Sobering Thoughts

Comments on politics, the culture, economics, and sports by Paul Tuns. I am editor-in-chief of "The Interim," Canada's life and family newspaper, and author of "Jean Chretien: A Legacy of Scandal" (2004) and "The Dauphin: The Truth about Justin Trudeau" (2015). I am some combination of conservative/libertarian, standing athwart history yelling "bullshit!" You can follow me on Twitter (@ptuns).

XML This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?
Thursday, July 31, 2014
 
On this day in Canadian history
On July 31, 1974, Robert Bourassa's Liberal government passed Bill 22, the Official Languages Act, which required French to be the language of work in both the private and public sector. It also required students to take basic instruction in the schools in French unless they passed a test to attend English schools. In 1977, the Parti Quebecois expanded the application of French in the province (including requiring advertising to be in French) with the implementation of the Charter of the French Language.


 
Don't believe the pretty pictures and price tag
The Canadian Press reports on a government project on the Toronto lakeshore:
The provincial government says it will start the first phase of its planned Ontario Place revitalization in the next few months.
Minister of Tourism, Culture and Sport Michael Coteau says construction is expected to begin soon on the first phase of the project — a new urban park and waterfront trail expected to open in 2016.
He says the next stage will be an environmental assessment and land use plan to prepare for development of the remainder of the grounds.
The province has earmarked $100 million for the first phases of the revitalization project.
But Coteau says there are no plans to incorporate residential development — such as condos — into the site because the space is being set aside for the use of the public.
Plans for later phases include the expansion of live music performances, a “canal district” of waterfront shops and restaurants and a hub for “culture, discovery and innovation.”
I bet this project will cost more than $100 million, take longer than 2016 to complete, never have all the amenities that are highlighted while trying to sell it, and doesn't end up looking anything like the artist's rendering of the concept. But there is no caveat emptor when using taxpayer dollars.


 
(High) Rates aren't the only problems with taxes
Daniel Hannan in the Daily Telegraph on the benefits -- and fairness -- of flat taxes:
Flat taxes make tax avoidance both purposeless and impossible. The rich spend less time on avoidance and more on generating wealth. Their proportion of the overall tax share starts to rise substantially. (“Ah”, say some critics, “but that’s only because they’re now earning more”. Well, yes. But, if that means they’re also paying more tax, where’s the problem?)
The real benefit of the flat tax, though, is not in stopping top-end avoidance. It’s in cutting the cost of compliance for everyone else. I have yet to come across a small business in my constituency that doesn’t need an accountant. Nor have I met a single person who has read and understood the tax code in its entirety.
We may have reached the point where the sheer density of our fiscal system is more deleterious to national competitiveness than the tax level.
If you don't think the rich pay enough in taxes, don't focus on rates but on the loopholes and exemptions that Big Government gives them to shelter their earnings and investments.


 
'Why Delayed Social Security Reform Costs Us'
Eugene Steuerle of the Urban Institute writes about the problems with the current, unreformed Social Security:
Continues a pattern of unequal justice under the law;
Threatens the well-being of the truly old;
Increases the share of benefits paid to the middle aged;
Leads government to spend ever less on education and other investments;
Contributes to higher nonemployment, lower personal income and revenues; and
Increases the burden that is shifted to the young and to people of color.


 
'Cut World's Highest Tax Rate To Curb Tax Inversions'
Arthur Laffer and Stephen Moore write in Investor's Business Daily that if American policymakers aren't happy about U.S. companies relocating through inversions, lower its onerous corporate tax rates and move to a territorial system.


 
Ontario PCs in hiding
The Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario Twitter feed has had only one tweet since the June 12 provincial election.


Wednesday, July 30, 2014
 
Capitalism is where people get rich making other people better off
Capitalism is not exploitation. Donald Boudreaux in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review:
Reality today, however, is poles apart from the reality of the past. Differences in material prosperity no longer are evidence of exploitation of the have-nots by the haves. In fact, for someone to get rich in a market economy requires that he or she serve the masses rather than exploit them.
Name any super-rich person, past or present, in America. Chances are you’ll name someone who started off poor or middle-class and became rich by enriching millions of other people: John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, Richard Sears, Henry Ford, Ray Kroc, Steve Jobs and Tiger Woods, to name only a few. Each of these people earned fabulous wealth by supplying millions of willing buyers with goods, services or entertainment.
The more these people improved the lives of others, the richer they became.


 
Minimum wage makes part-time workers susceptible to worse scheduling
Virginia Postrel in Bloomberg Views describes how minimum-wage laws make life more miserable for part-time workers:
Regardless of economic conditions, the deal between employers and workers has two components: money, including any benefits, and working conditions, including how well hours match worker preferences. The weak job market affects the total value of that package, not the mix between the two parts.
When an employer demands unpredictable work hours, it’s making the deal worse. It can get away with a worse deal because of the bad economy, but what about the mix? If unreliable schedules are so burdensome, why don’t workers switch to jobs with better schedules but lower pay? Why don’t competitors offer such options?
One possibility is that, despite the burdens, workers actually prefer more money to predictable hours. Some surely do. But others clearly don’t. For people who want a second job, not knowing their working hours isn’t just inconvenient. It’s costly.
The alternative explanation is that employers can’t offer, and workers can’t take, lower wages in exchange for better hours. The minimum wage sets a legal floor.
In other words, minimum-wage laws reduce the flexibility required to make employee-employer relationships more worker friendly. It is best for everyone if employee and employer are able to negotiate their own terms of the relationship rather than having the state take away what is effectively a bargaining chip for employees (lower wages) who want a different set of hours.


 
Fluke: Can't afford birth control, but can afford to pay for her own Congressional campaign
Bill Zeiser in The American Spectator: "Sandra Fluke is her own biggest campaign donor." Zeiser reports:
Sandra Fluke rose to fame after advocating for Obamacare before members of Congress on the grounds that she couldn't afford her own birth control. But just a few years later, she can afford a generous donation to her California State Senate campaign. That's the scoop from a great piece written by Ashe Schow of the Washington Examiner. Per Schow, Fluke donated $12,000 to her campaign and made $4,826.27 in non-monetary contributions. In addition, Fluke loaned her campaign $100,000.
Looking at the raw numbers, Fluke has outraised her opponent, Ben Allen. However, Fluke's own contributions, along with donations from her wealthy in-laws, total 33 percent of her fundraising. Allen's family and personal contributions, on the other hand, only make up 15 percent of his total donations. Schow breaks it down: "[i]f you remove family donations and loans, Allen has raised $330,141. Removing the same from Fluke and she’s only raised $278,859.01."


 
Crony capitalism: the Obama-Insurance Company complex
Jeffrey H. Anderson in The Weekly Standard:
Publicly, President Obama loves to demonize insurance companies. But behind the scenes, Big Government and Big Insurance maintain a cozy alliance that the Obama administration actively nourishes, often at taxpayer expense. Indeed, as emails recently obtained by the House Oversight Committee show, Big Government and Big Insurance have worked together to promote Obamacare. They’ve also worked together to make sure taxpayers will help bail out insurance companies who lose money selling insurance under Obamacare — that is, unless Republicans stop this from happening. Moreover, Obama senior advisor Valerie Jarrett is among the prominent White House officials who’ve been in the middle of this collaboration between insurers and the administration — between those driven by the profit motive and those driven by the power motive.
As is detailed in the Oversight Committee’s report, shortly after the disastrous Obamacare rollout began, White House communications director Tara McGuiness and Chris Jennings, Obama’s deputy assistant for health policy, “traded talking points with numerous insurance company CEOs.” According to the report, “Ms. McGuiness and Mr. Jennings collaborated closely with Florida Blue Cross and Blue Shield CEO Patrick Geraghty. After a CBS Evening News appearance on October 11, 2013, Ms. McGuiness emailed Mr. Geraghty, ‘You were great! I watched. Thanks for the help.’”


 
On this day in Canadian history
On July 30, 1929, William Davis, the 18th premier of Ontario, was born in Toronto. A Progressive Conservative, Davis would serve nearly 14 years as premier from 1971 through 1985, with two majority and two minority governments.
I have a column in the Ottawa Citizen today looking at his very progressive legacy.


 
Three strikes
1. The best baseball news this week will be that Vin Scully is returning to broadcast Los Angeles Dodgers games for a 66th season. The announcement was made in the second inning of Tuesday's game on the scoreboard at Dodger Stadium. The Los Angeles Times and MLB.com both have stories on this marvelous piece of news.
2. With the Boston Red Sox announcing that Jon Lester won't start Wednesday's game against the Baltimore Orioles, speculation is rampant that the BoSox starter is being dealt before Thursday's non-waiver trade deadline. Well, even more rampant than it was before.
3. Grantland's Jonah Keri looks at four teams and the possible moves (or non-moves) they could make that would have a major impact on this season and future seasons, and perhaps this is most true of what the Philadelphia Phillies might or might not do. I can't see them trading benched 1B Ryan Howard and his massively unmovable contract and their two best trading chips are 10 and 5 veterans who can veto a trade and say they will (2B Chase Utley and SS Jimmy Rollins). LH starter Cole Hamels is young enough and affordable enough to keep. Yet they have four or five other decent trade chips including starting pitchers A.J. Burnett and Cliff Lee, closer Jon Papelbon, catcher Carlos Ruiz, and OF Marlon Byrd. Philly has a subpar farm system and unloading three or four of those players could refurbish their minor leagues. However, as Keri notes, ownership doesn't want to destroy the brand they've created (which Keri doesn't directly note, includes several recent mediocre seasons). But as Keri does note, every team has seen what the Houston Astros rebuild has done for their revenue stream, including attendance, and that might scare off teams like the Phillies that need to rebuild by tearing down. Keri offers a compromise between what is needed in terms of restocking the team with talent for a future winning team in Philly and the need of ownership not to alienate fans: "The Phillies probably won’t initiate a full-scale rebuild, but if ownership and management can meet halfway between fire sales and inertia, it’ll be a productive start." Sustained 75-win seasons won't bring fans back to the ballpark, but winning will, and unloading more over-priced talent today means getting back to being competitive in the NL East sooner.


 
The Left wants edgy comedy, but not too edgy
At Samizdata Natalie Solent has a good post about the uproar over Jeremy Clarkson's use of the term slope and how the Left (at least at the BBC and The Guardian) used to like edgy comedy but now finds genuinely edgy humour too political incorrect and therefore not only unfunny but unspeakable. Edgy and politically correct do not go together.


 
State vs. parents: criminalizing perfectly normal and safe parenting
Lenore Skenazy found another case of misuse of child neglect laws to punish parents for letting children play outside in a public park without adult supervision:
A Port St. Lucie, Forida, mom has been arrested and charged with child neglect for daring to let her son, 7, play in the park half a mile from home. He was happily walking there when a busybody noticed him and asked where his mommy was. Then the busybody called the cops, since apparently no child should ever be outside without a private security detail.
The police descended upon the scene of the crime and later arresting the mom for the usual charge of child neglect ...
As the mom, Nicole Gainey, told ABC Action News:
"My own bondsman said my parents would have been in jail every day," says Gainey who paid nearly $4,000 to bond out.
The officer wrote in the report that Dominic was unsupervised at the park and that "numerous sex offenders reside in the vicinity".
"He just basically kept going over that there's pedophiles and this and that and basically the park wasn't safe and he shouldn't be there alone," says Gainey.
Never mind that research has shown living on the same block as a registered sex offender does not make kids less safe.
Noting that these cases are still unusual (and therefore make the news), Skenazy warns if parents give in to fears about children playing outside unsupervised, or fears that they will be arrested for doing so, we'll soon "be living under a de facto policy of No Child Left Outside."


 
Canada's richest neighbourhoods
Canadian Business has a list of the five richest neighbhourhoods in each province. No surprise that all five of Ontario's are in Toronto and all of British Columbia's are in Vancouver. Figures for each neighbourhood include average household net worth, average annual household income, and average house cost.


 
The Bush-Obamaconomy
Peter Morici, an economist and business professor at the University of Maryland, in Investor's Business Daily: "Real Unemployment Rate Isn't 6.1%; It's At Least 18%."
The economy has created only about 6 million new jobs during the Bush-Obama years, whereas the comparable figure during the Reagan-Clinton period was about 40 million.
A recent study by the Center for Immigration Studies indicates that virtually all the new jobs created since 2000 went to immigrants, whereas none were created for native-born Americans.
Adding in discouraged adults who say that they would look for work if conditions were better, those working part-time but say that they want full-time work, and the effects of immigration, the unemployment rate becomes about 15% — and that is a lower-bound estimate.


Tuesday, July 29, 2014
 
Me on Bill Davis
I have a column in the Ottawa Citizen on former Ontario premier Bill Davis. I point out that he really put the progressive in Progressive Conservative and note:
In his biography of Davis, journalist Claire Hoy charged the premier with presenting himself to rural voters as a conservative who talked up private enterprise and traditional values while governing as a centrist or liberal who expanded the state. Historian Ed Whitcomb says Davis positioned the Tories between the Liberals to the right and the NDP to the left ...
When critics of recent leaders say the Tories should emulate Bill Davis, do they have in mind his leadership style, the political machine, or his political philosophy? If it is his philosophy, will the Tories be able to distinguish themselves from the Liberals and NDP?
From rent control to endless budget deficits to the human rights code, Davis was anything but a conservative.


 
Capital punishment to make us comfortable
Jacob Sullum writes in the August/September Reason magazine:
It matters because lethal injection, first adopted by Oklahoma in 1977, is supposed to be "the most humane form" of capital punishment, as New Jersey Gov. Tom Kean called it when he signed a bill reinstating the death penalty in 1982. But in this context, "humane" really means "acceptable." The point is not to make condemned murderers comfortable; the point is to make us comfortable.
There are ways to make headline-grabbing fiascos like Lockett's prolonged death less likely. Better training of the technicians who carry out lethal injections would help, and so would simplification of Oklahoma's needlessly complicated protocol, which calls for three drugs when one large dose of a barbiturate such as sodium thiopental would do.
But if preventing unnecessary pain is the goal, it is hard to improve on the firing squad or the guillotine. Such old-fashioned methods were abandoned not because they were too painful but because they were too bloody.
I have increasingly mixed feelings about capital punishment, but I'm no fan of sanitizing death. If society is going to permit the killing of its worst criminals, we should know full well what we are doing.
And as a reminder of why (some) societies have capital punishment, which includes the need to civilize the collective desire for revenge, yesterday was the 37th anniversary of the kidnapping, sexual torture, and murder of 12-year-old Emmanuel Jacques, an incident that put to rest the notion that TO is Toronto the Good.


 
McGinnis shoots Chris Buck
Chris Buck, a freelance photographer in New York City, was friends with Rick McGinnis. McGinnis took some photos of him years ago and writes about their unlikely friendship. Buck is probably most famous for his unflattering photo of Michelle Bachmann for the cover of Newsweek. Recently Buck took pictures of former Louisiana governor and felon Edwin Edwards.


 
Stratfor on Israel
Stratfor Global Intelligence on the conflict between Israel and its enemies:
We have long argued that the Arab-Israeli conflict is inherently insoluble. Now, for the third time in recent years, a war is being fought in Gaza ...
Israel’s major problem is that circumstances always change. Predicting the military capabilities of the Arab and Islamic worlds in 50 years is difficult. Most likely, they will not be weaker than they are today, and a strong argument can be made that at least several of their constituents will be stronger. If in 50 years some or all assume a hostile posture against Israel, Israel will be in trouble.
Time is not on Israel’s side. At some point, something will likely happen to weaken its position, while it is unlikely that anything will happen to strengthen its position. That normally would be an argument for entering negotiations, but the Palestinians will not negotiate a deal that would leave them weak and divided, and any deal that Israel could live with would do just that.
What we are seeing in Gaza is merely housekeeping, that is, each side trying to maintain its position. The Palestinians need to maintain solidarity for the long haul. The Israelis need to hold their strategic superiority as long as they can. But nothing lasts forever, and over time, the relative strength of Israel will decline.
George Friedman, chairman of Stratfor, says "The Palestinian position meanwhile must be to maintain its political cohesion and wait, using its position to try to drive wedges between Israel and its foreign patrons, particularly the United States." (I'm a bit confused about who, precisely, Friedman is talking about when he refers to "the Palestinian" because there is no effective government and a multitude of (often terrorist) groups that seem to represent the Palestinian population, but earlier he suggests that if there was no Hamas, there would be another Hamas-like group, so we should assume it is Hamas.) Friedman also says that the only thing that will change the calculus is something outside the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which seems likely.


 
Social Security: disability funds run out in two years, retirement funds within 20
The Washington Examiner reports:
The Social Security disability trust fund is only two years away from exhaustion, Social Security's Board of Trustees announced Monday, while saying that Medicare's finances appear to have strengthened, thanks to slowing growth in the cost of health care.
The trustees, tasked by Congress with overseeing the trust funds of the nation's retirement programs, estimated that the combined trust for Social Security's retirement and disability programs would be depleted by 2033, the same year as in last year's projections. After that point, beneficiaries will face a 25 percent cut in benefits, as all payments must be financed by incoming tax revenue.
Social Security has been spending more than it has been taking in since 2010, and that imbalance is expected to worsen.
In the past, Congress has played accounting tricks to avoid cutting benefits, a tactic the administration once again favours.


 
'Cease the ceasefires'
Thomas Sowell:
Calls for a ceasefire are ringing out from the United Nations and from Washington, as well as from ordinary people in many places around the world.
According to the New York Times, Secretary of State John Kerry is hoping for a ceasefire to “open the door to Israeli and Palestinian negotiations for a long-term solution.” President Obama has urged Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to have an “immediate, unconditional humanitarian ceasefire” — again, with the idea of pursuing some long-lasting agreement.
If this were the first outbreak of violence between the Palestinians and the Israelis, such hopes might make sense. But where have the U.N., Kerry, and Obama been during all these decades of endlessly repeated Middle East carnage?
The Middle East must lead the world in ceasefires. If ceasefires were the road to peace, the Middle East would easily be the most peaceful place on the planet. “Ceasefire” and “negotiations” are magic words to “the international community.” But just what do ceasefires actually accomplish? In the short run, they save some lives. But in the long run they cost far more lives by lowering the cost of aggression.
Me: Ceasefire is diplomatic speak for coffee break in the killings. They are meaningless gestures by western leaders and organizations to make themselves look good but do no actual good where the conflict is actually occurring. Hamas will only agree to a ceasefire when they need to reload.


 
Do words matter?
Kathy Shaidle at Taki magazine:
I’ve always admired John McWhorter’s willingness, as a self-described “liberal Democrat,” to squirt Febreze on some of that tribe’s smellier orthodoxies.
Yet I was rattled when, in his new book, The Language Hoax, McWhorter challenged one of the sturdiest baseline beliefs on both left and right: that words matter ...
Leftists, of course, deny being engaged in a multigenerational, real-time production of “Gaslight Meets 1984,” and will likely wave unread copies of The Language Hoax in the air as proof. These are the same people who, for generations, have shushed, “Sheesh, it’s only a movie,” and “If you don’t like it, change the channel,” all while shoving trillions of dollars into subversive “entertainment” propaganda.
And who—conveniently exempt from their own advice, as usual—carry out bloodthirsty battles to hasten showbiz firings and cancellations in the wake of real or perceived “ungood duckspeak” violations.
Shaidle quotes Steve Sailer: "Orwell’s Newspeak is less about grammar than about controlling what vocabulary is politically correct, and thus narrowing the limits of what it is convenient to think. (…) Who gets called what depends upon who has the power."


 
Fox News Sunday bests Meet the Press in Washington D.C. viewership for first time in seven years -- and it's not even close
The Daily Caller reports:
The Sunday cable news shows are a weekend staple among Washington D.C.’s movers and shakers, an audience that is jealously guarded by the top networks and coveted by those scrambling to catch up.
“Fox News Sunday’s” big D.C. win over NBC’s “Meet The Press” last Sunday is a big deal — and a possible sign that the Sunday news hierarchy is shifting.
Nielsen Media Research reports that Fox’s flagship Sunday program, headed by Chris Wallace, beat out “Meet The Press” in every Washington ratings category for the first time in nearly seven years.
107,000 people tuned in to watch Wallace, including 41,000 in the all-important 25 to 54 demographic. NBC’s David Gregory could only muster 73,000 viewers, with just 33,000 in the 25 to 54 age group.
Not only did Fox beat NBC in his important Sunday talk-show market, it did so by almost 50%.


 
Modern parenting
Tyler Cowen points to a story about a Chinese father who hired in-game assassins to kill his son's online characters so the 23-year-old would find computer games boring and find a job.


Monday, July 28, 2014
 
TTC doesn't like zoned payment system because the people who would travel the farthest would pay the most
Yes, and that's a feature not a bug. The Toronto Star reports that Chris Upfold, the TTC’s chief customer service officer, sees problems with the zoned payment system, including introducing new levels of complexity (paying when going on and off the system), but the criticism that those who travel the farthest will pay higher fees seems to ignore that is precisely the point: traveling farther on TTC buses and subways should cost more, according to proponents of the zone system. Toronto is a big city and traveling from the far ends of the subway lines to the downtown shouldn't cost the same as jumping on and off the streetcars for those who are already there.
My concern with zoned payments, as Upfold notes, is that some people who have to travel far live in some of the poorest neighbourhoods (although we don't really know how many; many probably work near where they live). It is easy to see the city of Toronto inaugurating some sort of subsidy for low-income families if the TTC ever moves to a zone system.
My other concern is that some downtown city councilors might like the idea of fleecing suburban voters in parts of North York and Etobicoke.


 
McGinnis shoots Mickey Rooney
Corrected edition: this post previously erroneously referred to Mickey Rooney as Mickey Rourke. My apologies.
Rick McGinnis talks about three things in his Some Old Pictures I Took blog: those he photographed, the business of shooting (the venues in which he took the pictures, how these shoots came about), and technical details of him taking the pictures (camera equipment, finding the right shot, film). In his latest entry on actor Mickey Rooney, McGinnis focuses on his subject who was apparently accurately portrayed by Dana Carvey and who Rick considered a lonely person:
As the afternoon wore on, the huge glowing TV in the other room providing a soundtrack of soaps, it occurred to me that Mickey really didn't want us to leave.
He was once the biggest star in the world, and a man who'd blown through nearly $80 million dollars by the time his career cratered after the war. He'd been married eight times, made over 160 feature films and almost as many shorts, in a career that began in the silent era and saw him at his peak the prized player at the biggest studio in Hollywood. And he seemed to me terribly, terribly lonely.


 
9/11 cross can stay
Ed Morrissey at Hot Air:
Score another victory for common sense. An appeals court affirmed a lower court decision to toss out a lawsuit against the National September 11 Memorial and Museum that sought to bar the display of the “9/11 cross,” the artifact that emerged from the wreckage of the World Trade Center attacks. The group American Atheists tried to argue that the display violated the separation of church and state, while its defenders noted that this was a historical artifact and not an endorsement of religion.


 
What Israel is facing
The Tazpit News Agency reports:
Hamas had been planning a surprise attack where 200 fighters would have been dispatched through the dozens of tunnels dug by Hamas under the border from Gaza to Israel. The terror organization aimed to seize kibbutzim and other communities while killing and kidnapping Israeli civilians.
In total, thousands of Hamas terrorists would have been swarming across Israel, wearing IDF uniforms, which would have further complicated an Israeli response. Reports further indicate that Hezbollah may have planned to join the attack as well, opening another front in the north.


 
There is no international community
Toronto Sun columnist John Robson says there is no international community, but rather a West that has been both strong and free (but whose power is waning) and the rest of the world that envies us* but also hates us. The result is a divided world -- no community. If the "international community" were really a thing, there wouldn't be these little proxy battles between Russia and Ukraine (with the West), and Israel (with or without the West) and Hamas (with Iran). And even the relatively similar West is often divided: see the history of France with NATO or much of NATO with the U.S.
* Robson makes the point that the rest of the world does not envy America and the West's way of life, but rather "they envy its results, the prosperity, military prowess, and cultural confidence," and that this envy is often "negative and destructive."


 
Liberals vs. the rule of law
NRO's Kevin Williamson has a very good piece on the larger issues raised by the reaction to the Halbig decision:
There will always be occasions for discretion and interpretation on legal questions, but it is not the case that such discretion should presumptively empower the IRS to do things that the IRS is not legally entitled to do simply because Barack Obama wishes it to be so. If history teaches us anything, it is that a system of law that presumptively sides with political power soon ceases to be any sort of system of law at all. Rather, it becomes a post facto justification for the will to power, an intellectual window dressing on might-makes-right rule.
The matter addressed in Halbig is hardly the Obama administration’s first attempt to circumvent the law as written — see Hobby Lobby, etc. — nor is it the progressives’ only attempt to impose what they imagine to be enlightened ad-hocracy on the American people. The disdain for the letter of the law is complexly intertwined with the progressive managerial imagination: The law, in their view, is not something that limits the ambitions of princes, but something that empowers them to do what they see fit.


 
Journalistic priorities
Zero Hedge has front pages from various newspapers from July 28, 1914. Two (presumably typical) front pages have headlines screaming about war in central Europe but not one Chicago daily which focused on a Canadian farmer, "Big Bill Kelly," who was serving time in an Atlanta jail. World War I would see 37 million casualties (17 million deaths, 20 million wounded); Kelly would be pardoned five years later.


 
Indexation is socialist
At Zero Hedge, Charles Gave of Evergreen Gavekal notes the problem of indexation when allocating capital:
The role of financial markets is to evaluate in real time the marginal return on capital of different assets. This is done through a ‘price discovery mechanism’, with the ‘right price’ found out through a system of constant trial and error. To discover this price calls for a community of active money managers, each doing his or her due diligence before buying and selling. This price is a function of the return on capital and of the expected growth rate of this return. It has nothing at all to do with the size of the investment under consideration. What’s more, if the price of an asset has been going down for the ‘wrong’ reasons, then active money managers should buy more of it. Over time this process will help to stabilize the system.
Active money management is essentially a ‘mean reversion’ strategy. That’s not so for indexation. In the indexation process, there is no attempt at price discovery. The only thing that matters is the relative size of the asset: the bigger the market capitalization, the more an investor should own. This means if the price of a large asset goes up more than the market as a whole, indexers have to buy even more of it.
Thus indexation is a momentum-based strategy. Worse, it is a form of socialism, since new money is allocated not according to the expected return on capital but rather according to the current price of an asset relative to other assets. The bigger an asset, the more one should own …
In a true capitalist system, the rule is the higher the price, the lower the demand. With indexation, the higher the price, the higher the demand. This is insane.


 
The (carless) culture that is New York
At the Cato Institute's Downsizing Government website, Randal O'Toole discusses mass transit and "who is it for" (not the poor who lack automobiles, he says) and he has this stunning fact:
After all, more than 20 percent of no-vehicle households are in New York, a state that has only 6 percent of the nation’s population.
Many households, O'Toole says, make the choice to not have a vehicle.


 
Obama's foreign policy failures
The Washington Examiner: "For White House, even small victories prove elusive in Gaza, Ukraine." I'm not so sure that Vladimir Putin, Benjamin Netanyahu, or Hamas leaders would care what any president said, but President Barack Obama has no credibility with world leaders that he is guaranteed to be ignored when he speaks.


 
Modern Western democracies are like Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries
Michael Barone sees similarities between today's crony capitalist societies and those described by historian H. R. Trevor-Roper. Read Barone's column to see if Trevor-Roper's essay is worth your time.


 
On this day in Canadian history
On July 28, 1930, R.B. Bennett's Conservatives defeated William Lyon Mackenzie King's Liberals, winning 134 seats compared to 91 for the Liberals, nine for the United Farmers, and 12 others. The Conservatives had 47.79% of the vote, compared to 45.5% for the Liberals. Rising unemployment hurt the governing Grits, who lost 26 seats. But Bennett would only serve one term as the Tories could do little to help Canadians during the first half of the Great Depression.


 
Buyer's remorse
Hot Air notes a new CNN/ORC poll finds that if American voters could have a do-over for the 2012 election, Mitt Romney would beat Barack Obama 53%-44%. This is the definition of a useless poll but as Hot Air's Noah Rothman says, "this question is an instructive measurement of voter satisfaction with the president" three months in advance of the midterm elections.


 
Hamas used child labour to build tunnels; 160 kids killed
Breitbart reports:
Hamas killed hundreds of children in the construction of its extensive tunnel network, built partly to carry out attacks on children across the Gaza border in Israel. That report--confirmed by Hamas itself--emerged in 2012, not from the Israeli government, but the sympathetic Journal of Palestine Studies, in an article that otherwise celebrated the secret tunnel system as a symbol of Palestinian resistance to the Israeli "siege" of the Gaza Strip.
The article, "Gaza's Tunnel Phenomenon: The Unintended Dynamics of Israel's Siege," was published in the Summer 2012 edition of the Journal by Nicholas Pelham, who writes for the Economist and the New York Review of Books, according to his bio. It is receiving new attention thanks to Myer Freimann of Tablet, an online journal of Jewish affairs, whose post about Hamas's use of child labor has gone viral in social media.
Pelham wrote that despite the economic success of the tunnels underneath the Egyptian border, which enriched Hamas through a thriving black market as well as arming it with new weapons, there were a few drawbacks. One of these was a "cavalier approach to child labor and tunnel fatalities," he noted. "During a police patrol that the author was permitted to accompany in December 2011, nothing was done to impede the use of children in the tunnels, where, much as in Victorian coal mines, they are prized for their nimble bodies. At least 160 children have been killed in the tunnels, according to Hamas officials."


 
Olivia Chow is worse than you can imagine
Eye on a Crazy Planet has highlights/lowlights from the Toronto Sun interview with Toronto mayor wannabe Olivia Chow. My favourite is her touting of her private sector experience.


Sunday, July 27, 2014
 
People like this must be kept away from political office
Dylan Ross.
(HT: Jonah Goldberg)


 
Weekend list
1. Screen Crush: "Comic-Con 2014: Epic Cosplay Photo Gallery."
2. Grantland has a short 10-minute documentary on the history of the high-five.
3. Business Insider has a map of the "Happiest And Unhappiest Regions In The US."
4. Graphjam on how we view drivers on the road.
5. Mental Floss explains "How Do Royalties Work for 'Weird Al' Songs?" And the one artist that won't let Weird Al parody his songs.
6. Conservation says that insects are the future of fast food.
7. Priceonomics on golfers buying hole-in-one insurance.
8. From the animal kingdom. National Geographic answers the question, "Are Crows Smarter Than Children?" io9.com tells you "What Happens To Snakes In Microgravity." The Daily Telegraph report "Adorable minuscule monkey welcomed to London Zoo" comes with video. Boing Boing has a great photo: an otter cuddle pile.
9. Cracked.com: "5 Recent Blockbusters That Prove Movies Hate Science."
10. Neatorama on rabbit poop flamethrowers.
11. Trailer for Season Five of The Walking Dead:


 
George Will is wrong on what the Senate needs
Washington Post columnist George Will says the Senate needs Monica Wehby, a pediatric surgeon running to defeat Oregon's incumbent Democratic Senator, Jeff Merkley. My concern is not Wehby's moderation, which is probably the only reason she has any chance to win as a Republican in Oregon, a trendy Left Coast state; no my concern is that there is no shortage of politicians but American needs pediatric surgeons. Will makes the case that health care is an important sector of the economy that is inadequately represented in the legislatures that govern so much of the industry. Another thing that Will likes about Wehby is that she is a novice politician -- only eight senators do not have previous political experience -- and while typically that endears a candidate to me, I'm of the view that the good that comes from Wehby doing her current job is much greater than anything she can do in the one she is seeking.


 
The demographic that decides U.S. elections
The Atlantic's Molly Ball notes that recent elections (presidential and midterms) have been decided by working class voters (those earning less than $50,000). When the gap between Republicans and Democrats favour the Dems by just ten percentage points, the GOP wins, but when the Democrats take this demographic by 20 percentage points, they are victorious. Ball's conclusion is that economic populism wins the day. One might take this analysis with a grain of salt considering the source for her insight is Mike Podhorzer, the political director of the AFL-CIO, but it makes sense. Blue collar voters were key to Reagan's victories in the 1980s when the Republicans offered tax cuts to help make life more affordable for working class voters. Taxes are much lower than they were when Reagan took office and conservatives need a new affordability agenda if the GOP wants to win over disenchanted voters making just around the national average income. Counting on anti-Obama sentiment might not -- and should not -- be enough.


 
Helping the world's poor
Matt Ridley has a longish but important article in the Wall Street Journal. He criticizes the United Nations for having too many Millennium Development Goals (eight) and the process for finding the next set of United Nations target to benefit the developing world (one working group has 169 targets so far). Ridley sensibly advises the UN to partner with Bjorn Lomborg's Copenhagen Consensus Center which does a great job of prioritizing the "good things" the world can do by employing vigorous cost-benefit analyses. Ridley produces his one five-item list and three seem like the sort of things that everyone can agree upon if they put their political favourites aside (especially environmental causes that are often at odds with helping the poor), namely reducing malnutrition, tackling malaria and tuberculosis, and expanding free trade. All are cost-effective ways to vastly improve the lives of the most vulnerable and desperate people in the world. Pre-primary education's benefits are far from settled social science and providing universal sexual and reproductive health is both too controversial to get widespread support and conflates rights issues for women with the health concerns of mothers and their newborn children (increasing vaccinations, improving nutrition, and providing hygienic baby-deliveries would go a long way to reducing both maternal and infant mortality). Focusing international aid (multilateral and country-to-country) in these priority areas of malnutrition and malaria/tuberculosis, and opening up trade would go a long way to reducing suffering in the developing world. The UN's approach of dozens of unfocused targets guarantees that few problems will be dealt with comprehensively, but perhaps that's the point; if aid agencies and international organizations solve problems, they undermine their reason for existence.


Saturday, July 26, 2014
 
Box office slumps, maybe the movies suck
Nikkie Finke: "Friday Box Office: #1 ‘Lucy’ Wkd $45.1M, #2 ‘Hercules’ $30.2M As Summer 2014 Slump Continues." Both movies look terrible. Maybe Hollywood should stop producing crap and people will watch movies again. That said, remember when $45 million was a pretty good first two weeks?


 
On this day in Canadian history
On July 26, 1923, U.S. President Warren Harding stops in Vancouver on way back from Alaska and in doing so becomes the first sitting president to visit Canada. He contracted pneumonia while playing golf in the city and died a week later.


 
Bring back firing squads?
Alex Kozinski, chief justice of Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals and a chief libertarian jurist, says that the recent botched, two-hour execution of an Arizona murderer, indicates that firing squads should replace the supposedly antiseptic lethal injection executions. The CSM reports, "Kozinski said using drugs to carry out executions is 'a misguided effort to mask the brutality of executions by making them look serene and peaceful'." That is an understandable criticism of the current regime governing capital punishment but we should also appreciate the desire by some libertarians to make the death penalty as repugnant as possible.
Also repugnant is the the double murder committed by Joseph Wood.
Anyway, I see a future alliance of capital punishment supporters and opponents advocating the firing squad: supporters because it is increasingly difficult for states to obtain the necessary concoction of lethal drugs (sodium thiopental and pentobarbital) and opponents because they think the voting public will turn against the procedure or that courts will throw out the penalty as unconstitutional because it is cruel and unusual.


 
Kathy Shaidle is a national treasure
Consider the range for her sardonic wit.
Exhibit A: on a Pink-related post.
Exhibit B: on a Toronto deli sponsoring the Palestine Film Festival.


 
'No evidence that the California cellphone ban decreased accidents'
Hot Air notes that a study published in the Transportation Journal on California's cellphone ban found no discernible benefit to banning the popular devices.


Friday, July 25, 2014
 
Rick McGinnis shot John Waters thrice
Rick McGinnis on taking pictures of John Waters 17 years apart and about John Waters more generally:
It's amazing to think that there was once a time when cultural slumming was something hipsters did, and that one man could singlehandedly corner the market on movies about misfits, weirdos, deviants, freaks and fuck-ups. While Waters' vision of a world more tolerant of oddballs turned into musical comedy, the inspiration for his characters have gone on display every night thanks to reality TV like Honey Boo-Boo and Hoarders.
Ultimately, my affection for Waters' films was tainted by the people who said they loved them, like falling out with a band because you can't stand their fans. Waters actually seemed to have an honest affection for the lunatic fringe of white, working-class culture that I didn't see his audiences sharing, and the laughter edged too close to mockery for me.


 
Can you 'normalize' abortion?
From "safe, legal and rare," to rom-coms about abortion, the pro-choice rhetoric has changed a lot in 20 years. Megan Cairns at The America Spectator:
Even though Salon.com praises Emily Letts’ work and NPR calls Obvious Child a “momentous film of small, embarrassing truths,” there is a reason Notalone.us will never catch on, Obvious Child is a box office flop, and public opinion on abortion is moving more and more towards the pro-life side of the spectrum. No matter how much the far left tries to sterilize abortions, most women know the truth. Abortions hurt—mentally, physically, and spiritually.
Eliminating a preborn child will never be the same as removing one's tonsils.


 
Is Sharknado a documentary?
Actress Tara Reid:
"I mean, the chances of it happening are very rare, but it can happen actually. Which is crazy. Not that it – the chances of it are, like, you know, it's like probably 'pigs could fly'. Like, I don't think pigs could fly, but actually sharks could be stuck in tornados. There could be a sharknado."


 
Why the 2009 Detroit-bound Christmas suicide bomber failed
The Daily Telegraph reports:
Underwear bomber plot failed because he 'wore same pants for two weeks.'
US official says terror plot failed because bomber did not change his undergarments for two weeks and soiled the explosives.
As John Pistole, the head of the Transportation Security Administration, said, "Thank goodness for bad hygiene."


 
Guns save lives
The Daily Caller reports:
A Pennsylvania police chief says that a doctor undoubtedly saved lives after he shot a gunman who opened fire Thursday in an incident that left a hospital case worker dead.
The gunman, Richard Plotts, of Upper Darby, opened fire at Mercy Elizabeth Hospital, just outside of Philadelphia, shortly after entering an office with the case worker, the Associated Press reports.
Witnesses said that when they opened the office door after hearing shouting, they saw Plotts with a gun. The witnesses closed the office door and called 911. Minutes later, they heard gun shots.
Plotts had shot and killed a 53 year-old female case worker. He sustained several critical gun shot wounds himself from the gun of a hospital psychiatrist. The psychiatrist suffered a graze wound to his head. Plotts was taken into custody.
The tragic loss of the case worker's life cannot be discounted but overall you have see this as a happier ending than these situations often end up being. Armed citizens taking the defense of their own lives -- and their fellow citizens' lives -- into their own hands often results in a smaller number of fatalities than does waiting for the police to show up after the carnage has been completed.


 
'Pro Bono Law Morphs into Left-wing Lawfare'
Powerline's Paul Mirengoff notes that the huge law firm of Kirkland-Ellis is representing Shirley Sherrod, an Department of Agriculture official fired and rehired from the Obama administration after her anti-white farmer views became public, against the widow of Andrew Breitbart, the man who posted excerpts of the video. Mirengoff notes that "based on a review of the full video, Sherrod was offered a new position at the Department of Agriculture," yet Sherrod still "decided to sue Breitbart. And now that Andrew is no longer with us, she is pursuing her claim against his widow." Mirengoff says it is "vengeful, spiteful crusade" that law firms should have no part of. "The modern left has hopelessly perverted the concept of pro bono representation, and Sherrod’s case against Andrew’s widow is a near-perfect manifestation of that perversion."


 
Steyn on Obama's foreign policy MO
Mark Steyn:
Bush may have been loathed by large numbers of Europeans and Arabs, but he had very cordial relationships with their leaders, from Blair and Merkel to the brace of Abdullahs in Jordan and Saudi. Obama's too cool to work the phones. Which helps explain that photograph at right. With regard to what's happening in Gaza, the US president has no relationships with anybody in the region who matters. To define American "allies" as broadly as possible, name one who has any reason to trust Obama or his emissaries. In Cairo, General Sisi regards Obama as a Muslim Brotherhood sympathizer; in Riyadh, King Abdullah regards him as the enabler of the Shia Persian nuclear program; and in Amman, the other King Abdullah regards him as the feckless bungler who's left the Jordanians with the world's wealthest terrorist group on their eastern border.
Shuttle diplomacy, of the kind the vainglorious Kerry is attempting, only works if you already have a relationship. You can't start trying to build one after the shooting's started. And in this case the regional leaders' crude self-interest outweighs whatever value they might place on staying on the right side of President Fundraiser and Secretary Windsurfer.



Thursday, July 24, 2014
 
Walk a dog without a leash and get treated like a violent criminal
Zenon Evans at Reason's Hit & Run:
John Gladwin, a 69-year-old Army veteran, "must allow home visits by a federal probation officer, file monthly activity reports and … must get written authorization anytime he leaves the massive Central District covering most of Southern California," details LA Weekly. The government chooses to monitor this retiree and restrict his movement, though he's never committed a violent crime or sold illegal drugs or weapons. No, he let his dog, Molly, off her leash to play just beyond their yard in the vast expanse of Santa Monica Mountains.
The thing is, Molly has never actually caused trouble with hikers or others in these mountains, which are divided among four different authorities – California State Parks, Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority and U.S. National Park Service – and each have different rules. But he's twice been caught in federal territory just hundreds of feet from his own property and has been prosecuted for violating a leash law. Now, "if he's caught with so much as a foot in the park, which stretches 50 miles from the Hollywood Hills to Point Mugu, [Gladwin] will go to jail."
Gladwin is riding out a 12-month probation for what seems like a few unfortunate encounters with officials on power trips.


 
Grocery-store rotisserie chicken as sign of progress
Megan McArdle on the fact that store-bought rotisserie chicken being cheaper than making it on your own spit-roast chicken:
The rotisserie chickens were actually cheaper than buying and roasting my own.
Cat Vasko noticed the same thing and decided to figure out why. The answer makes a surprising amount of sense: Grocery stores make them out of unsold chicken that is about to pass its expiration date. It’s an elegant way to make a profit out of food that would otherwise be a net loss. And it’s not just chicken -- according to Vasko, the ever-expanding prepared-foods section of the supermarket uses up all sorts of unsold produce and meat. It is, as she says, a bit like hunter-gatherers using every inch of the animal.
This is the sort of thing that no one talks about when they talk about innovation --and yet, it’s a major way in which our economy has become more efficient over the last few decades. Reducing spoilage means grocery stores can sell us raw chickens at lower prices -- and that we can get fresh, delicious prepared food at even lower prices. It’s a win for the grocer and the consumer.
And this from Vasko is worth reading if you are thinking that it all sounds yucky or dangerous:
It's worth noting, first of all, that sell-by, use-by and best-by dates were never intended as indicators of food safety, but rather as estimates of food quality. The USDA itself says that food product dating is intended to "help the purchaser to know the time limit to purchase or use the product at its best quality. It is not a safety date."


 
Washington football fans: do not change team name
Politico reports that polling firm Vox Populi conducted a poll of 701 self-described NFL fans in the Washington DC-area and found that 71% of them do not find the team name Redskins offensive and 65% do not was to see the Washington Redskins change their name. (The respective numbers among Redskins fans, as opposed to football fans, is 83% and 77%.) Only 30% of NFL fans and 19% of Redskins fans said they do want to see a name change.


 
Ottawa's foreign workers program challenged in court
The Toronto Star: "Foreign workers program challenged in court." The paper reports, "Restaurant owners have launched a court challenge against Ottawa in halting their applications to hire migrant workers and placing them on a blacklist." Let's save time and not bother with hearings and the wait for judgement. The Supreme Court of Canada is going to rule that the Conservative government is wrong, and they can do that right away and not waste everyone's time. We don't need legislatures to pass laws and bureaucrats to regulate, when we have judges to rule us. I guess it makes their job easier if there is a Conservative government to do the heavy lifting of designing a policy and then the ermine-robed justices dictate that the exact opposite thing is what they deem appropriate.


 
Happy blogging anniversary to Kathy Shaidle
I'm sure the world is a better place and I know my online life is better because of Kathy Shaidle's Five Feet of Fury (and before that, Relapsed Catholic). I check a lot of blogs regularly but FFF is one of the three I refresh repeatedly throughout the day. She says the things most on the right think but are too scared to utter publicly. She has been blogging for 14 years now. Congratulations on maintaining a high level of excellence for so long. And thank you, Kathy, for blogging.
When people ask me how they can support my blog, I always tell them to financially support Five Feet of Fury and Blazing Cat Fur or buy her book. They are still being sued and need the help. Perhaps a modest donation of 14 dollars on the 14th blogversary.


 
Illiberalism
William Anthony Hay reviews Edmund Fawcett's Liberalism: The Life of an Idea in the pages of the Wall Street Journal. Fawcett doesn't understand how modern liberalism became illiberal -- or even that this phenomenon occurred -- but Hay does:
In the 19th century, liberal attacks on authority dismayed the traditionalist members of society. Little could they imagine what was to come—not only, in the modern era, a celebration of radical individual autonomy but a new sort of orthodoxy enforced with Jacobin severity. Mr. Fawcett sees a backlash against liberalism in the anti-immigrant views of Marine le Pen in France and in the views of America's "resentful conservatives," who resist, say, the celebration of multiculturalism or the normalizing of homosexuality and legalizing of abortion. He neglects to mention another sort of backlash: the tendency of "liberals" today to assume that whatever they hold to be in error has no rights—a truly illiberal idea.


 
Don't fly Delta
Michael Munger had terrible flight with Delta when he went first class and it is worth reading his bullet-pointed rant about everything that went wrong. But this is the bottom line and from everything I've experienced and heard from others, this rings true:
Delta is notorious for its indifference to customer service, but this was amazing. If you fly Southwest, you'll notice that they have the door open and people filing out within two minutes of landing. Delta wants to show you who's boss. They are. Apparently, this happens a lot.
I've always had great service with Southwest and I've only taken Delta once but it was lousy. And if memory serves me correctly, Delta is usually more expensive.


 
IRS scandals pile up
First the Internal Revenue Service harasses conservative groups for partisan purposes and then it lies about losing emails that may expose the scandal as being every bit as bad as many of expect it to be. But lost emails? Really? As Investor's Business Daily editorializes: "The IRS is counting on the general public's relative ignorance of computer technology to believe its smoke-and-mirror cover-up." IBD summarizes six basic questions posed by the International Association of Information Technology Asset Managers, experts in the area of computer hardware and date retention:
1. First, what happened to the IRS' IT asset managers who seemingly vanished during this critical period? IAITAM , which runs the only worldwide certification program for IT asset managers, says its records show that at least three IRS IT asset managers were moved out of their positions at the time of the May 2013 inspector general's report that detailed the agency's targeting practices. What can they tell us?
2. The hard drives in question are federal property and cannot be destroyed or recycled without proper documentation. "Proper IT asset management requires clear proof and records of destruction when drives are wiped or destroyed," notes IAITAM President and founder Barbara Rembiesa. Where are these records?
3. IAITAM asks if the drives were destroyed by an outside IT asset destruction unit, a not-unusual practice among federal agencies. If so, it adds an entire second layer of documentation of the destruction of these assets, including who approved it.
4. What are the IRS' specific policies and procedures on document retention when hard drives are damaged or destroyed? In most large private-sector organizations, hard drives and computers are just not tossed in the dumpster or dropped off at the local recycling center until recovery of the lost data is assured.
5. What is the disaster recovery policy at the IRS, an agency responsible for our most sensitive tax information, particularly in light of its statistically implausible number of hard drive crashes?
6. Where are Lerner's emails from her BlackBerry device and what is on the enterprise server? Some have even suggested Lerner may have off-loaded her emails to what is known as a USB flash drive and still has them in her possession, another federal offense.


 
The Obama recovery
John Merline in Investor's Business Daily:
The IBD/TIPP Economic Optimism Index, for example, is lower today (at 45.6) than it was in June 2009, the month that marks the official end of the last recession (when it stood at 50.8).
Just 38% of the public say they're satisfied with the direction of the country, down from 51.5% in June 2009. Just 19% think the economy will improve over the next six months, compared with 34% five years ago.
Even more startling, five years after the recession ended, 45% think the economy is still contracting; more than half (52%) say it isn't improving.
What do these people know that Obama doesn't?
What Obama didn't say in his speech is that the recovery he has overseen — which started six months after he took office — also has been the weakest on record since World War II.
Real per-capita GDP is up just 6% since the recovery started, and if the economy had merely kept pace with the average postwar recovery, total GDP would be $1.6 trillion bigger than it is today.
Job growth is about half the average pace of the previous 10 recoveries — which translates into 7 million fewer jobs than an average recovery would have produced.
Nor did Obama point out that, as a result of this anemic growth, many Americans are doing a whole lot worse than they were when Obama's economic recovery began five years ago.
Real median household income is down almost 4% from where it was when the recovery started in June 2009, according to Sentier Research, which tracks such data monthly.
And Merline goes on and on about how the Obama recovery ain't recovering.


Wednesday, July 23, 2014
 
Sex-positive activist Trish Kelly drops out of race for Vancouver Parks Board after video of her talking about masturbation goes public
Eye on a Crazy Planet responds: "I thought being a jerk-off was a prerequisite for being a politician." Stacy McCain wonders if someone of "solitary" habits can really be part of the LGBT community. As The Interim reported in June, trans issues are important to Vancouver Parks.


 
'Senate spending down $1 million over same period a year ago'
The Ottawa Citizen reports:
Between March and May of 2013, the Senate’s administration approved slightly more than $5.5 million in expense claims. During the same period this year – the most recent numbers available – the Senate’s finance officials processed slightly more than $4.5 million in claims.
It's amazing what the Senate can save when they aren't paying for Pam Wallin's and Mike Duffy's travel and food. Just joking.
However, as the Citizen also reports, after Senate expense claims initially fell after new audit procedures were imposed in mid-2013, they are rising again.


 
At least they are finally being honest about their agenda
The Daily Caller: "130 Environmental Groups Call For An End To Capitalism." The Daily Caller reports:
“The structural causes of climate change are linked to the current capitalist hegemonic system,” reads the final draft of the Margarita Declaration, presented at a conference including about 130 environmental groups.


 
Help Debra Harrell
Debra Harrell is the South Carolina mom charged with child abandonment after letting her nine-year-old daughter play at the park on her own. Harrell spent a night in jail while her daughter remained in state custody for 17 days. Harrell has been fired by her employer, McDonalds. You can assist Harrell through this website. I hope she wins her criminal case and then sues the hell out of everyone.


 
2016 watch (Michelle Bachmann edition)
Scott Conroy of Real Clear Politics reports:
Though set to retire from the U.S. House after her term expires at the end of this year, Michele Bachmann may not be done with electoral politics.
The Minnesota congresswoman and 2012 Republican presidential candidate told RealClearPolitics on Tuesday that she is considering a second White House run.
Bachmann ran a longshot campaign in January 2012, finishing sixth in the Republican Iowa caucuses six months after winning the Ames Straw poll in August 2011, and she dropped out of the GOP primaries the next day. Conroy does not report what compelling reason there is for Bachmann to run, but she does promise a better campaign infrastructure if she takes a second crack at the nomination in 2016.


 
2016 watch (Paul Ryan edition)
Hot Air's Noah Rothman on Rep. Paul Ryan's rebranding of himself:
Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), the Republican Party’s bookish former vice presidential nominee, is starting to look like a candidate for the presidency in 2016.
In August, Ryan will publish a book with a distinctly campaign-themed title, The Way Forward. On Tuesday, the Federal Election Commission approved of a nationwide book tour sponsored by Ryan’s publisher and the Political Action Committee the Wisconsin congressman founded, Prosperity Action PAC ...
This development comes as the congressman prepares to deliver a major address on conservative social policy. Preliminary reports indicate that Ryan hopes to shape the conservative approach to a variety of contentious socio-economic issues including poverty, education, tax and regulation policy, criminal justice reform, and the consolidation and streamlining of social safety net programs.
Interestingly, Ryan, a fiscal conservative known for advocating budgetary restraint, will be advocating for smarter spending rather than austerity in his speech.


 
Midterm elections
The National Journal's Josh Kraushaar on the uphill battle for Republicans to win the Senate which would require a net gain of seven seats:
To accomplish that feat, Republicans would need to oust four sitting Democratic senators. Over the last decade, Republicans have defeated only three sitting senators (Tom Daschle in South Dakota, Russ Feingold in Wisconsin, and Blanche Lincoln in Arkansas).
Recent history does not prove that defeating four incumbent Democrats is impossible, but that doing so is highly unlikely, at least within a vacuum. Kraushaar also provides reasons for thinking that 2014 might be different for Democratic incumbents:
I've argued before that the likelihood of 2014 being a wave election has been rising, given the president's consistently low approval ratings and the fact that Republicans are running evenly on the generic ballot (which usually translates into a clear GOP edge) and that the right-track/wrong-track numbers are near historic lows. All these big-picture signs are ominous for the party in power.


 
Wishful thinking?
David Catron at PJ Media: "Obamacare Slowly Succumbs to Its Birth Defects."
Relatedly, Cafe Hayek has several links to commentary on the Halbig decision.


 
Sadly, it's only The Onion
From The Onion: "Palestinians Starting To Have Mixed Feelings About Being Used As Human Shields." It's too bad this isn't true:
Saying they’ve begun to reevaluate their stance as the latest outbreak of Israeli-Palestinian violence has escalated, hundreds of residents of the Gaza Strip told reporters Friday they are starting to have mixed feelings about Hamas using them and their loved ones as human shields. “At this point, I have to say I’m pretty much on the fence about having militants strategically store their missile batteries in and around my home, which Israel will almost certainly want to bomb,” said Azzam al-Salhi, explaining that, while he’s always understood Hamas’ reliance on guerilla tactics to perpetuate the decades-long fight against Israel, he has recently soured on the idea of going to bed every night facing the real prospect of being incinerated by an Israeli airstrike intended for a Hamas arms cache.
Not that a Palestinian who thought this would ever go on the record to state it. But you have to wonder, what do everyday Palestinians actually think and feel about being used as human shields? When I went to Israel in 2008 and talked to Palestinians in and near Bethlehem, they all seethed with hatred for Israel and the Jews and blamed them for everything. And you have to wonder about a culture where we've seen mothers interviewed saying they want their young boys to grow up to be suicide bombers. The Hamas propaganda machine no doubt indoctrinates the locals that Israeli retaliation is actually aggression and the death of a few innocents is a price worth paying to end "Israeli oppression."
Also from The Onion: "Everyone In Middle East Given Own Country In 317,000,000-State Solution." This is funny:
“Given the incredibly complex and volatile sociopolitical landscape throughout the Middle East, a 317,000,000-state solution is the only realistic means of achieving lasting peace,” said U.N. Security Council president Eugène-Richard Gasana, noting that the treaty was reached after lengthy negotiations, which brought together each of the more than 300,000,000 independent factions. “We are pleased to finally come to an agreement that will hopefully stabilize the entire region and adequately satisfy the demands of all parties.”
“We are confident that with every man, woman, and child possessing his or her own autonomous area of sovereignty to run as he or she sees fit, we will avoid many of the conflicts that have plagued this part of the world for centuries and left countless dead,” Gasana added. “This is a bright new future for the Middle East.”


 
On this day in Canadian history
On July 23, 1935, Walter Lea's Liberal Party returned to power after a four-year absence, winning all 30 seats in the legislative assembly. It is the first time in the British Commonwealth that a government would face no opposition in an elected chamber and one of only two times in Canadian history (Frank McKenna's Liberals won all 58 seats in New Brunswick in 1987).


 
David Warren challenges media to cover anti-Christian persecution in Muslim Middle East
David Warren has a tremendous essay on news judgments: Kim Kardashian's dress gets more coverage than the "final solution" for Christians in Iraq. He writes about the lazy cliches that journalists use to describe persecution by Muslims rather than digging and understanding atrocities. And he concludes with a thought experiment:
The area and population of the territory the “Caliphate” now controls in Syria and Iraq being currently roughly equal to that controlled by the government of Israel, let us imagine what the “coverage” would be, had the Israelis told all Muslims to run for their lives; had they announced that everything Muslims owned now belonged to the Israeli government; and that any Muslim still found within Israel’s de facto borders after twenty-four hours would be put to the sword. Questions:
Do you think this story might make the front page?
Do you think the media would seek more information?
Do you think the matter might remain news for more than one day?


 
Rick McGinnis covers the Honda Indy
Rick McGinnis writes about the Honda Indy at his photo blog and BlogTO. Great pics and reporting; from his BlogTO piece:
The Pirelli series was a particular crowd pleaser, filled with Mustangs, Lambos, Ferraris, Audis and even a couple of Kias, painted in colour schemes that ranged from restrained to gaudy, driving in a dense pack that sometimes didn't make it through the turns intact. A pair of Cadillacs announced their presence before they could be seen with a howling engine noise that could be felt from your chest to your fillings, but the prettiest car by far was the GT Class-winning Dodge Viper raced by Montreal's Kuno Wittmer. In bright red with two wide white stripes running down the hood, it proved when it comes to race car liveries, you can't beat the classics.


 
'Underpunishment and overincarceration'
Reihen Salam at NRO's Agenda has a thoughtful column that should lead conservatives to rethink some of its tough-on-crime approach that isn't working and can lead to underpunishment and too much government:
How can we both have underpunishment and overincarceration? Several mechanism are at play. Mandatory minimum sentences all but guarantee that prison sentences for some offenders are longer than is strictly necessary to incapacitate potential offenders or to deter future crime. Other perpetrators, meanwhile, get away with their crimes because crime-fighting resources are stretched thin and the residents of violent-plagued communities often fail to cooperate with the police out of fear of reprisals or the belief that doing so is futile, an attitude that contributes to underpunishment.


 
'It’s Time for Conservatives to Stop Defending Police'
Conservative writer and lawyer A.J. Delgado in NRO:
For decades, conservatives have served as stalwart defenders of police forces. There have been many good reasons for this, including long memories of the post-countercultural crime wave that devastated, and in some cases destroyed, many American cities; conservatives’ penchant for law and order; and Americans’ widely shared disdain for the cops’ usual opponents. (“Dirty hippies being arrested? Good!” is not an uncommon sentiment.) Although tough-on-crime appeals have never been limited to conservative politicians or voters, conservatives instinctively (and, it turned out, correctly) understood that the way to reduce crime is to have more cops making more arrests, not more sociologists identifying more root causes. Conservatives are rightly proud to have supported police officers doing their jobs at times when progressives were on the other side.
But it’s time for conservatives’ unconditional love affair with the police to end.
Let’s get the obligatory disclaimer out of the way: Yes, many police officers do heroic works and, yes, many are upstanding individuals who serve the community bravely and capably.
But respecting good police work means being willing to speak out against civil-liberties-breaking thugs who shrug their shoulders after brutalizing citizens.
She has a very short list of representative examples of police violations of the property rights of non-suspects and innocent bystanders and Delgado rightly notes that one positive development in the Right's new-found questioning of the police is the Tea Party's "emphasis on constitutionalism" which has "refocused attention on the Bill of Rights."


 
Opportunity feminism vs. gender feminism
Ravishly interviews Christina Hoff Sommers, author of the new book Freedom Feminism, in which the author makes an important distinction:
Classical equality of opportunity feminism (I call it “freedom feminism”) is a legitimate human rights movement. There were arbitrary laws holding women back. Women organized and set things right. But, as I try to show in my writings, that reality-based movement has been hijacked by male-averse, conspiracy-minded activists. (I call them “gender feminists"). American women happen to be among the freest, most self-determining people in the world, but the gender feminists seek to liberate them from an all-encompassing “patriarchal rape culture.” What is their evidence that such a culture exits? They point to their own research as proof. But most of that research, including their famous statistics on women’s victimization, is spurious. Gender feminism is the opposite of an evidence-based movement—it’s propaganda based. Social movements fueled by paranoia and fantasy tend to be toxic.
When I work with female students I always recommend CHS's 1994 Who Stole Feminism?, for which I am usually thanked.


Tuesday, July 22, 2014
 
Police behaving reasonably
It shouldn't be news, but it is. Lenore Skenazy relates a good news story about police exercising common sense in dealing with the mother of a child who wandered near the road and the officer who was extra kind and went beyond the call of duty.


 
New WaPo venture
The Washington Post launched Storyline:
The Washington Post today launches ‘Storyline’, a new digital initiative led by economics writer Jim Tankersley examining how U.S. public policy is affecting the lives of Americans across the nation. Storyline will feature a mix of narrative writing, data journalism and visual storytelling to explore big questions like: who’s being lifted by the economic recovery, and who’s left waiting for it to kick in? How are Americans adapting to life under Washington’s immigration deadlock?
I am of three minds on this one. First, stories can show how the human side of larger issues. Second, anecdote is not actually the singular of data. Three, by their very nature anecdotes are very selective and can thus mislead and they can mislead with conscious or unconscious bias.


 
Steyn on the Malaysian air tragedy and Ukraine
Mark Steyn in the same piece noted below (Steyn on Hamas) discusses shooting down of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17:
The least worst explanation for what happened to MH17 is that "pro-Russian separatists" mistook it for a Ukrainian military transport and blew it out of the sky: A horrible accident in the fog of war. If that was the agreed storyline, you'd be anxious to make yourself respectable again in the eyes of the world as quickly as possible: You'd seal off the crash site until the international investigators and representatives of the governments who'd lost citizens could get there and retrieve the black boxes and recover the bodies. Instead, as I discussed on Rush on Friday, the "separatists" immediately refused to allow anybody near the site and began looting and defiling the bodies, stealing cash and credit cards and trophies and leaving what's left decomposing out in a field for anyone with a cellphone to shoot souvenir snaps of. As Greg Gutfeld says, "That field is no longer a war zone. It is an international crime scene."
Why? Why would you do this? Why, having "accidentally" shot down a passenger jet, would you then deliberately desecrate and dishonor the dead?
In his columns, blog posts, and radio appearances (as guest and host), Mark Steyn routinely makes observations and asks questions that no other journalist does.


 
Steyn on Hamas
Mark Steyn: "In the Sixties and Seventies, many anti-colonial movements used terrorism to advance their nationalist goals. Hamas uses nationalism to advance its terrorist goals." Or as Kathy Shaidle says: "Muslims: Even worse than the Irish!"