Sobering Thoughts |
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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).
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Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Quote of the day "We have an inflated sense of what leadership can achieve in the modern world." -- Tim Harford, Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure Congressman Weiner Yes, the jokes get old, but they are also irresistible. Story about Rep. Anthony Weiner's lewd Twitter pics at Politico. Three and out 3. Rich Lederer of Baseball Analysts has an open letter to LA Angels general manager Tony Reagins which focuses on the team's $140-million 27-27 team (as of Sunday) and looks to next year, another season in which the Angels are hampered by bad contracts. The letter is not a source of optimism if you are a Angels fan, but will certainly do wonders for the moods of Oakland A's, Texas Rangers, and Seattle Mariner fans. Bad contracts -- in terms of length and costs, usually for veterans who are likely to decline -- kill teams' competitiveness. Often teams do not understand this, although Lederer is attempting to help the Angels realize the errors of their ways. 2. There are three things about this season I don't get. Does anyone have an explanation for Albert Pujols not being Albert Pujols: 257/326/395 with 8 HRs? Relatedly, how are the St. Louis Cardinals first in the NL Central with an incredible 32-22 record -- second overall in MLB -- when their best hitter isn't even close to being even a good hitter right right now and their ace Adam Wainwright went down for the season in Spring training? And how are the Arizona Diamondbacks in first in the NL West? Okay, I understand how they are first -- they won 13 of 15. What I want to know is how did they do that? Interestingly, the D-Backs are the only NL team with both a record above 500 and a positive scoring differential. Arizona might be riding a hot streak over a little more than two weeks to take advantage of the struggling San Francisco Giants who just can't score. But if the Giants can't score and the Colorado Rockies can't prevent opponents from scoring, the D-Backs just might inexplicably insert themselves into this divisional race. 1. Steve Slowinski looks at the "slow decline" of Alex Rodriguez and what he needs to do to take the all-time HR lead. It isn't much -- hit about 30 HRs a year for five years, or last a little longer if he hits fewer (25 HRs a year for six) and he comfortably surpasses Barry Bonds. A-Rod has 622 and Bonds, the career HR leader, has 762. Slowinksi notes the five players ahead of A-Rod -- Bonds, Babe Ruth, Willie Mays, Ken Griffey Jr., and Hank Aaron -- all averaged 180 HRs for the rest of their career after reaching the age of 35, which A-Rod turned this season. As Slowinski says, "All these players weren’t just great home-run hitters — they were great late home-run hitters as well." A-Rod is on pace for just under 30 HRs this season but I put no more stock in that than I worry too much about the fact that Rodriguez has hit just one homerun in his past ten games. Predicting how sluggers is not easy, but considering A-Rod is signed through 2017, if he has much left in the tank at all, it should be close. Monday, May 30, 2011
Why Catholics are Right My review of Michael Coren's Why Catholics are Right is in the June Catholic Insight. My conclusion: While a committed anti-Catholic is unlikely to be persuaded by the facts and arguments Coren brings together in defence of the Catholic Church and Catholic faith, those reading with an open mind are likely to benefit from a fuller knowledge and deeper understanding of Catholic history and teaching. Saturday, May 28, 2011
Weekend stuff 1. Settlers of Catan in lego. By the way, Settlers is a great board game -- simple but not simplistic. The eldest four in our household are addicted to it right now. 2. Business Week has a longish profile of Tyler Cowen. 3. "30 of the World's Greatest Wedding Cakes." 4. Justin Timberlake's opening number for SNL last weekend was humorous, and pretty catchy. 5. From Business Insider: "The 19 Greatest Roadside Attractions In America." 6. The Smoking Gun has five pages from Katy Perry's concert riders. 7. Pictures from the Swedish subway system. 8. Slate on male lactation. 9. Blazing Cat Fur lists reasons Canada does not have a Conservative government. 10. Raymond Crowe's incredible hand shadows. Friday, May 27, 2011
Three and out 3. While I like to see the Los Angeles Dodgers do well and respect the overall ability of the San Francisco Giants rotation, I don't really care about the NL West. But it is sad to see that the Giants star young catcher Buster Posey will miss the rest of the season with a leg injury. If you love baseball, you should want to see young players succeed and develop and they can't do that on the DL. Will Carroll is a must-read because he deals with the concept of reward (strong offensive contributors) vs risk (injury behind the plate) when it comes to baseball's best catchers, as well as the injury itself. He also talks about rule changes and, borrowing an idea from Joe Sheehan, makes a point that I have never thought of before: Organized Baseball has put catchers at risk because they have tolerated obstruction at the plate, which is clearly against the rules for all other infield position players; disallow catchers from blocking runners and the risk will be reduced. Makes sense to me. Rob Neyer of SB Nation also riffs on Sheehan's suggestion and thinks it a good idea. Dave Cameron of Fangraphs chimes in and endorses the idea of eliminating the opportunities for home plate collisions. You can see the injury here, and the best view comes in the final 15 seconds of the clip. 2. There are not a lot of irreplacable players in baseball. Few teams rely so disproportionately on one player and lack other options that an injury turns a franchise from likely divisional favourite to lucky-to-be-competitive simply through a single prolonged absence. Buster Posey for the Giants is one such player. ESPN's David Schoenfield looks at five others who improve a team an order of magnitude, and it is hard to argue against any of them: what are the Cincinnati Reds without Joey Votto or the Toronto Blue Jays without Jose Bautista? Sub-500 teams. (Oh wait, the Blue Jays are a sub-500 team.) It is notable that Carlos Santana of the Cleveland Indians is on the list; like Posey, he is a catcher with a big bat. 1. Chris Jaffe of Hardball Times points out that if the Atlanta Braves can finish the season nine games over 500 -- or get to that mark at some point in the regular season, the Braves will reach 500 as a franchise for the first time since June 3, 1923 -- 88 years ago. Their low point, Jaffe notes, was April 1991, when they were 526 games under 500 (8,105-8,631). They were also 524 games under 500 back in 1946 -- so essentially they were 500 from '46 through '91. It is impressive that they have overcome that deficit in just two decades by essentially having 3.25 seasons worth of wins more than they had in losses. Their success over that time obscures the fact that for most of Braves history -- in Atlanta, Milwaukee and Boston -- they just weren't that good. The Boston Braves had 11 100-loss seasons including four and three consecutive season streaks of such futility -- including years before the 162 game schedule. If you enjoy baseball history, even if you are not a Braves fan, this is worth reading. Friday '80s flashback Last week I posted a video by Love and Rockets on the Friday flashback. They were formed out of the ashes of Bauhaus. I like the Bauhaus version of "Ziggy Stardust" much better than David Bowie's. I am tempted to title this post, 'Randall Denley, RIP' Ottawa Citizen columnist Randall Denley, it was announced last week, will be taking a leave of absence from the newspaper to run for the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party in the provincial election this Fall. His erstwhile colleague Kate Heartfield comments: He's been a columnist here for 18 years, which is a remarkable feat. He churns out well-researched opinions like clockwork; many columnists go stale or predictable after a while, but Denley has managed to keep up the element of surprise. He never takes a position just because it's what his regulars would expect, or because it's the "conservative" position. It's a little sad to see him turn into a partisan, in fact, precisely because he managed to maintain his status as a non-partisan columnist for so long. (Non-partisan is not the same as non-ideological.)I, too, was a little sad, even slightly disappointed. I don't get why opinion journalists would give up their job to run for office. They have to check in their own brain if they are (un)fortunate enough to win, and assume the collective brain of the party whose banner they ran under, which really means assuming the policies and positions of the leader. If the leader does an about face on an issue, so do they. Intellectual integrity is out the window. And when it really comes down to affecting policy, the average MP or MPP/MLA/MNA has minimal influence. I don't see the average elected official having any more power than the average columnist in the grand scheme of things. The world needs more columnists like Randall Denley, not another politician. Thursday, May 26, 2011
Noooooooooooooo A Canadian Press/Harris Decima poll say Canadians are open to re-open the constitution to reform/abolish the Senate, bring Quebec into the constitutional fold, or alter the electoral system. Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Who dresses Michelle Obama? Lasso of Truth critiques Michelle Obama's immature, improper look. I had the same thoughts when I saw the news footage this morning. Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Republicans in trouble GOP lost NY-26, which as the joke goes, has been Republican since the Earth cooled. Sure the faux Tea Party candidate siphoned off support, but it seems likely that the media explanation that this was a referendum on the Paul Ryan budget is plausible, to say the least. I have predicted all along that Barack Obama was likely to be re-elected in 2012, and while it is always dangerous to read too much into a special election, this does not augur well for the Republicans. Americans like the idea of shrinking government, but voters will recoil at the thought of giving up any of the largess for themselves. Me in the Ottawa Citizen on Senate reform I have a column in tomorrow's Ottawa Citizen on Stephen Harper appointing losing candidates in the general election to the Senate and the state of Senate reform. Bottom line: Harper can make up for his abandonment of his reform principles by committing to Senate reform in the upcoming Throne Speech. A sample 'graph: The optics of appointing more senators, especially ones defeated by the voters, is terrible, but paradoxically it is precisely because Harper needs a majority in both chambers to enact change — including Senate reform — that he makes further appointments. Bob Dylan turns 70 I'm not a Bob Dylan fan but there is music of his I like, especially "Lay Lady Lay," "Tangled Up in Blue," and "Hurricane" -- yeah, I know I shouldn't like that last song. I can't stand reading about Dylan and how he resists being mythologized. Excepting John Lennon, I can't think of a musical artist who has been more mythologized. I can't vouch for the veracity of this statement, but if it is true, I am inclined to appreciate Dylan a bit more: ""When I was in Woodstock, it became very clear to me that the whole counterculture was one big scarecrow wearing dead leaves. It had no purpose in my life. It's been true ever since, actually." And yes, I know, he called Barry Goldwater his favourite politician. As a tribute to Dylan I present Weird Al's palindromic "Bob". Monday, May 23, 2011
Tim Pawlenty Former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty travelled to Des Moines to announce he is seeking the Republican presidential nomination. Ramesh Ponnuru and Rich Lowry outline five challenges T-Paw faces in winning the nod. Indirectly, the most important is beating Michelle Bachmann: "If she gets in, she could easily steal Pawlenty’s thunder in Iowa and deal a severe blow to his candidacy." Ponnuru and Lowry explain the importance of Iowa: Over the last 30 years, Republican nomination battles have had a predictable pattern — one candidate wins Iowa, another wins New Hampshire, and whoever of the two wins South Carolina gets the nomination.Assuming this pattern holds and assuming Mitt Romney wins New Hampshire, the first caucus is critical. I'm not sure if the pattern will hold because Romney could win New Hampshire, Bachmann or Sarah Palin (who I doubt will actually get into the race) could win Iowa and the South could be looking for an adult alternative to Romney (I don't think evangelicals will vote for a Mormon). Possible, although recent political history demonstrates the idea of a three-way race is more far-fetched than one might think. Here's another reason I think Pawlenty (or perhaps Romney) will get the nomination over Bachmann, Palin or Newt Gingrich: Republicans typically nominate their moderate candidates. The Republican primaries come down to a right-wing candidate and a moderate candidate who is usually the establishment choice. The moderate usually wins. John McCain (the maverick) and Rudy Giuliani (the pro-choice mayor) were the centrists facing challenges from the Right, Mike Huckabee (despite a populist economic agenda, he was considered the most right-wing because of his championing of social issues) and Mitt Romney (remade as a National Review conservative). Eventually the race came down to McCain and Huckabee and McCain won. George W. Bush was considered moderate in 2000 when he faced a more fiscally and socially conservative Steve Forbes (who was then the favourite of the Religious Right). In 1996, Bob Dole was the establishment's choice over the tax-cutting Phil Gramm. In 1988, Vice President George H.W. Bush beat back challenges by Jack Kemp, Bob Dole and Pat Robertson and needed to add Dan Quayle to solidify his support among conservatives. You have to go back to Reagan 1980 to find a primary won by the clear conservative. I'm dismissing Jon Huntsman, who is positioning himself as a moderate, because former governor of Utah/former ambassador to China is hardly the kind of resume to build a presidential run upon. Pawlenty is not a moderate but could be viewed as one in comparison to some of the candidates. That could be a tremendous advantage down the road -- if he isn't eliminated early in the primaries. I'm not sure that declaring "there are no longer any sacred programs" and suggesting he will raise the age to receive Social Security, reform Medicare, and end ethanol subsidies, is the way to win the Iowa caucus or even Republican primaries. For every person thrilled at ending welfare for corn farmers, there will be three older voters worrying about their handouts. Perhaps T-Paw will be what Rob Long implies is unfuckable, to quote a Hollywood executive; more best man and less groom. Still, I reiterate my prediction about the GOP primaries: Pawlenty will be standing ready to win the nomination when Mitt Romney inevitably faulters. Sunday, May 22, 2011
Interesting lego fact "There are 62 LEGO bricks for every person in the world." I'm not sure if that sounds like a lot or not; initially this sounded low, but 300 billion lego bricks is a lot. The source is Amazon's product description of Jonathan Bender's Lego: A Love Story. I think that book is going on my Father's Day wish list, along with James May's Lego House by James May (of Top Gear). I can usually con my sons to get me a book they'll want to read, too. Daniels declines presidential run Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels has announced he will not run for the Republican nomination for president. There will be some who are angry that his wife and daughters "vetoed" his decision, but both the job of running for nomination and winning the presidency are full-time pursuits for not just the candidate, but the family. On one level you can't fault him for putting family ahead of country. On another you can: on simple utilitarian grounds, marginally bettering the lives of 300 million people is more important than greatly benefiting a half dozen. Of course, that assumes he is significantly better than the next best candidate who is likely to win. I would argue that the difference between Daniels and, say, Tim Pawlenty, for the majority of Americans is minimal (in terms of affecting their lives, not voting preference). I would also suggest that Daniels and Pawlenty were never going to both run, with either being perfectly fine candidates for the GOP to fallback on when Mitt Romney's candidacy fails to take off again. For now the GOP nomination looks interesting not because it is a wide-open field attracting numerous strong candidates but because it wide-open and attracting a small handful of candidates, some good and some not-so-much so. Saturday, May 21, 2011
Weekend stuff The long-anticipated return of stuff. 1. From the New Scientist blog Short Sharp Science: "Rapture: Why do people love doomsday predictions?" Relatedly, via Boing Boing, a great Apocomix, a two-minute end-of-the-world movie montage. 2. Alexandra Petri of the Washington Post explains why the campaign to force McDonald's to retire Ronald McDonald is an incredibly stupid idea. 3. Science Daily: "Japan's 9.0 Tohoku-Oki Earthquake: Surprising Findings About Energy Distribution Over Fault Slip and Stress Accumulation." 4. From McSweeney's: "A Hoth Realtor Addresses some of the Concerns Being Raised over His Decision to Turn Han Solo's Deceased Tauntaun into a Modest Studio Apartment." 5. This picture is not photoshopped or otherwise staged. The photographer is a friend of a friend. My friend was holding the girl's backpack so she wouldn't fall off the roof while the picture was being taken. 6. Popular Mechanic has step-by-step instructions describing "How to Rappel from a Helicopter." 7. "Cooking is chemistry." Video is worth watching. 8. Some dude went to Boston Logan International Airport and recorded 51 planes taking off over a one hour and ten minute period of time and condensed it into a frantic 2:30 minutes. The video is oddly mesmerizing. Friday, May 20, 2011
Kapitalists don't like capitalism Russ Roberts points out that consumers, not businessmen, like/benefit from capitalism. Onion column on libertarianism The Onion can get closer to the truth with satire than most newspapers and broadcasters do with reporting actual events. In a satirical column, "Fiscally I'm A Right-Wing Nutjob, But On Social Issues I'm Fucking Insanely Liberal," by Larry Bourdrias: The world is a complicated place, and in this day and age, you just can't expect a person to fall on the same political side of every issue he is confronted with. Things are more nuanced than that, and the average American might think one way about one topic, and a completely different way about another. For instance, when it comes to fiscal issues, I consider myself to be a rabid, foaming-at-the-mouth, right-wing lunatic. But on the social front, I'm a completely out-of-his-mind, wacked-out liberal loon. Alfred Apps hides Liberal affiliation Liberal Party president Alfred Apps is counsel at Fasken Martineau. There is no mention in his biography, affiliations or community involvement that he has been associated with the Liberal Party going back to the early 1980s and has served as its president for the past few years. This raises the question: is it Apps or Fasken Martineau that is embarrassed by the connection. Is Harper this conniving? Some of the folks at the National Post debated Stephen Harper's Senate appointments over in Full Comment. Kevin Libin is usually very perceptive, but he's off the mark on this one, I'm afraid, by being too cute by half. [M]aybe I’m projecting my own perceptions onto Harper here, but I’m still betting that the point he’s demonstrating is exactly that: that the current Senate structure is a stain of unaccountability on Canada’s democracy; that one undemocratic politician is as bad as any other, be they party hack or constitutional scholar. I may not respect the appointments he’s made, but I never respected any appointments any prime minister has ever made, because I don’t respect appointments. I think Harper’s showing he doesn’t respect them either.For the record: I don't like but couldn't muster much outrage at the appointments. Harper needs the Senate to enact his agenda. The little whiff of hypocrisy can be fixed by fully embracing incremental Senate reform measures later in the mandate. The hypocrisy of the libertarian drug legalization movement I'm very sympathetic to the libertarian cause on this issue, but Kathy Shaidle hits the nail on the head: And how so-called libertarians can support a cause that outspokenly wants to tax and regulate something is beyond me.There is more insight and wisdom in an average Five Feet of Fury post than most columnists produce in a year. Preparing for a zombie attack I should condemn this as a waste of taxpayer money, but I'm too much a fan of zombie movies not to enjoy the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention using the scenario of a zombie attack to promote emergency preparedness and educate the public about the CDC. For example: If zombies did start roaming the streets, CDC would conduct an investigation much like any other disease outbreak. CDC would provide technical assistance to cities, states, or international partners dealing with a zombie infestation. This assistance might include consultation, lab testing and analysis, patient management and care, tracking of contacts, and infection control (including isolation and quarantine).It is worth noting that the CDC has no advice on how to defend oneself against zombies -- or, if you prefer realistic examples, looters and assailants in real emergencies. Along with your water, meds, and copies of important documents, you should have a weapon. Friday '80s flashback Love and Rockets "No New Tale to Tell" -- not as big a hit as "So Alive" or "Balls of Confusion" (great covers) and nowhere near as great as my favourite Love and Rockets song, "Haunted, When the Minutes Drag"* -- but it is probably the band's best video. Thursday, May 19, 2011
Follow me, email me You can follow me on Twitter here. I know I need to put a proper picture up. You can email me at paul_tuns[AT-SIGN]yahoo.com. What I'm reading The Big Questions: Tackling Problems of Philosophy with Ideas from Mathematics, Economics and Physics by Steven E. Landsburg. Re-reading and finishing a book that I only half read when it came out in 2009. Civilized Life in the Universe: Scientists on Intelligent Extraterrestrials by George Basalla. This 2006 book is critical but not dismissive of the notion of extraterrestrial life. I can't imagine that Robin Hanson would like it. But it builds nicely on Peter Ward and Donald Brownlee's 2000 Rare Earth: Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe. These two books are sufficient for those who are only casually interested in the issue. For an obit I have to write, I'm re-reading Fr. Ted Colleton's three books: his autobiography, Yes, I'd Do it Again, which focuses on his time as a missionary in Kenya, and his two collections of columns for The Interim: Yes, I'm a Radical and I'm Still a Radical. Counterknowledge: How We Surrendered to Conspiracy Theories, Quack Medicine, Bogus Science and False History by Damian Thompson. I thought I might try to write something about conspiracy theories in light of recent events and Jonathan Kay's new book, Among the Truthers: A Journey into the Growing Conspiracist Underground of 9/11 Truthers, Birthers, Armageddonites, Vaccine Hysterics, Hollywood Know-Nothings and Internet Addicts, which I plan to start reading by the end of the month. "Immigration and the Canadian Welfare State 2011" (pdf), a report from the Fraser Institute by Patrick Grady and Herbert Grubel. It seems odd to me that a libertarian think-tank would publish so many studies that question immigration. "A Bridge Over Troubled Waters: Alternative Financing and Delivery of Water and Wastewater Services," (pdf), a C.D. Howe report by Elizabeth Brubaker. "Is this the end of the Tory Dynasty? The Wildrose Alliance in Alberta Politics" (pdf), a Calgary School of Public Policy paper by Anthony M. Sayers & David K. Stewart. The paper does not answer the title question. "Report on the Inquiry on National Institutional Capacity to Produce Population Estimates and Projections" (pdf) from the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs: Population Division. It came out late last year but is pertinent to the recent release of UN population projections through 2100. I'll have something about this in the July Interim. Boredom Maclean's has an interview with Peter Toohey, author of Boredom: A Lively History. I think what Toohey says is interesting and while I don't deny that both everyday boredom (a momentary feeling) and existential boredom (more like depression) exist, I cannot understand how a person of average intelligence and even the minimum of curiosity could suffer any serious bouts of boredom. I would go so far as to say that being repeatedly bored is probably a sign that one is not very curious or intelligent. There is a difference between Harper Tories and Liberals From the Toronto Star: A majority Conservative government will move ahead with regulations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in Canada but a cap-and-trade system won’t happen anytime soon, says Environment Minister Peter Kent.Ideally, Ottawa would stop fretting about GHGs completely. Of course, Peter Kent is only saying the Conservative government will reduce GHGs. There is a good chance that the government won't do anything. About four days too late Dominique Strauss-Kahn resigns as head of the IMF. This sentence from the Washington Post report is extraordinary: "The resignation — emanating from a jail cell on Riker’s Island, where Strauss-Kahn has spent three nights while he fights to be released on bail..." Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Extinction rates exaggerated because of math error/bad model New Scientist reports: The destruction of nature is driving species to extinction - but perhaps not as rapidly as has been thought. While the most widely publicised estimates predict the loss of natural habitat will condemn 18 to 35 per cent of all species to extinction by 2050, these figures could be about twice as high as the actual number - all because of a mathematical error that has gone unnoticed for decades.The calculation problem -- which doesn't count the number of species but rather utilizes a formula predicated on habitat loss -- resulted in "extinction rates that were between 83 and 165 per cent higher than those [a better] method produced." However, even the new and presumably better method is based on habitat loss and not actually counting the number of known species. Tweet of the day Mike Storeshaw: And they said a Harvard guy wouldn't resonate with the Tim' Horton's crowd RT @SusanDelacourt: Canada's favourite donut is boston cream, btw Huge admission of inadequacy of polling I'm not against polling. I think it has its place. The biggest problem is usually how we (the public and media) utilize polls and how pollsters interpret and analyse their own polls. But I found this quite the admission, as Susan Delacourt tweets from the 2011 Canadian Political Science Association conference: "Polls underestimated #cpc because they underestimated GOTV abilities, esp. at the advance polls, Bricker says." That's a huge failure admitted by Darrell Bricker of Ipsos Reid; polls are accurate, he is saying, except in capturing how key election tactics influence voting outcomes. Me on Sheila Fraser's legacy I have a column in today's Ottawa Citizen looking at the 10-year tenure of Auditor General Sheila Fraser. My conclusion: Fraser has changed the office by making its findings accessible and intelligible, ensuring that when the government is criticized for coming up short in managing its resources, the public and the political class know it. Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Venn diagrams that sum up my life Some combination of this diagram from Graph Jam and the one below from I Love Charts:  Top 10 pickup lines for economists Modified Rapture has the top 10 lines for hitting on an economist. My favourite is #3: "You’re my very favorite kind of moral hazard." Terrible journalism Peter King is a terrible football writer -- his very occasional insights do not offset his complete lack of reporting and less-than-pedestrian observations. Exhibit A from this week's column: I think I’m for a reunion of Pete Carroll and Matt Leinart in Seattle. For one reason: Why not?Never mind that the second part is not a sentence. More importantly, it's not a reason. What kind of analysis is "why not"? Also this week he had to retract a large portion of his column because he reported on an interview that never occurred. See page two, where six paragraphs are scratched out. Monday, May 16, 2011
Progress Steven Landsburg asks who would be more astonished: Aristotle by a 1975 Texas Instruments calculator or the Martin Gardner of 1975 (who said Aristotle would be astonished by the calculator) by the iPhone of 2011? You have to read the whole post. And then try to imagine what technology in 36 years will be like. The point is you probably can't. Mitt Romney's credibility problem The Cato Institute's Michael Tanner takes on Mitt Romney's defense and evasions on the health care reform he brought to Massachusetts. If Republicans don't like Obamacare, they can't live with the man who gave the Bay State Romneycare. Stimulating bigger government I highly recommend Timothy Conley and Bill Dupor's paper on the Obama/Democrat Congress stimulus bill (formerly the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act) in which they find the ARRA: [C]reated/saved approximately 450 thousand state and local government jobs and destroyed/forestalled roughly one million private sector jobs.George Will is allowed to say, "I told you so." The paper is available as a PDF at the top link here. Sunday, May 15, 2011
Is this a sign of progress? The Guardian reports: In a literal application of the sharia law of an eye for an eye, Iran is ready for the first time to blind a man with acid, after he was found guilty of doing the same to a woman who refused to marry him.It is good that men are finally being punished in Iran for being beastly to women. It is hardly a step in the right direction that the state will facilitate the woman being beastly to her assailant: Majid Movahedi, 30, is scheduled to be rendered unconscious in Tehran's judiciary hospital at noon on Saturday while Ameneh Bahrami, his victim, drops acid in both his eyes, her lawyer said.The Guardian also reports that those seeking equality before the law for men and women in the predominantly Islamic country should hold their applause: Iranian media have reported that Movahedi will be blinded in both eyes but Bahrami, in an interview in 2009, said that the man would be blinded only in one eye because "each man is worth two women" under Iranian law.A long prison sentence would have been a just sentence. A state that uses barbarism in its punishment loses the moral right to punish. And a state punishes not only for the victim of the crime but on behalf of society as a whole, whose rules and values were violated by the criminal; the direct victim, at this point, should have nothing to do with meting out the punishment, which makes the state a collaborator in vigilantism. Of course, many Islamic countries follow degenerate ideologies. Those in the West who love liberty and yearn for a Middle East that embraces Western values, must condemn both the acid attacks on women and barbaric punishments for such actions. Wednesday, May 11, 2011
More on PR Of course one cannot fit everything one would like to say on any topic neatly into 750 words, so here are several points I would like to have made that did not appear in my column on proportional representation in today's Ottawa Citizen: 1) The argument for proportional representation is usually asserted (that is assumed) rather than argued. Party distribution in Parliament is just supposed to be proportional to how people voted, but there is no compelling reason why this should be so unless you already believe it. 2) PR proponents fundamentally misunderstand our system of government. We elect MPs not parties. There is no reason to elevate the importance of political parties and indeed most Canadians would probably want less partisanship, not more. 3) Related to point #2, PR would further empower parties and sever/weaken the link between MPs and those they are supposed to serve. It would likely make party discipline more severe. 4) The idea of wasted votes under the so-called first-past-the-post system is based on faulty logic. The idea in democracy is that mass participation legitimizes the results, so everyone's vote counts for something: legitimacy. 5) I could have mentioned that Stephen Harper and Tom Flanagan once supported electoral reform and a form of PR. If there was PR, they would never have done what was necessary to merge and grow the parties on the Right. 6) PR would make Parliament more proportionally representative, but not necessarily government. 7) I would like to have noted that voters in two of Canada's three most populous provinces have voted against PR in three different referenda. It would have also been good to note how the British, just last week, resisted change to a mixed system that included PR. 8) Proponents of PR say such changes would increase voter turnout because every vote would count, but they do not offer evidence for this. I would suggest people don't vote because they are generally disengaged or disaffected. 9) I would like to have extrapolated on the point that 60% of Canadians voted against the Conservatives, 70% voted against the NDP and more than 80% voted against the Liberals and what that means (or doesn't mean). Indeed, to be more accurate, 60% did not vote against the Tories, they voted for alternatives. Furthermore, in PR systems and inevitable coalition governments they result in, no one voted for the various partner arrangements and deals that eventually form the government. Where is the democracy in that system? Did Liberal Democrat voters in the United Kingdom in 2010 also vote for the Conservatives? No, but that's what Lib Dem voters ended up with in government. 10) I would also like to have extrapolated on the point about electoral reform being a way for political parties to avoid doing the hard work of expanding the base and getting elected. Related to that is that PR institutionalizes minor parties that might otherwise die off due to lack of support. 11) I would have liked to provide historical examples of the deal-making that put government out of the reach of voters, including the specifics of minor parties (especially in Israel) propping up various regimes. 12) I cannot recommend enough John Pepall's book Against Reform. Kelly Jane Torrance reviews the book in the current Weekly Standard: "Pepall examines each call for reform, and finds it wanting. His approach is analytic, his conclusions full of common sense. More surprising, he manages to make the details of parliamentary wrangling entertaining." I wish I had the room in the column to quote more liberally from the book. Reading WWI I didn't think I'd ever read another book about World War I. Not that it is unimportant, just there is a limit to one can read and I've had my fill of a period which while vitally influential to the rest of the century, doesn't really hold my interest. But Tyler Cowen has persuaded me to purchase Dance of the Furies: Europe and the Outbreak of World War I by Michael S. Neiberg. It sounds different enough to be worth the $30 and the investment in time. Whether I get to it now or by Christmas is another matter. Reading Cowen's blog has cost me a small fortune. About a quarter of my book reading comes from suggestions he makes and probably another 10% comes from sources cited in those books. Me in the Ottawa Citizen: against proportional representation Here is the conclusion from my column in today's Ottawa Citizen: PR seems to be a solution that is worse than the supposed problem it addresses. Electoral reform should be resisted. Parties that want more seats should have to broaden their support through persuasion rather than demand an overhaul to the entire system in order to gain access to the halls of power. Monday, May 09, 2011
Advice for the NDP Tasha Kheiriddin has 10 pieces of advice for the NDP. It is a solid list but three need to be highlighted as priorities: 1. "Squelch talk of merger, and work on attrition." Defeating the Liberals is probably more in the interest of the Dippers than Tories, but more importantly, merger talks are a distraction from acting as the government-in-waiting. 2. "Focus on fundraising." With the Tories surely scrapping the per-vote subsidy, the party on the Left that can most effectively raise money will have a huge advantage. Right now that is the NDP, and they might as well start now. 3. "Solidify your base in Toronto by playing up a “cities agenda”." Politically it will help further marginalize the Liberals. Also, the NDP think about cities in a way that the Tories do not and Liberals are ignoring, so it is one policy area of strong differentiation. And while I agree with Kheiriddin on "dropping the crazy" I do not think that the NDP policy on capping interest rates for credit cards is viewed with the kind of widespread derision that she thinks it is. It is a nutty policy, but the public does not view it as such. Friday, May 06, 2011
'80s Flashback Friday "Ceremony" and "Temptation" by New Order are both among my top 20 favourite songs. The original recording of "Ceremony" is available here (and, of course, there is the original by Joy Division) and below is a great live version recorded in 2002. New Order puts me in high school dance frame of mind -- I just want to stand against a wall with friends and listen to the music. The center in Canadian politics Talk about the future of the Liberal Party of Canada tends to revolve around one of two ideas: the need for it to merge with the NDP or the need for it to recapture the political center. Examining the debate, David Mader is too dismissive of the whole idea of the political center, saying that centrist parties are without principles other than the acquisition of power: When a party purports to be conservative — fiscally conservative, say, we know how to judge its success: has it made government smaller, or slowed the pace of its growth? Are taxes lower? Debt under control? We judge a progressive government similarly: is the social safety net secured? Expanded? Are economic extremes tempered? But that’s not how you judge the success of a centrist party. The only metric of success for a centrist party is… success. A centrist party exercises power for the purpose of… exercising power. I mean, that’s what Silver’s talking about, right? He wants to scrap the whole thing, start from scratch, rebuild from the ground up. New faces, new ideas, new policies. To what end? Centrism! Um… to what end? Power! What else?That sounds good, but it is also too cute by half and a little bit too self-congratulatory. (We conservatives have principles, you centrists don't.) I am not sure exactly what a centrist party or politician would be, although I would know one when I see it. And I wouldn't be comfortable defining a centrist party as merely one that is fiscally conservative and socially liberal. I don't see how Bill Clinton or Jean Chretien could accurately be described as either left-wing or right-wing (except on an issue by issue basis), although I would have no problem defining either as liberal; at the same time I think they were centrists. Yet, I don't equate liberalism with the center, say between socialism and conservatism. But not being able to define what a centrist party stands for does not mean it does not exist. But I have another problem with the Mader paragraph above. He dismisses the centrist party as existing to seek power. It is not that this is inaccurate, but it is incomplete; all parties seek power. Historically the party system emerged (after the power of the king was transferred to Parliament) so that this group of people rather than that group of people could form a government, and that it be done with some coherence. More than raising issues and more than getting policy implemented, parties exist to raise one person to the top for the single purpose of bringing that person to power. The only way to judge parties that makes sense to me is how successful they are at becoming governments, after which the purpose of the party is to keep the government in power by exercising discipline over its members. Being conservative, socialist or centrist is a means to the end of gaining power. Wednesday, May 04, 2011
Divorce/contraception-inequality link Russell Roberts points to a new OECD study (pdf) showing rising and widespread inequality among many of the largest economies and after examining three standard explanations for inequality, raises a fourth possibility: There is a fourth explanation. The fourth explanation is that these results are statistical anomalies. They come from how we calculate inequality using household income. The underlying cause of the worldwide trend is an increase in the divorce rate that caused an abrupt change in the number of households and an unexpected increase in the labor force participation of married women. It is not a result of a dysfunctional economy or a dysfunctional political system or technological change. It’s the result of an increase in the availability of the pill and other forms of birth control that changed the sexual and marital culture leading to a world where divorce is much more common. Orwell: call your office Blazing Cat Fur says the broad powers granted the state under the Conservative's Investigative Powers for the 21st Century Act to determine hate and ban hyperlinks to sites that might promote hatred are too much. BCF notes this is "a very wide and very subjective avenue and who gets to be judge, jury and hangman?" As Big Blue Wave noted, this is why she doesn't vote Conservative. Among many reasons. Monday, May 02, 2011
Election prediction The Tories will lose a few seats, most notably Saskatoon-Rosetown-Biggar (which is too bad because Kelly Block is a wonderful woman) and in Quebec (but no more than 1-3), but the Conservatives will pick up multiple seats in Newfoundland, Prince Edward Island, Toronto and surrounding area, and British Columbia. I think some seats that became too close to call early in the election (Vaughan, Kitchener Center, Mississauga South, Kitchener-Waterloo, Guelph -- two of them pickups) will tip Tory because of the NDP surge. Some seats the Conservatives should have won in Northern Ontario, Welland, Atlantic Canada, the territories, and Vancouver (many of them due to NDP and Liberals reversing themselves on the long-gun registry) will not end up going Conservative. The NDP surge hurts Tory chances in several British Columbia ridings (Burnaby-Douglas, Nanaimo-Cowichan, B.C. Southern Interior), Quebec, and larger pickups in Newfoundland. Most importantly the NDP surge eliminates the Liberal chances to hold their fortresses in Toronto, Brampton and Mississauga. My best guess about Quebec is that the Bloc wins a plurality of seats but loses some to the NDP and the Liberals lose seats to both the NDP and Bloc. There are a handful of ridings that are too close to call because they became three-way races and that could tip federalist ridings to the Bloc. The Liberals will probably lose a few seats to the NDP in Atlantic Canada as well as Toronto, Ottawa and BC seats to the Dippers. Here are my predictions (again) CPC: 168 NDP: 65 Lib: 49 Bloc: 27 Ind: 1 Here are the ranges: CPC: 151-178 NDP: 58-79 Lib: 24-67 Bloc: 19-42 Ind: 1-2 Green: 0-1 Here are specific seats I think the Conservatives will pick up: British Columbia: Esquimalt - Juan de Fuca: no incumbent, Keith Martin (Lib) retired Vancouver Center: Hedy Fry (Lib) Vancouver South: Ujjal Dosanjh (Lib) Vancouver Quadra: Joyce Murray (Lib) Manitoba: Winnipeg South Centre: Anita Neville (Lib) Ontario: Guelph: Frank Valeriote (Lib) London North Centre: Glen Pearson (Lib) Kingston and Islands: no incumbent, Peter Miliken (Lib) retired Bramalea-Gore-Malton: Gurbax Mahli (Lib) Brampton-Springdale: Rudy Dhalla (Lib) Brampton West: Andrew Kania (Lib) Mississauga East-Cooksville: no incumbent, Albina Guarnieri (Lib) retired Mississauga-Brampton South: Navdeep Bains (Lib) Mississauga South: Paul Szabo (Lib) Eglington-Lawrence: Joe Volpe (Lib) Scarborough-Rouge River: no incumbent, Derek Lee (Lib) retired Markham-Unionville: John McCallum (Lib) Richmond Hill: Byron Wilfert (Lib) Ajax Pickering: Mark Holland (Lib) New Brunswick: Moncton-Riverview-Dieppe: Brian Murphy (Lib) Prince Edward Island: Malpaque: Wayne Easter (Lib) Charlottetown: no incumbent, Shawn Murphy (Lib) retired Newfoundland and Labrador: St. John's South-Mount Pearl: Siobhan Coady (Lib) Avalon: Scott Andrews (Lib) Bonus predictions: Liberal Justin Trudeau loses to Bloc Quebecois in Papineau Conservative Kellie Leitch defeats Independent Conservative Helena Guergis in Simcoe-Grey Liberal Gerard Kennedy loses to NDP in Parkdale-High Park Liberal Ralph Goodale barely olds off Conservatives in Wascana (Tories win seat in next election) Tories win with 39.1% of the vote, Liberals finish with between 20-22.5% and Greens finish with about 4%. Sunday, May 01, 2011
Prediction CPC – 168 NDP -- 65 Libs -- 49 Bloc -- 27 Ind – 1 Explanation Monday morning, along with my total list of Tory pickups. More on NDP-Liberal merger talk Here is my Ottawa Citizen column from yesterday, "NDP-Liberal merger talk is nonsense." Of course, you can only say so much in a column-length treatment of any topic, so here are some things that I would have liked to approach if I had a a thousand more words: 1. Many NDPers view the Liberals as Tory Lite. 2. Perhaps the rank-and-file voters are closer to each other than the elite of the party. 3. Use a few Brian Topp quotes from his memoir on the almost coalition, How We Almost Gave the Tories the Boot to demonstrate the dislike between NDP and Liberal elite. 4. Get into how the NDP are not just Liberals in a hurry. There is a big difference between socialism and progressive liberalism, the historical ideologies of the two parties. 5. The two parties are recently appearing closer than they have been historically because over the past few election cycles the NDP has moved toward the center and the Liberals have moved leftward. 6. A case could be made that the Liberals campaign to the left-of-center but govern closer to the center. 7. I would have liked to get more into the Toronto-Montreal business elite that have controlled the party that are closer to the Progressive Conservative wing of the Conservative Party, echoing Ray Heard's recent comments that the Liberals should look for growth opportunities among disaffected Tories; how do blue Grits work with the union-connected NDP. The NDP, after all, is formally tied to the Canadian Labour Congress and Canadian Auto Workers. 8. An anecdote to demonstrate the cultural differences between the parties: Tommy Douglas liked to brag about raising money through bake sales by little old ladies in Saskatchewan while the Liberals raised a lot of money from Bay Street. Of course, there are numerous other cultural differences (top-down versus bottom-up, at least in self-image) that could be explored. 9. Assuming that the Liberals continue to decline -- and I'm not predicting that -- at some point a formal merger might be irrelevant. Organic merging is occurring at the voter level as progressive voters are moving to the NDP while ethnics and the business community are moving to the Conservatives. The elite of the Liberal Party might represent an entity without value to negotiate with. |