future party activists). More molehills become mountains through the overuse of adverbs and adjectives – by definition subjective parts of speech; McDonald makes certain connections, activities, and speeches seem more foreboding than they might be otherwise with headquarters that are “luxurious,” activists who are “stars,” and projects which are “ambitious,” and you almost hear the ominous organ music whenever she talks about socially conservative moral views.

A more serious problem is that McDonald refuses to take the theology of a diverse group of Christians seriously enough to differentiate between them, instead suggesting that their End Times religious beliefs uniformly lead evangelicals (she mostly ignores Catholics) to embrace a social conservatism that will make the country righteous for the return of Jesus. Considering that the “Armageddon Factor” is her thesis, the lack of intellectual vigor or even curiosity about End Times theology is serious shortcoming.

It is hard to tell reading The Armageddon Factor who McDonald dislikes more, Christians or conservatives, but clearly the combination of the two is beyond the pale. She says, "theirs is a dark and dangerous vision, one that brooks no dissent and requires the dismantling of key democratic institutions." McDonald is less interested in telling the story of the rise of Religious Right than she is in fomenting distrust of anyone whose faith informs their public policy views.

There are four fatal problems with the book: wild exaggerations and conjecture, factual errors, a core misunderstanding of the subject matter, and a clear bias that prevents accurately depicting the story of Canada’s religious conservatives – a story that should be told. Unfortunately, McDonald is not the person to write such a book. Considering that the casual reader might not be equipped to detect all the factual mistakes, there is absolutely no benefit to reading The Armageddon Factor and indeed some harm due to the misinformation the author is peddling.
posted by Paul Tuns at 8:49 PM

 
First drafts

Opening sentence to the first draft of my review of Marci McDonald's The Armageddon Factor: The Rise of Christian Nationalism in Canada, for the forthcoming Interim: "If you set out to write a bad book you would have a hard time outdoing Marci McDonald, whose The Armageddon Factor is so comprehensively awful that there is no reason whatsoever to ever read it." I might change that because I'm not sure that's the tone I want in the paper, but those words neatly summarize what I think of McDonald's over-exposed work of quasi-fiction.
posted by Paul Tuns at 11:44 PM

 
Obama's plan to tackle the deficit

President Barack Obama is going to get a hold on a deficit of $1.5 trillion by asking Congress to pretty please take a second look at what it wants to spend. Brian Wingfield, the Washington Bureau Chief of Forbes, doubts it will work.
posted by Paul Tuns at 11:36 PM

 
I'm not sure Barone is right

Michael Barone says that voters don't like their elected representatives bringing home the bacon any more:

There is an old saying on Capitol Hill that there are three parties — Democrats, Republicans and appropriators. One reason that it has been hard to hold down government spending is that appropriators of both parties have an institutional and political interest in spending.

Their defeats are an indication that spending is not popular this year. So is the decision, shocking to many Democrats, of House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey to retire after a career of 41 years. Obey maintains that the vigorous campaign of a young Republican in his district didn't prompt his decision. But his retirement is evidence that, suddenly this year, pork is not kosher.

I don't know if that is true. My guess is that voters don't like government spending in general: bank bailouts, stimulus spending, the takeover of General Motors, Obamacare, etc... More importantly, this shift in opinion does not appear to be ideological; I don't think voters have suddenly become more conservative or libertarian -- they don't necessarily want smaller government. I think it is something a little different. I don't have polling data to support my thesis, but my guess is that voters don't believe politicians know what they are doing when it comes to spending. The defeat of incumbents might have less to do with being ticked off at pork per se than the perception that politicians are playing fast and loose with the public purse and it's clear that the elected officials are ignorant at best, incompetent at worse.

Matthew Continetti writes in the current Weekly Standard about the generational shift appearing to take place in the elections with younger candidates replacing grey-haired political veterans. At some level I think voters are embracing a new generation of politicians because the previous generation clearly didn't have the answers -- and indeed might be part of the cause of many of today's problems (an expensive health care system, the financial collapse, the recession, etc...).
posted by Paul Tuns at 10:51 PM

 
Samuelson on Greece

Robert J. Samuelson in the Washington Post:

Greece's street protests warn of social unrest. Austerity could prove destabilizing if weak governments can satisfy neither their voters (who want less austerity) nor financial markets (which want more). Social protections are weakening. Conflict within and between nations is rising. "There's a threat to the European [political and economic] model, which includes solidarity between the North and South" of Europe, says Ian Lesser of the German Marshall Fund.

The euro's steady decline on foreign exchange markets suggests much skepticism that Europe can win its gamble. Even if it does, the spending cuts and tax increases will dampen already-low economic growth. Europe's contribution to the global recovery will be meager. But if the gamble fails, much worse may lie ahead. Europe is trying to muddle through.

posted by Paul Tuns at 10:40 PM

 
Climate changes (verb) not climate change (noun)

From Science Daily:

An international team of scientists has discovered that climate change played a major role in causing mass extinction of mammals in the late quaternary era, 50,000 years ago. Their study, published in Evolution, takes a new approach to this hotly debated topic by using global data modelling to build continental 'climate footprints.'

"Between 50,000 and 3,000 years before present (BP) 65% of mammal species weighing over 44kg went extinct, together with a lower proportion of small mammals," said lead author Dr David Nogues-Bravo from the Center for Macroecology, Evolution and Climate in University of Copenhagen.

How will envirofanatics blame the automobile for this one?
posted by Paul Tuns at 10:36 PM

 
Weekend stuff

1. From Wired's GameLife blog: "Q&A: Pac-Man Creator Reflects on 30 Years of Dot-Eating."

2. In the Wall Street Journal T.J. Stiles lists the five best mogul biographies.

3. Listverse has the "Top 10 Greatest Firearms Designers."

4. TV shows employ a lot of people and generate a lot of economic activity. New York City will miss Law and Order. (See also this New York Times column.) Hawaii will miss Lost.

5. A century after his death, Mark Twain's autobiography -- to be taken from 5000 pages of unedited memoirs -- is to be published.

6. When you name your kid D’AlCapone AlPacino Morris you are setting him up for a life of crime -- murder, aggravated burglary, aggravated robbery, kidnapping and felonious assault. (HT: Freakonomics)

7. Laser-like shot for goal. Story here.


posted by Paul Tuns at 8:53 PM

 
Saving dollars, saving lives

Over at ProWomanProLife Jennifer Derwey has an interesting post on making life affordable -- and therefore allowing young women and couples to be more open to life. People who work at pro-life counselling centers have pointed out to me that often even small costs look daunting to the women who face crisis pregnancies. Creating and publicizing opportunities to save a few dollars here and few cents there add up, and could be life-saving.
posted by Paul Tuns at 12:57 PM

 
Beyond the column

One of the great advantages with blogging for columnists is that they can expand upon or touch upon points not made but relevant to their word count-limited columns. Tyler Cowen writes about Greece and its economy in the New York Times but offers several bulleted items at Marginal Revolution that 1) didn't make the NYT's piece but are 2) just as important if not more so. Three of those points include:

2. I don't see any reason why a narrower Eurozone has to collapse.

3. Greece with a default and a floating exchange rate could do OK (though not spectacularly well). The real question is how to get from here to there.

4. I don't have any problem suggesting that Greece needed, and still needs, to collect more tax revenue. Yet many writers on "the left" will bend over backward to avoid uttering these simple words: "The Greek government spent too much money." It's true, the Greek government spent too much money. Be worried if you are reading a writer who does not admit (much less emphasize) that upfront.

posted by Paul Tuns at 12:47 PM

 
Ego sum ledo proinde ego sum

Michael Coren in his weekend column on the proliferation of hate speech and victimhood:

In Canada, it seems, I am offended therefore I am.

Of course, it isn't only Canada and the desire to be offended (I am convinced that many people seek victimhood) is nothing new. Charles Sykes wrote an excellent book that touched upon this topic in the early 1990s, Nation of Victims, A: The Decay of the American Character.
posted by Paul Tuns at 12:42 PM

 
Three cheers for libertarians

Don Boudreaux:

Correct or incorrect, right or wrong, wise or foolish, informed or ignorant, smart or stupid, insightful or benighted – classical liberals and libertarians have none of the fetish for power that infects the minds and souls of so many people on the political left. And this fact alone goes a very long way to recommending classical liberalism (or libertarianism) over alternative ideologies. Indeed, fear of concentrated power – and the recognition that power is never remotely as concentrated or as dangerous as when it is in the hands of the state – might well be the single most important reason why persons become classical liberals or libertarians.

But being a libertarian or classical liberal is hard. Ann Coulter once used a line about the innate desire of most people to control others -- the human instinct to fascism, or something like that. Given half the chance, I'm sure 90% of people would impose their views on the rest of society, perhaps including tastes in food and music. People don't like disagreement and if given the opportunity would gladly eliminate it, by force if possible. Perhaps I'm too pessimistic about my fellow man, but I don't think so.

And to anticipate a criticism against me for being hypocritical, my desire to outlaw abortion is a protection of individual rights; preborn human beings deserve the same legal protections as those already born. As for my opposition to homosexual acts, I criticize them and think them immoral, but I wouldn't want them criminalized. Vices are not crimes, to quote Lysander Spooner.

By the way, Canadian libertarian Martin Masse has a column at the National Post expressing skepticism about the abortion license. He still favours permitting first-trimester abortion but says that once the unborn child is recognizably human it requires the same protections as everyone else. That's a good start; more importantly, it is evidence that libertarian thought permits restrictions on the "freedom to choose" to kill one's unborn child.

Lastly I want to draw attention to John Marshall's post on Rand Paul at No Left Turns in which he says that the Kentucky Republican senatorial candidate and son of the former Libertarian presidential candidate Ron Paul points to a way in which libertarianism can be a productive part of the Republican/conservative coalition:

If Paul wins in November, provided similar victories are achieved in other races around the country, it just might augur a correction to conservatism that it has not received since the loss in the 1998 elections and the turn the party made to Bush II and compassionate conservatism, i.e., European style Christian Democrat policies.

The implications for libertarianism seem striking as well. In short, Paul might be a clue to a libertarianism that doesn't strive so much for autonomist liberty, but seeks recovery of vital American political traditions and habits. Comfortable with religion, understanding the foundations of the family to civilization, and yet decisively aware of the dangers posed by the progressive smart set and their federal bureaucracy to our constitution, Paulian libertarians might be the subtle and powerful change within the coalition of conservatism.

posted by Paul Tuns at 11:41 PM

 
Three and out

3. Tim Marchman notes that the Chicago Cubs stink despite a lot of things going right for them. He says the Cubbies should fire manager Lou Piniella, but warns it shouldn't make much difference in the win-loss column.

2. Joe Posnanski writes about Florida Marlins All-Star SS Hanley Ramirez's lack of effort earlier this week. The article is humane and understanding, but as Pos notes, there is a big difference between understanding and accepting the lackadaisical play.

1. Bob Elliott of the Toronto Sun says that there is a case to be made that Vernon Wells is the best hitter in the history of the Toronto Blue Jays. Most of the numerical evidence is proof that Wells has played in a Jays uniform for a long time, not that he is among their best hitters. To me, that conversation begins and ends with Carlos Delgado, Roberto Alomar, and George Bell, with Delgado on top.
posted by Paul Tuns at 9:05 PM

 
It's not climate change (a noun) but climate changes (a verb)

A report from Fox News on the fourth International Conference on Climate Change put on by the Heartland Institute notes that there are also global cooling alarmists but the message between the worries and warnings is that climate is not something that is static:

Contrary to the commonly held scientific conclusion that the Earth is getting warmer, Dr. Don Easterbrook, emeritus professor of geology at Western Washington University and author of more than 150 peer-reviewed papers, has unveiled evidence for his prediction that global cooling is coming soon.

“Rather than global warming at a rate of 1 F per decade, records of past natural cycles indicate there may be global cooling for the first few decades of the 21st century to about 2030,” said Easterbrook, speaking on a scientific panel discussion with other climatologists. This, he says, will likely be followed by “global warming from about 2030 to 2060,” which will then be followed by another cooling spell from 2060 to 2090...

"Global warming is over -- at least for a few decades," Easterbrook told conference attendees. "However, the bad news is that global cooling is even more harmful to humans than global warming, and a cause for even greater concern."

About climate change Easterbrook noted (as reported in the words of the Fox News report): "Ten big climate changes occurred over the past 15,000 years, and another 60 smaller changes occurred in the past 5,000 years."
posted by Paul Tuns at 5:18 PM

 
Best take on the Tuesday primaries ... at least one of them

Charles Krauthammer on the defeat of turncoat Senator Arlen Specter, as noted in The Corner:

I think it's very simple explaining that election. Specter demonstrated the limits of political opportunism — even by senatorial standards.

Bonus Krauthammer quote on whether he went to a recent state dinner at the White House:

No. I had thought about crashing it. … And if I was caught, I would say that — my defense would be that — I'm simply an undocumented guest, I’m not illegal.

posted by Paul Tuns at 5:07 PM

 
Brasil's 2014 World Cup

AP reports that between transportation improvements and stadia renovations, the 2014 World Cup could cost Brasil $20 billion. Fortunately the costs of these large-scale projects are never under-estimated.
posted by Paul Tuns at 5:02 PM

 
Caplan@Cato

Bryan Caplan's Cato Institute intern memories are worth reading.
posted by Paul Tuns at 4:58 PM

 
Meet Wenlock and Mandeville

The mascots for the 2012 Olympics in London. I'm speechless.


posted by Paul Tuns at 9:09 AM

 
Shagging soldiers

The Daily Telegraph reports:

Female British soldiers are being urged to carry condoms to war after an alarming number of pregnancies at bases in Afghanistan...

Military personnel are officially prohibited from sexual relationships in war zones but the rule is rarely enforced provided there is not impact on discipline or operations.

A report in the Mail on Sunday said condoms are readily available to male and female soldiers at bases such as Camp Bastion, which houses 8,500 British service personnel, including 700 women.

If condoms are readily available and, as the Telegraph reports, 133 women soldiers have been evacuated from Iraq and Afghanistan since 2003 because they were pregnant, I'd say the officially-prohibited-but-rarely-enforced stricture against sexual relations among soldiers is an understatement.
posted by Paul Tuns at 11:47 AM

 
Quebecers tired of sovereignty debate

You can read a story about it at the Globe and Mail and the specific details are less important than my interpretation: 1) at some level this is an endorsement of the Stephen Harper government and 2) those who support a Canada with Quebec should not be complacent. It has long been recognized that to some degree support for sovereignty or separation was less a true desire to leave Canada than it was an expression of opposition to Ottawa and Canada's centralizing federalism. It is telling that after more than four years of Conservative rule, support for sovereignty and the sovereignty debate is so low as to be a non-issue. That's good news for Canada and even better news for Quebec. But I remind readers that the debate has been declared over before and warn that anti-Ottawa sentiment can flare up without notice. To keep Quebec in Canada, the federal government needs to stay out of provincial jurisdictions.
posted by Paul Tuns at 8:59 AM

 
Euro trash

Joseph Y. Calhoun III of Alhambra Investments on the "Greek" bailout:

French President Sarkozy allegedly told German Chancellor Merkel that France would leave the Euro if her government didn’t agree to the EU contingency bailout plan. According to a Spanish newspaper, Sarkozy threw a fit worthy of a two year old, slamming his fist on the table, demanding EU solidarity and saying that no European country could be allowed to default. One wonders what would have happened if Frau Merkel had merely responded with a shrug and a jaunty c’est la vie! Would Sarkozy really have just walked away from the Euro - and Germany - when it is the only thing standing between France and its own Greek style day of reckoning? The terrible truth is that the French economy is basically Greece on steroids and they need the Euro a hell of a lot more than the Germans ever have. French debt to GDP isn’t as high as Greece yet but it is well on the way and by the way 58% of it is held by foreigners with 20% coming due this year. One can’t help but wonder if Sarkozy’s tantrum wasn’t more about his own country than the Club Med nations.

And then there's this from the current Economist which reports on the unprecedented move by the International Monetary Fund to help bail out a rich country (yes, Greece qualifies); the Fund is led by Dominique Strauss-Kahn, and the magazine reports:

Some also wonder whether the political ambitions of Mr Strauss-Kahn, who is widely rumoured to be considering a run for the French presidency, were behind the IMF’s eagerness to step in. Simon Johnson, once the fund’s chief economist, says that “a former French finance minister is the worst possible person to be leading the IMF into negotiations designed to save the euro. The conflicts of interest are overwhelming.” The fund’s European adventures may help Mr Strauss-Kahn. Their consequences for the institution he heads are less clear.

posted by Paul Tuns at 8:56 AM

 
Midweek stuff

1. From WiredScience: "New Global Map of Every Country’s Tallest Building."

2. Secrets of Batman's utility belt: Cracked breaks the secret to how the Caped Crusader can hide so much stuff (humour).

3. The Daily Beast ranks the U.S states by corruption. Number one broke my heart.

4. Gods of the Copybook Headings provides a counter-list to the Times top 50 prime ministers that I mentioned a week or so ago with a list of his own top 10. He also critiques the original list, here.

5. From Wired's Epicenter blog: "Overwhelmed? Welcome to the Age of Curation."

6. From Mental Floss: poor school band choices.

7. From Listverse: "15 Firsts In Video Game History." An excellent evolutionary history of video games, mostly from the tech side.

8. He's safe at home:


posted by Paul Tuns at 1:08 AM

 
The gun control debate is based on 'what ifs' not reality

President Barack Obama has said in the past that he opposes concealed weapons because, "I think that creates a potential atmosphere where more innocent people could (get shot during) altercations." John Lott, who has re-issued his More Guns, Less Crime (third edition), responds: "The gun-control debate largely focuses on what might go wrong, rather than evidence on what actually happens." (HT: Newmark's Door)
posted by Paul Tuns at 12:53 AM

 
Will on the rogue 9th Circuit Court

George F. Will says the Supreme Court of the United States should take all of five minutes to issue a summary reversal of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision against Arizona's school choice program when it considers the possibility of issuing its 12th summary reversal of the court Will calls a "stimulus package" for the Supremes. The 9th circuit routinely ignores the Supreme Court's precedent-setting decisions. No arguments are necessary. Just reverse it.
posted by Paul Tuns at 12:07 AM

 
Rahm Emanuel: once a SOB, always a SOB

Politico reports on Jonathan Alter’s new book, The Promise: President Obama, Year One and there a number of unflattering takes on Obama's chief of staff and former Congressman Rahm Emanuel. I particularly like this 'graph:

“Take your f—ing tampon out and tell me what you have to say,” Emanuel told an unnamed male aide during a meeting in his office, wrote Alter, who asserts that reports Emanuel “mellowed over time were untrue.”

posted by Paul Tuns at 11:51 PM

 
Counter intuitive argument about murder laws

Jeffrey Miron suggests that laws criminalizing murder might actually make us less safe:

[P]olicies that criminalize murder might cause private parties to be less vigilant about avoiding murder. And private actions - such as living in a safe neighborhood, not frequenting dangerous parts of town, installing locks and alarms, owning guns and guard dogs – play a large role in helping people avoid murder.

A related fact is that evidence for the deterrent effect of police, prisons, and other criminal justice actions against murder is mixed, at best.

None of this means I necessarily oppose laws against murder.

I think Miron is correct to say that people are less likely to take the precautions necessary to protect themselves because they erroneously think they are safer with laws in place against murder (or other violent crimes). But deterrence is only one reason we punish crime; another is just deserts -- criminals deserve to be punished.
posted by Paul Tuns at 11:09 PM

 
Couldn't happen to a nicer guy

New York Times headline: "Specter Loses Pennsylvania Senate Seat." Former RINO turned Democrat got knocked off by a real Democrat, Rep. Joe Sestak for the Democrat senatorial nomination.
posted by Paul Tuns at 10:48 PM

 
Two questions gleaned from Marginal Revolution

1. If you could create a punctuation mark, what would its function be and what would it look like?

2. On marijuana: "How long do you predict it will be from legalization to government subsidization?"
posted by Paul Tuns at 9:06 AM

 
What May 18 tells us about November 2

Not a lot, probably. As Dan Balz writes in the Washington Post about today's much-watched primaries in Arkansas, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania:

But the results are not likely to offer a single satisfying answer to how big Democratic losses might be in November. Rather, Tuesday's voters will drop clues on a variety of questions, about anti-incumbent sentiment, "tea party" power and presidential popularity.

And I'm skeptical about the clues that will be dropped; a lot can happen over the next five-plus months. All that today's primaries will tell us is who will be on the ballot, and probably not much more.
posted by Paul Tuns at 1:31 AM

 
A product of one's environment

David Brooks has an excellent column in the New York Times about the New York of the 1970s and how it has influenced today's parents and policy-makers. It defies excerption, so just read the whole thing.
posted by Paul Tuns at 1:27 AM

 
What I'm reading

1. The Armageddon Factor: The Rise of Christian Nationalism in Canada by Marci McDonald. It's so awful I'm a little surprised anyone would publish it. A real review will be forthcoming.

2. Power Hungry: The Myths of "Green" Energy and the Real Fuels of the Future by Robert Bryce. It will provide loads of evidence to counter ecofreaks who peddle wind and solar as the future of fuel.

3. "Gambling with Other People's Money: How Perverted Incentives Caused the Financial Crisis," by Russell Roberts. The best thing I've read about the financial crisis.

4. "The Tea Party Jacobins," a review of numerous political books by Mark Lilla in the May 27 New York Review of Books. The normally sober-minded Lilla sometimes seems unhinged in his criticism of the political Right.

5. "The Economics of Happiness," a commencement address by Ben S. Bernanke.

6. "Rage Machine: Andrew Breitbart’s empire of bluster," by Rebecca Mead in the May 24 New Yorker.
posted by Paul Tuns at 11:28 PM

 
Lines

Donald DeMarco knows how to get published in The Interim: send me something with some connection to baseball. Here's DeMarco in the May issue of the paper:

The brief interim between the end of batting practice and the commencement of the game invites a moment of reflection when the spectator can look at the field of play while it is devoid of players. In this meditative moment, undistracted by the game, one can begin to appreciate the significance of the foul lines. They begin at “home” and extend out to infinity, as they embrace the entire playing field. They are both protective arms and defining boundaries.

There can be no game without these foul lines. And if one objects to the harshness of the word “foul,” let him understand that baseball is neither indecisive nor timid about the way it identifies the location of a ball that is not “fair” (a term that is redolent with implications of justice, beauty and liveliness).

Baseball’s foul lines echo more important lines, those that divide right from wrong, good from evil and truth from falsity. They provide a context of clarity that is often missing in the worlds of politics, religion and morality. Fans may boo and scream, but their protests are directed at the performance of the players or at the officiating of the umpires. The game itself is a welcomed reprieve for the anxious multitude that live in a world of confusion where the foul lines are blurred, erased or misplaced.

Read of the rest of the article, entitled "Life is not like a baseball game with clear, clean lines."
posted by Paul Tuns at 10:52 PM

 
On the insufficiency and necessity of government action

Consider these two comments which appear contradictory but which I think are both true.

First, George Melloan's contribution to the Cato Journal special issue on "Restoring Global Financial Stability":

If there is a role for the government to play in restoring financial harmony it would have to be quite the opposite from the role Washington has played over the last decade, which has produced financial chaos. But the chances at this point that Washington will reverse its past practices and quietly withdraw to the sidelines so that the markets can make necessary corrections are quite slim, or, more precisely, non-existent. It is the nature of governments to first interfere with market forces and then make the problem worse by addressing the resulting confusions and dislocations by interfering still more.

And this, in James Surowiecki's excellent article "The Age of Political Risk," in the current New Yorker:

Of course, government actions always affect the economy, but usually in an undramatic way: an interest-rate cut here, a new regulation there. The economic downturn and the debt crisis have given us instead a world where governments are among the most important players in markets—injecting money into economies on a colossal scale and routinely propping up, or even nationalizing, troubled companies.

As a result, investors have a vast range of new things to worry about, like voter sentiment in Westphalia. They have to try to figure out whether policymakers will do things they shouldn’t, like slash spending during a downturn, and not do what they should, which is to intervene promptly when systemic crises appear. Unfortunately, this sort of thing is inherently harder to predict than, say, how Procter & Gamble is going to do over the next few years. Last week, Mohamed El-Erian, the C.E.O. of the bond giant Pimco, sent a letter to investors saying that “the new normal” is a world in which “the public sector plays a much more influential role.” That’s a more uncertain world and therefore one in which markets will be more volatile.

I'm not happy about this state of affairs but I recognize reality when I see it. Unfortunately, we are living in an age in which consumers and producers require the psychological comfort of thinking that government is doing something (anything) to help the economy. This presents certain challenges to conservatives, especially those who hold elective office, who must balance some semblance of respect for free markets and an understanding that those free markets want (and therefore need) government intervention.
posted by Paul Tuns at 10:43 PM

 
Tory-Lib Dem coalition

There are things to like and things to dislike in the coalition agreement between the British Conservatives and Liberal Democrats. Something I don't like: in what sense are the Tories conservative in most of their agreement with the Lib Dems on political reform? Consider:

Political Reform

The parties agree to the establishment of five year fixed-term parliaments. A Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government will put a binding motion before the House of Commons in the first days following this agreement stating that the next general election will be held on the first Thursday of May 2015. Following this motion, legislation will be brought forward to make provision for fixed term parliaments of five years. This legislation will also provide for dissolution if 55% or more of the House votes in favour.

The parties will bring forward a Referendum Bill on electoral reform, which includes provision for the introduction of the Alternative Vote in the event of a positive result in the referendum, as well as for the creation of fewer and more equal sized constituencies. Both parties will whip their Parliamentary Parties in both Houses to support a simple majority referendum on the Alternative Vote, without prejudice to the positions parties will take during such a referendum.

The parties will bring forward early legislation to introduce a power of recall, allowing voters to force a by-election where an MP was found to have engaged in serious wrongdoing and having had a petition calling for a by-election signed by 10% of his or her constituents.

We agree to establish a committee to bring forward proposals for a wholly or mainly elected upper chamber on the basis of proportional representation. The committee will come forward with a draft motions by December 2010. It is likely that this bill will advocate single long terms of office. It is also likely there will be a grandfathering system for current Peers. In the interim, Lords appointments will be made with the objective of creating a second chamber reflective of the share of the vote secured by the political parties in the last general election.

And the sections on the EU smell like weasel, which read in part:

We agree that the British Government will be a positive participant in the European Union, playing a strong and positive role with our partners, with the goal of ensuring that all the nations of Europe are equipped to face the challenges of the 21st century: global competitiveness, global warming and global poverty.

We agree that there should be no further transfer of sovereignty or powers over the course of the next Parliament. We will examine the balance of the EU’s existing competences and will, in particular, work to limit the application of the Working Time Directive in the United Kingdom.

We agree that we will amend the 1972 European Communities Act so that any proposed future Treaty that transferred areas of power, or competences, would be subject to a referendum on that Treaty – a ‘referendum lock’. We will amend the 1972 European Communities Act so that the use of any passerelle would require primary legislation.

We will examine the case for a United Kingdom Sovereignty Bill to make it clear that ultimate authority remains with Parliament.

posted by Paul Tuns at 1:43 PM

 
Three and out

3. It is not fair that the Philadelphia Phillies are playing their "road" games against the Toronto Blue Jays in Philly in late June. Due to security concerns surrounding the G20 meetings taking place next door, the games were moved from TO to Philadelphia. The Jays get the gate revenue but the Phillies get the home field advantage. I'd be ticked, too, if I was a Mets fan -- or Braves or Marlins fan and my team came up a game short at the end of the year. MLB better hope Philly wins a playoff spot by a large margin, loses the "home" away games, or doesn't make the playoffs.

2. Peter Morris has a list in the Wall Street Journal of the five best baseball books.

1. Joe Posnanski Ken Griffey Jr. -- the tale of two careers, one up to his age 30 season and one after. Sadly players get old and injured and become a shell of their former self.
posted by Paul Tuns at 9:24 AM