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).

 
A fact that environmentalists should deal with (rather than climate change)

Hans Rosling tweets: "The worst environmental problem in todays world? More than 1 billion people drink their neighbours lukewarm feces ..."

Here is the Tropical Medicine & International Health article, "Global assessment of exposure to faecal contamination through drinking water based on a systematic review." This is a genuine environmental crisis that requires immediate attention.

posted by Paul Tuns at 6:31 PM

 
George Will's latest

George Will on Paul Ryan, progressivism, and Barack Obama:

“Society,” Ryan writes, “functions through institutions that operate in the space between the individual and the state,” and “government exists to protect the space where all of these great things occur.” Hence government has a “supporting role” as “the enabler of other institutions.” Progressive government, however, works, sometimes inadvertently but often deliberately, to subordinate or supplant those institutions. This depletion of social capital is comprehensively injurious to the culture. And “all the tax cuts in the world don’t matter much if you don’t get the culture right.”

Progressivism aims to place individuals in unmediated dependency on a government that can proclaim, as Barack Obama does: “If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.” Meaning, people depend on government for what they are and have.

Will makes some good points about Ryan apologizing for castigating the taker class. The problem is that the dependency of Americans, including middle class and conservative voters, needs to be challenged. The bigger problem for Republicans is that challenging dependency looks like an attack on all government programs and that turns off voters (including many middle class, and some conservative, voters). I'm not sure that a conservative movement assault by pundits, think tanks, and activists on the vastness of government, while the GOP's elected officials and candidates remain silent on Big Government -- or worse, contribute to its enlarging -- is a formula that will work. Ryan appears to want to attack the progressive mindset while acknowledging that government (may) have some minimal role to play to help those who need a temporary hand up. Unfortunately, that seems to always play into the hands of the Left and never quite placates the concerns of those who have come to depend on government's largesse.

posted by Paul Tuns at 5:57 PM

 
Politico's best summer books

Politico: "Playbook readers' best summer books." The list of contributors is heavy on the parasite class in Washington (staffers, lobbyists) and other than Why Does the World Exist?: An Existential Detective Story by Jim Holt, there was not one book on the list that I'd want to read that I haven't already. (Ten years ago, there would have been a dozen or more, so maybe this says more about me than the contributors.) Still worth checking out the list if only to find out what is popular in the American capital.

posted by Paul Tuns at 5:44 PM

 
Environmentalism leads to a decline in living standards

The Daily Telegraph reports that the European Union may ban "high-wattage hair dryers, lawn mowers and electric kettles" (in total about 30 appliances) and has already banned "powerful vacuum cleaners" all in the name of being eco-friendly. Two points need to be made. 1) When you decrease the power of appliances by 30% (as may happen to hair dryers), it will take longer to get the job done and then some of the saved energy due to the "efficient" technology will be lost due to the increased time the technology will be used because it is less powerful. 2) Making products less powerful lowers the standard of living for people who use those inferior products. So instead of spending three minutes blow-drying one's hair, it will now take four minutes. Instead of going over the carpet once, there will be spots that will need to be done twice.

(HT: Small Dead Animals)

posted by Paul Tuns at 5:01 PM

 
Life in prison for selling pot

Aaron Malin, Director of Research for Show-Me Cannabis in Missouri, writes in Reason about the craziness of the war on drugs and cynical and often disproportionate three-strikes laws:

Jeff Mizanskey is serving a life sentence without parole for marijuana. He has been in prison since right after I was born 21 years ago. Jeff is the only person in Missouri sentenced to die behind bars for marijuana, a victim of the state's rather unique three strikes law.

Missouri's three strikes law landed Jeff his life without parole sentence. Around half of states have some type of three strikes law on the books. In almost all of these states the statutes apply to violent crimes—murder, rape, assault with a deadly weapon, etc. In Missouri, Jeff racked up all three strikes without ever committing an act of violence. He was a working class guy with a small side gig as a low-level pot dealer. He never hurt anyone, never brandished a weapon, and never sold to children.

posted by Paul Tuns at 11:01 AM

 
Cruz to Obama

Republican Senator Ted Cruz's brilliant gimmick: invite Barack Obama to play golf on the Texas-Mexico border.

posted by Paul Tuns at 10:53 AM

 
The new world order

Lilia Shevtsova in The American Interest:

Having flipped the global chessboard with his annexation of the Crimea and an undeclared war against Ukraine, Putin effectively ended the most recent period of interregnum and inaugurated a new era in global politics. However, no one yet knows what this era will bring. The global community is still reeling in shock, when it isn’t trying to pretend that nothing extraordinary has in fact occurred.

The full essay is worth reading.

Also, Ole Solvang writes in Foreign Policy about the human cost in eastern Ukraine:

As the morgue and hospital staff explained, the vast majority of civilian deaths and injuries in Luhansk is due to the use of explosive weapons. As a matter of policy, these weapons shouldn't be used in populated areas such as Luhansk because of the risk to civilians. The use of some of the weapons documented here, such as unguided Grad rockets, is a clear violation of the laws of war; combatants cannot accurately distinguish military from civilian targets -- which may amount to war crimes.

posted by Paul Tuns at 7:31 PM

 
Steyn on Rotherham. Sort of.

Mark Steyn's essay is not only about Rotherham but the West's reaction and interaction with Islam. There is a lot packed into one column, including how the dangers of Islam continue unabated despite the growth of the national security state:

In an ill advised choice of words, the Prime Minister David Cameron said, "We need to tackle the ideology of Islamist extremism head on" - because trying to do it with your head off doesn't seem to be working out for those poor fellows in Mosul.

But what does "head on" mean? I was listening to Congressman Peter King on the radio the other day discuss the issue of American and other western Muslims sallying forth to fight for ISIS, and his warnings about jihadists with western passports being able to move freely within Europe and North America made a lot of sense. But I had the uneasy feeling, as with Cameron, that the upshot would be a world in which, in five or ten years' time, it will be more difficult and burdensome for law-abiding persons to fly from London to New York a two-day business meeting or from Toronto to Athens for a week in the Greek islands. In other words, the political leadership of the western world will attempt to micro-manage the problem through the panopticon security state.

Underneath the watchful eyes of the digital panopticon, however, the Islamization of the west will continue. Not every Muslim wants to chop your head off. Not every Muslim wants to "groom" your 11-year-old daughter. But these pathologies nest within Islam, and thrive at the intersection of Islam and the west. As long as Islam is your biggest source of population growth - to the point where Mohammed is now the most popular boy's name in Oslo - you're not "tackling" the issue, and certainly not "head on".

In a bizarre column even for the post-Conrad National Post, Afsun Qureshi suggests the best thing you could do to lessen the likelihood of being set upon by Muslims is to learn to recite the shahadah, "a testimony to the identity of Allah as the one true God, and Muhammad as his prophet". She might be right. Wearing a burqa might help, too. Or the shalwar kameez. On the other hand, most of those Syrian men paraded through the desert in their BVDs to their rendezvous with death knew the shahadah, and a fat lot of good it did.

To recite the shahadah when you're accosted on the streets is to accept the basic premise of your attackers - that Islam now has universal jurisdiction. There's way too much of that already. In essence, the entire establishment of a South Yorkshire town accepted that the cultural mores of Islam superseded whatever squeamishness they might otherwise have about child rape.

Just read the whole thing.

posted by Paul Tuns at 5:30 PM

 
Even the good news is bad

Stephen Moore in Investor's Business Daily:

President Obama has been celebrating the decline in the budget deficit over the last several years — from $1.3 trillion in 2010 to the still stratospheric $500 billion this year. Somehow borrowing more than $1 billion a day is seen as a fiscal triumph in Washington. Talk about dumbing down the test.

That really is the good news.

Moore notes that spending it going to increase and swiftly:

The real spending problem is that, over the next decade, outlays will explode by nearly $2.3 trillion. Of that increase, 60% will go to income redistribution programs — or what Washington euphemistically calls "entitlements." Another 25% will be interest on the debt. The remaining pittance will be for defense and domestic agencies. National security spending has fallen from nearly 50% of the budget under John F. Kennedy to just 17% — and falling — now.

The nation has been on high alert for at least two decades that the baby-boomer retirement wave was coming and that this demographic hurricane would rip gaping holes in the budget.

Nothing was done. Now 10,000 boomers are retiring every day. This means costs for the big four budget boulders — Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, plus ObamaCare subsidies — will soar. From 2013-2024, nominal spending on these programs will surge 95%.

This is not an Obama issue. For more than 30 years, almost the entire political class has refused to deal with these expensive programs. And any politician who seeks the large-scale necessary cuts in the future will soon be a former politician.

Americans should remember that no great civilization has lasted forever, but the decline of the United States will be made worse and sooner by the decisions (and non-decisions) they've made, both as politicians and voters.

posted by Paul Tuns at 10:59 AM

 
Premiers call for a(nother) study of missing and murdered native women

The Winnipeg Free Press reports that since 1996 there have been 40 official and third-party studies, reports, investigations, reviews, royal commissions, and strategic frameworks on the issue of murdered and missing native women. (Unlike for other races, native missing and murdered women are always lumped together.) The issue has been examined by the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, Statistics Canada, the House of Commons Standing Committee on the Status of Women, Assembly of First Nations, provincial/territorial advisory committees, women's groups, native groups, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch. The Free Press also lists them all. As the introduction says, "While this list may not be all-encompassing, it provides a good indication of the extent to which this issue has been the subject of study." While maybe not all-encompassing, it seems unlikely a new inquiry would find anything new to report.

(HT: Small Dead Animals)

posted by Paul Tuns at 10:46 AM

 
Conservatives should apply their distrust of government to foreign policy

Donald Boudreaux at Cafe Hayek:

The lesson is clear: government is just as bad at picking winners when intervening in foreign affairs as it is at picking winners when intervening in economic affairs. The same combination of hubris, imprudence, carelessness, misinformation, and myopia that leads government officials to spend other people’s treasure in support of economically calamitous ventures at home (such as subsidies to Solyndra) also leads these officials to spend other people’s treasure - and lives - in support of strategically calamitous ventures abroad (such as subsidies to Syrian rebels).

Government competence does not begin as you cross the border.

posted by Paul Tuns at 8:45 AM

 
Harper and the Nobel Peace Prize

The Globe and Mail reports that B’nai Brith Canada has nominated Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper for the Nobel Peace Prize for speaking out against Russian aggression and the threat of Islamic terrorism. This is precisely why Harper won't win the Nobel Peace Prize. While Harper would probably look at the Nobel Prize as a nice resume item for the next federal campaign, he shouldn't want to join the company of Yasser Arafat, Frank B. Kellogg, Mohamed El Baradei, Jimmy Carter, Wangari Muta Maathai, and Al Gore and their dubious achievements.

posted by Paul Tuns at 8:41 AM

 
The Obamaconomy

An Investor's Business Daily editorial reports that the Bureau of Economic Analysis announced that it tweaked its GDP growth numbers while the Congressional Budget Office updated its long-term economic outlook revising growth estimates significantly downward. IBD says:

In short, what we have is a weak economy that continuously disappoints, along with tax and spending policies that are putting the brakes on long-term growth.

So, go ahead and cheer the ray of good GDP news this week. But unless the country's economic ship changes course, lots of rough weather lies ahead.

posted by Paul Tuns at 10:12 AM

 
'Obama Watched Islamic State Grow'

From an Investor's Business Daily editorial:

A new report from the West Point counterterrorism center says the administration ignored warning signs as the Islamic State grew and trained over a four-year period paralleling our withdrawal from Iraq.

As President Obama dithers about whether to strike the Islamic State's sanctuary in Syria, a report by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point shows how we got to this point. Obama simply overlooked the "JV" team until it was ready for terrorism's Pro Bowl.

Instead, he was focused on getting us out of Iraq and creating a power vacuum that the terrorist group was all too willing to fill.

"ISIL did not suddenly become effective in early June 2014," the report states. "It has been steadily strengthening and actively shaping the future operating environment for four years."

IBD notes:

What can be drawn from this report is that the Islamic State could have been stopped in its infancy by a president who was busy drawing red lines in Syria using vanishing ink. The "cancer" that the administration now speaks of could have been surgically removed in its early stages as it trained and prepared in Syria.

posted by Paul Tuns at 10:07 AM

 
Rotherham

John O'Sullivan on Rotherham:

We often read or hear from the media that a nation is “shocked” or “horrified” by the revelation of some crime or government scandal. It is almost never true. At best, most people are disapproving or mildly interested in the shocking news. Since Tuesday afternoon, however, Britain has felt real shock and horror over the report that 1,400 young women in the South Yorkshire town of Rotherham had been groomed, raped, prostituted, trafficked, and brutally abused in almost every possible way by a criminal gang for the last 16 years. In addition, the authorities — which in this case are the local government authority, the police, and the child-protection services — had been repeatedly informed of these crimes but had dismissed the reports as false or exaggerated and taken no action to investigate, halt, and punish them ...

No fewer than three official investigations (prior to this one) looked into these crimes. They reported the broad truth that we now know and called for further investigations and arrests. The police and child-protection services did nothing whatever about them ...

What happened is explained by two additional facts: The 1,400 girls were all white and of Christian background and English ethnicity while all but one of their exploiters were Muslims of Pakistani heritage ...

Worse, the report concedes that the estimate of 1,400 victims is a conservative one. (It is the equivalent of about three girls’ schools.) Some of the girls were as young as eleven. And since other (more or less identical) cases of criminal exploitation of young Christian girls by Pakistani Muslim men have been uncovered in cities such as Oldham, Birmingham, and Oxford in the last decade, the total number of victims must be staggering.

The shock and anger is not with the crime, but the politically correct cover-up.

O'Sullivan says that two things are necessary to prevent this from recurring: people need to go to jail -- both the rapists/traffickers and the authorities who did nothing -- and there must be reform of the official understanding of multiculturalism and racism. In other words, these crimes and scandals will continue to occur in England.

posted by Paul Tuns at 9:39 AM

 
'Obama’s Irrational Animus for Israel'

Pete Wehner in Commentary:

Think about this for a moment. In a neighborhood featuring Hamas, ISIS, Hezbollah, Syria, and Iran, just to name a few of the actors, President Obama was “enraged” at … Israel. That’s right, Israel–our stalwart ally, a lighthouse of liberty, lawfulness, and human rights in a region characterized by despotism, and a nation filled with people who long for peace and have done so much for so long to sacrifice for it (including repeatedly returning and offering to return its land in exchange for peace).

Yet Mr. Obama–a man renowned for his lack of strong feelings, his emotional equanimity, his disengagement and distance from events, who New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd refers to as “Spock” for his Vulcan-like detachment–is not just upset but “enraged” at Israel.

posted by Paul Tuns at 9:14 AM

 
Retiring Toronto politicians could result in more left-wing city council

Gloria Lindsay Luby joins the ranks of Toronto city councillors who are not seeking re-election, joining Karen Stintz, Doug Ford, and Mike Del Grande. At some point in their political careers all four of these people would be considered on the right of city council although Lindsay Luby was more in the middle and went whichever way the wind blew (that is, with her council colleagues most of the time -- she once had ties to the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party but was also part of left-wing mayor David Miller's Executive Committee). Stintz became a pain in the ass for Rob Ford, but she was an original choice for his team when he first became mayor and once led the Responsible Government Group, a centre-right coalition at city hall. Ford and Del Grande really looked out for the taxpayer. Even with Lindsay Luby and Stintz's questionable credentials as part of the council's centre-right, it is easy to see TO city council moving leftward with their departure (although Mike Del Grande's incredibly sensible son John is seeking to replace him). Why won't Mike Layton, Gord Perks, and Joe Mihevc retire from elected politics?

posted by Paul Tuns at 5:55 PM

 
Some numbers

The Toronto Sun's Christina Blizzard notes some numbers: In 2003/04 there were 1,966,570 students in Ontario's two taxpayer-funded school system; in 2013/14 there were 1,845,665 students. In 2003/04 the total cost of Ontario's public schools was $15.23 billion; in 2013/14 the total cost of Ontario's public schools was $20.97 billion. And over the past five years, mathematical proficiency is getting worse. On the plus side, literacy is improving. Ontario taxpayers, parents, and kids are not getting their money's worth.

Blizzard blames the education system's embrace of whatever teaching fad excites educators, and that may be part of it. But the Ottawa Citizen's David Reevely makes a more important point, that we treat reading and writing as essential but elevate math to something only the nerds or brainiacs are good at: "Most people would hide it if they couldn’t read but claim an inability to estimate sales tax as a charming quirk. Treating math competence as part of being a functioning adult, not a mystery practised only by people in certain occult professions, is part of the solution."

posted by Paul Tuns at 4:51 PM

 
Ikea: Swedish for fakery

Tyler Cowen notes, "An amazing 75% of the images in an Ikea catalog are not photographs but CGI."

posted by Paul Tuns at 4:36 PM

 
Vice report: 'Al Sharpton is a huge fraud'

While not without its problems (cheap shots at New York's cardinal, criticism of New York's effective stop-and-frisk policies), Michael Tracey's Vice article deserves praise for challenging the privileged position Al Sharpton has attained considering his history:

“Sharpton has a long and well-documented history of leveraging his civil rights profile for his own benefit,” journalist Wayne Barrett, who chronicled his travails for 37 years at the Village Voice, wrote on the sordid occasion of Sharpton’s 2011 ascension to the 6 PM MSNBC time slot ...

At times, Sharpton has certainly helped provide needed services to traumatized, grieving, and financially despondent victims of NYPD violence. But he has all too frequently used such endeavors to promote lies and slander, always to the convenient effect of heightening his own stature. The 1988 Tawana Brawley disaster is among Sharpton’s most high-profile scams, and is cited on a regular basis by the conservatives he purposely enrages. During that shameful saga, Sharpton served as lead spokesman for a batty team of NYC lawyers that claimed the Ku Klux Klan, Irish Republican Army, and other dark forces were involved in covering up the rape of a 15-year-old black girl. The entire story was ultimately exposed as a hoax, and the district attorney Sharpton falsely accused of being one of the attackers successfully sued for defamation.

Sharpton also thrust himself to the fore of Eric Garner’s police-caused death this summer. NYPD officers threatened, surrounded, and then seized Garner in an illegal choke hold, in broad daylight, for doing nothing more than standing on a Staten Island sidewalk. The coroner’s office declared it a homicide; locals were distressed. Given Sharpton’s longtime residency and activism in the city, that he would intervene after such an incident may seem reasonable enough.

Well. At the Garner funeral service on July 23, which I attended, Sharpton delivered a bombastic address. In it, he paid special attention to the individual who recorded Garner’s fatal police altercation, which showed incontrovertible proof of officers’ unprovoked aggression. Sharpton invited the young man up to the altar of Bethel Baptist Church in Downtown Brooklyn and heralded his courage—the only problem was that he kept misstating the man’s name as “Ramsey Ortiz” instead of “Ramsey Orta," indicating just how little attention Sharpton apparently pays to the pesky details of the causes he inserts himself into ...

Sharpton infamously lavished his then girlfriend, who was also executive director of NAN, with luxury hotel stays valued at $4,000 per night—not to mention “a Mercedes, a Caddy, a $7,000 Rolex, mink coats, David Yurman jewels, and a Trump apartment.” ...

From the Donald Sterling affair, to the 2004 Haiti coup d’état, to the 2000 Florida recount—Sharpton apparently feels that he has a constructive role to play in virtually every major world controversy. But if anything is impressive about Sharpton, it’s the sheer breadth of his hypocrisy. That so many powerful actors are eager to countenance his bullshit really sucks, most of all for the besieged people of Ferguson. Meanwhile, the sleazy “reverend” keeps laughing all the way to the bank.

None of this is new to those of us who have followed this charlatan's career, but it is worth re-stating, especially considering his prime time perch at MSNBC. Indeed, this report could have delved deeper into Sharpton's scandals; there is no mention of the Crown Heights riots he helped incite which led to the murders of Yankel Rosenbaum and Anthony Graziosi or Sharpton's anti-Semitism.

Tracey explains the problem of Sharpton having credibility:

Despite the outsize importance that black voters assign to criminal justice issues, national Democrats have virtually ignored the policy preferences of their surest constituency in this arena. Sharpton’s primary function appears to be misdirecting black folks’ absolutely justifiable fury into votes for politicians who might systematically neglect their concerns but nonetheless pay requisite homage to “the Rev.”

Therein lies the danger of Sharpton injecting himself into situations like Ferguson: His unwieldy rants have the effect of inflaming tensions, and not the productive kind of tension that might eventually manifest in substantive change. Instead, he fosters an aura of cheap partisanship, which only reduces the likelihood that marginalized communities suffering under violent police regimes will secure any meaningful amelioration of their hellish predicaments.

(HT: Hot Air's Jim Treacher)

posted by Paul Tuns at 10:40 AM

 
2016 watch (Mitt Romney edition)

Breitbart reports:

According to the new USA Today poll, 35 percent of likely GOP voters in Iowa would pick Mitt Romney as the next GOP nominee.

None of the other Republican candidates thought to be running for president in 2016 even got into double digits in the poll.

Good grief. Former Arkansas governor and 2008 GOP insurgent candidate Mike Huckabee is a distant second with 9%. Good grief. Yet the poll was of 170 caucus voters, so sample size is an issue. As is the timing of the poll: it is 18 months until the caucus and there are no declared candidates.

posted by Paul Tuns at 8:17 AM

 
Tory, Ford lead as Chow tanks in the polls

The Toronto Star reports that Forum Research has the Toronto mayor's race becoming a two-man contest as John Tory narrowly leads Rob Ford 34%-32% with one-time front-runner Olivia Chow falling back to 24%. I am surprised by this and would cheer were it not for the fact this is a Forum Research poll, the company that predicted a 29-point lead for the Liberal in the Brandon-Souris by-election last November that the Tories ended up winning. Still, there are reasons to believe these poll numbers: Chow has run an invisible campaign counting on her name recognition rather than a clearly articulated vision of where to take the city, and Tory has benefited by being the most viable non-Ford candidate; also, Ford's poll numbers in the 20s never made sense as he seems to have a hard floor of the mid-30s. For Ford to win, Chow needs to stop bleeding support and maintain at least a quarter of the vote but there is a chance if she doesn't seem like a winner some (more) of her support will migrate to Tory to prevent a Ford re-election.

What does all this mean (if the results hold)? The narrative has generally been a divided right (Ford and Tory) and the left (Chow). I have never bought that storyline. Tory attracts a lot of centrist support and Ford wins over typical NDP voters, and Tory isn't much of a conservative. If Tory wins, expect more city funding of gay theatre and that type of thing. It seems strange that in Toronto, the two supposedly right-wing candidates are taking fully two-thirds of the vote. But if Tory wins, you can count on pundits explaining why Toronto is not backing a a right-leaning mayor but simply embracing the anti-Ford (an accurate explanation, in my view) and that Tory has no mandate to counter-act the left-wing city council.

posted by Paul Tuns at 8:13 AM

 
The benefits of play

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Peter Gray, a research professor of psychology at Boston College and author of Free to Learn, and Lenore Skenazy, author of Free-Range Kids, discuss the benefits of play and warn that kids need unstructured time to play:

They've got their backpacks and glue sticks, and they're off—to erase the gains made over the summer. While educators bemoan the "summer slide" when children ostensibly forget lessons they learned at school, we should be more concerned about the "September slide." That's when the gains children made in summer slip away. "Back to school" too often spells "No more play."

Play—"free play" initiated and directed by children—is not the opposite of learning. It is learning at its most powerful, nature's way of teaching children the big lessons they need for a happy, productive life. Yet play gets shoved aside by reading logs and essay prompts and today's misguided view that résumé building is more valuable. One large-scale study found that children age 9 through 12 spent just more than an hour a day playing, mostly indoors. That's not enough.

Those benefits include cooperation, self-control, paying attention, innovation and creativity, managing difficult tasks, learning to practice, and solving problems and taking responsibility.

posted by Paul Tuns at 7:54 AM

 
Journalists: your moral and intellectual superiors

Felix Salmon tweets: "So @SteveCollNY, Dean of Columbia Journalism School, is simultaneously on the Conde Nast payroll?"

posted by Paul Tuns at 12:35 AM

 
'Privately Educated Still Dominate Top U.K. Jobs: Report'

Bloomberg reports:

Britain’s claims to being a land of fairness and opportunity have been thrown into question by a survey revealing the majority of people in influential jobs went to private school.

The survey of 4,000 people in powerful positions showed that 71 percent of senior judges, 62 percent of senior armed forces officers, 55 percent of permanent secretaries, 53 percent of senior diplomats and 50 percent of members of the House of Lords went to independent, fee-paying schools, while only 7 percent of the population as a whole attended such institutions. Members of the cabinet were five times as likely to have attended private school as the general public were, according to the survey conducted by the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission, an advisory group sponsored by the Department for Education.

This report illustrates that 1) private schools offers a superior education, 2) private schools offer networks that help people rise in various institutions, 3) the British government is still elitist, or 4) possibly all of the above.

posted by Paul Tuns at 12:32 AM

 
Europeans are poorer than Americans

The United Kingdom would be the second poorest state if it were part of the United States. The Washington Post reports:

If Britain were to join the United States, it would be the second-poorest state, behind Alabama and ahead of Mississippi.

The ranking, determined by Fraser Nelson, an editor of The Spectator magazine, was made by dividing the gross domestic product of each state by its population, and it took into account purchasing power parity for cost of living.

Other European countries were also included in the per capita GDP rankings, and the top nation, Norway, would rank as the ninth wealthiest state, behind Massachusetts and in front of New Jersey.

posted by Paul Tuns at 12:25 AM

 
Sign of the apocalypse

Full House could be revived. Apparently conservatives should be happy.

posted by Paul Tuns at 12:09 AM

 
Bill de Blasio's New York

National Review's Kevin D. Williamson on rising crime in the Big Apple:

It’s been a year since New York City adopted Local Law 71 with the enthusiastic support of Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, who is now mayor of the city. Local Law 71, the so-called Community Safety Act, used the possibility of endless civil-rights litigation to gut the city’s “stop, question, and frisk” procedure for dealing with street-level crime, and Mr. de Blasio campaigned energetically on the issue, charging that the New York Police Department had “unfairly targeted young African-American and Latino men.” ...

The number of vagrants on the streets, and their aggression, is on the rise. The number of people sleeping in the City Hall and 33rd Street subway stations, the endpoints of my daily commute, is visibly higher, as is the level of vagrancy in Penn Station and Grand Central. The squeegee men are back, and their like-minded colleagues are setting up shop in churches. Violent crime around the city is up significantly. Central Park muggings and casual, racially motivated assaults are back in the news. In a city in which it is well-nigh impossible for me to carry a gun legally (I have held concealed-carry permits in other jurisdictions), shootings are up 12 percent. We are seeing increasingly Chicago-style headlines: Over one mid-August weekend, 21 people were shot.

In 2012, there were no rapes in Central Park. By September of 2013, a month after the Community Safety Act was passed, there had been a half dozen, and felonies in the park were up 10 percent. Misdemeanor sex crimes in the park rose by 100 percent. Concession-stand workers were robbed at knifepoint, and this past weekend a woman was shot in the head with an airgun by a gang of black teens shouting, “White people suck!”

In terms of the experience of street-level disorder, New York City already is a markedly different place from what it was when I arrived here only a few years ago. Criminals may not get the letter of the law, but they understand the mood and the message. They know when the police are on a short political leash and when they are not.

posted by Paul Tuns at 9:11 PM

 
Ebola bad for west African economy

Tyler Durden at Zero Hedge on Ebola's effects on the economies of Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Nigeria:

Reuters reports, is "causing enormous damage to West African economies and draining budgetary resources." In fact the damage from Ebola to Africa is already so acute, it is expected that economic growth in the region will plunge by up to 4 percent as foreign businessmen leave and projects are canceled, according to the African Development Bank president said.

"Revenues are down, foreign exchange levels are down, markets are not functioning, airlines are not coming in, projects are being canceled, business people have left - that is very, very damaging," African Development Bank (AfDB) chief Donald Kaberuka said in an interview late on Tuesday.

posted by Paul Tuns at 6:07 PM

 
The big news story in Canada today is ...

Unsubstantiated reports that the NHL wants to expand by four cities by 2017, including returning to Quebec City and putting a second team in Toronto (or the Greater Toronto Area), plus Las Vegas and Seattle. (Other possible cities include Portland (Oregon) and Kansas City, with TSN being the sole source saying there are potential owners interested in Hamilton, Ont.) The Toronto Sun reports that the NHL (and its owners) could pocket $1.4 billion in expansion fees. I'm not a pro hockey fan so I don't care, but every serious analyst already considers the game watered down with talent that doesn't belong in the North American pro league, so this would further decline the quality of the NHL game. But owners don't care about the quality of the game on the ice (or they would have eliminated several teams or institute changes to the game). ESPN reports, "And the fact that expansion fees -- which could run $300 million or more, depending on location -- do not count as hockey-related revenues and therefore don't have to be shared equally with the players also contributes to expansion fever." That's quite an incentive to make the game suck even more. A number of teams in the American south have floundered in terms of financial stability (see Atlanta and Phoenix, perhaps the Florida teams), so the wisdom of adding Las Vegas is questionable (at best), but those floundering teams "need" the expansion revenue. Arenas are already being built in Las Vegas and Quebec City. The original reports have Las Vegas as "a lock" and that the only question is whether Sin City will be the only expansion team or one of two (or four), but ESPN says that's not true; in fact their "sources" deny the whole expansion story.

ESPN raises some serious questions about Las Vegas netting an NHL team:

There's a reason Vegas doesn't have a pro sports team. There are lucrative television deals in the NHL, but it remains a gate-driven league and there are questions about whether a city with a population just north of 600,000 could sell 10,000-12,000 season tickets.

Maybe, but the workforce in Las Vegas is different than that in any other NHL market. With so many people working so many different shifts, would the ability of fans to attend games be affected? And the notion that Vegas casinos would buy large blocks of tickets to give away to fans runs against casino practice, which is to keep patrons in your own building rather than send them elsewhere.

Would casinos invest in suites for high rollers? Perhaps, but being such a transient marketplace -- in terms of both residents and visitors -- casts a huge shadow over the potential viability of the city.

While adding four teams seems like a lot, The Sporting News reminds fans:

The NHL adding more than two fits historically. This is how the league has operated the past 40-plus years:

1967: Next Six, to join with the Original Six.

1970-74: Six, to continue Western expansion and to compete with the WHA.

1979: Four, as the league absorbed the surviving teams of the dying WHA.

1991-93: Five, as the Sun Belt strategy took hold.

1998-2000: Four, as part of the league's reunion tour (Atlanta, Minnesota, Ohio).

It hasn't always worked in the past, and if they choose poorly (again), it is easy to see the NHL needing to expand again, if only for the expansion fees to finance struggling teams in the future.

posted by Paul Tuns at 5:06 PM

 
British police refuse to investigate racially and religiously motivated sex crimes for feat of being labeled racist

Legal Insurrection notes a inquiry report and media coverage of a British policing scandal:

In Rotherham, England, a group of Pakistani immigrants and others of Pakistani descent deliberately targeted white teenage girls for sexual exploitation, with a religious angle to the targeting.

The authorities knew of the exploitation, but were fearful of talking about it or going public with it for fear of being called racist or Islamophobic.

So the abuse continued for over a decade, with approximately 1400 girls gang raped and otherwise sexually abused. It’s all detailed in The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Exploitation in Rotherham, 1997 – 2013.

Ann Althouse says "'fear of being thought as racist' ... sounds like a confession of deliberate law enforcement paralysis." Instapundit comments: "Perhaps they need to consider the possibility that there are worse things than being thought racist. Of course, if that idea were to spread, a powerful tool of social control would vanish."

posted by Paul Tuns at 12:02 PM

 
2016 watch (Romney edition)

Mitt Romney tells Hugh Hewitt he is not running, stop asking, but circumstances might chance and he might run. He sounds like a person who is not running but doesn't want to completely eliminate the possibility of running. Romney is smart enough to know that he probably doesn't get another chance. He's not Richard Nixon or Adlai Stevenson and 2016 is not 1968 or 1956.

posted by Paul Tuns at 11:25 AM

 
'Using Homer Simpson To Explain Why Inequality Doesn't Matter'

At Cafe Hayek Donald Boudreaux shares an email about how The Simpsons demonstrates that "there sure isn’t any stagnation" because despite staying in the same job and having one income, the Simpson family enjoys an improved standard of living (larger television, second car, more gadgets) as the years pass. At Forbes.com Tim Worstall that concerns about inequality are overblown because money (income) doesn't matter as much as living standards and The Simpsons illustrates, "those physical living standards of the average family have continued to rise." The point is not that a fictional show -- a cartoon -- disproves Thomas Picketty, but that what money can buy is more important than the money itself, and that a show that attempts to accurately portray a lower middle class household illustrates that it buys more than it used to. As Worstall says:

The first being that we do, obviously, have widening inequality of cash or money incomes. But we’re also seeing something of a shrinkage in inequality in terms of consumption.

The latter matters more to people's actual lives, and the happiness (or contentment) that greater consumption brings.

posted by Paul Tuns at 10:32 AM

 
On this day in Canadian history

On August 27, 1793, John Graves Simcoe, the first Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada, moves the capital of the Province of Upper Canada from Newark (Niagara Falls) to York, and renames the settlement after the Duke of York. His first choice was London, Ont., because of its strategic position between lakes Erie and Huron, but it was vetoed by Governor-in-Chief Lord Dorchester. York was renamed Toronto in 1834.

posted by Paul Tuns at 9:45 AM

 
'The welfare state is us'

The Cato Institute's Michael Tanner:

One hundred ten million! That’s how many Americans now live in households that receive some form of means-tested welfare benefit from the federal government. According to a report from the Census Bureau released last week, that’s the highest absolute number in American history, and it represents 35.4 percent of the American population. Think about it — more than one out of every three Americans live in households that are now on welfare. Looked at another way, America’s welfare state now has nearly three times the population of the largest actual state.

Because many of these households include more than one person, the number of individual households is smaller, but still a record – roughly 33.5 million, more than a quarter of the country’s households. Worse, 10.5 million households receive benefits from three or more separate programs.

Furthermore, "the welfare rolls have actually grown by nearly 4 million households since the end of the recession."

And don't (just) blame the Obama administration:

[W]elfare also increased during the Bush administration: The proportion of households receiving SNAP (food stamps), TANF (Temporary Assistance to Needy Families), or SSI (Supplemental Security Income for the disabled) increased 36 percent during his presidency.

Shockingly, these numbers do not include all "welfare" programs, just the means-tested ones:

[N]one of these numbers include the middle-class social-welfare programs like Medicare and Social Security. Counting these programs, more than 153 million Americans, nearly half the population (49.5 percent), are living in households now dependent on government for a significant portion of their income.

Call it Taker Nation or Dependency Nation, but the U.S. is on the wrong and unsustainable track with so many people receiving government largesse (and that doesn't include government employees). Tanner notes:

According to calculations by Harvard’s Greg Mankiw, based on data from the Office of Management and Budget, roughly 60 percent of Americans receive more in government benefits than they pay in federal taxes. A Tax Foundation study suggests that as many as 70 percent of Americans are net recipients of government largesse. Those numbers will only grow worse in the future.

This will have political ramifications, as the growing number of recipients, especially dependents, will have little interest in voting for parties or candidates who want to shrink government.

posted by Paul Tuns at 7:57 AM

 
The importance of economics

Donald Boudreaux teaches economics at George Mason University and he makes the case "that principles of microeconomics is the most important economics course any student can ever take. Ever. By far." Boudreaux explains, "If taught properly, and learned with an open and critical and attentive mind, a principles of microeconomics will impart to the student more understanding of the operation of economies than will all other economics courses combined – and I include here even well-taught PhD econ courses."

Peter J. Boettke also teaches economics at GMU and he has an excellent post about "The Role of Principles in Economics and Politics," in which he quotes Frank Knight, who said in 1951: "The serious fact is that the bulk of the really important things that economics has to teach are things that people would see for themselves if they were willing to see." As much as some people want to teach you how to think like an economist (or a freak as two of them famously put it), I tend to agree that economics (and thinking like an economist, which means understanding incentives), is something that anyone can do but few try. Moralizing is easier than understanding.

posted by Paul Tuns at 7:01 PM

 
The state of American polling

A long, intelligent, data-filled survey of the polling scene in the United States by FiveThirtyEight's Nate Silver. He notes the problems with surveys (fewer people agreeing to take polls, more expensive to get a representative sample). But it might surprise people that -- at least by the metrics Silver uses -- polling is generally more accurate than it was in the 1990s.

posted by Paul Tuns at 1:38 PM

 
Stop over-arming the police

Glenn Reynolds in USA Today: "Police officers act like they're in a war zone, forgetting they face citizens, not enemies." This is something conservatives should, but do not, care about.

posted by Paul Tuns at 11:02 AM

 
Canada's low-tax business environment

Mark J. Perry of the American Enterprise Institute notes Canada has a low corporate tax environment especially compared to US, Germany, Japan, and France ("all taxes levied on corporations including income taxes, property taxes, capital taxes, sales taxes, miscellaneous local business taxes, and statutory labor costs (statutory plan costs and other payroll-based taxes)"); slightly lower than United Kingdom and Mexico.

posted by Paul Tuns at 10:26 AM

 
Banning e-cigarettes at work could be lead to more cigarette smoking

Toronto city council voted overwhelmingly (36-2) for a Board of Health recommendation which would prohibit e-cigarette use in all City of Toronto workplaces. Lance at Small Dead Animals notes that banning e-cigs at work would lead him back to real cigarettes: "I can guarantee you that if Saskatchewan jurisdictions start along the same road I'll probably be back on cigarettes when I work in those areas. You don't get anywhere near the nicotine dose from electronic nicotine delivery as you do from smoking. When working on-site it's more efficient to puff a cigarette for 5 minutes than to vape for 30." He also says that these electronic devices, which get people off cigarettes, are "at risk because people say it looks like smoking and have absolutely no facts supporting any serious health issue." PeterJ comments: "These kind of rulings have nothing to do with health or smoking. It all about the power trips that took them into politics in the first place."

posted by Paul Tuns at 10:17 AM

 
'IRS: Oh, those Lois Lerner emails, yeah they’re backed up'

Legal Insurrection points to a Judicial Watch reveals:

Department of Justice attorneys for the Internal Revenue Service told Judicial Watch on Friday that Lois Lerner’s emails, indeed all government computer records, are backed up by the federal government in case of a government-wide catastrophe. The Obama administration attorneys said that this back-up system would be too onerous to search. The DOJ attorneys also acknowledged that the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) is investigating this back-up system.

Of course they were backed up. And of course the Obama administration would have lied about it.

posted by Paul Tuns at 8:21 AM

 
Round-up of elite liberal opinion against Rick Perry indictment

Michael Barone in the Washington Examiner:

The basis for the indictment is, in the words of liberal New York Magazine writer Jonathan Chait, “unbelievably ridiculous.” The first count says that Perry violated a vaguely worded statute by threatening to veto an appropriation. That, even though the Texas Constitution gives governors the veto power and the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment protects their right to free speech.

The second count states that it was illegal “coercion” to demand the resignation of Rosemary Lehmberg, head of the public integrity prosecution unit whose funding Perry vetoed, after she was arrested for drunk driving with blood alcohol content three times the legal limit.

“To describe the indictment as ‘frivolous’ gives it far more credence than it deserves,” Chait said. Liberal Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz agreed. Perry’s actions, he said, are “not anything for a criminal indictment,” adding that the indictment is reminiscent of “what happens in totalitarian societies.”

The editorial writers of the Washington Post and the New York Times agreed. A “tendentious prosecution,” the Post wrote, noting that it was not the first one launched in Austin. The Texas town also produced the 2006 campaign finance indictment of former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay that was finally ruled invalid last year.

The Times, after making clear its distaste for Perry (“one of the least thoughtful and most damaging state leaders in America”), wrote that “the indictment appears to be the product of an overzealous prosecution.”

(HT: Instapundit)

posted by Paul Tuns at 8:17 AM

 
On this day in Canadian history

On August 26, 1875, John Buchan, 1st Lord Tweedsmuir, was born in Perth, Scotland. On the recommendation of Prime Minister R.B. Bennett, Buchan was named the 15th Governor General, a position he held from 1935 to 1940. An author of more than 50 books, including biographies and action adventure novels, he inaugurated the Governor-General's literary awards.

posted by Paul Tuns at 6:00 AM

 
Let's restore constitutional order and not allow presidents to interpret laws as they wish

Allan Meltzer, University Professor of Political Economy at the Tepper School, Carnegie Mellon University, writes in the Wall Street Journal:

Most of us learned in grade school that the Constitution parcels legislative, executive and judicial power into separate branches of the government. This separation of powers—the system of checks and balances—is to prevent tyranny and ensure that all citizens enjoy equal protection under the law. How true are these time-honored precepts today? Unfortunately, as some colleagues at the Hoover Institution's program on regulation and the rule of law are finding, the answer is less and less.

With regard to presidential power, the Constitution is explicit: Congress is authorized to make laws, and the president must execute them. The Constitution does not authorize the executive branch to change the laws or decline to enforce them for its own convenience.

Yet President Obama has waived the requirements of laws such as the Affordable Care Act and some laws on immigration—effectively rewriting them. This practice is constitutionally dangerous: Unless it is checked, there is not much short of impeachment to prevent a future president from issuing his own laws by reinterpreting existing laws.

The Supreme Court has been loath to prevent the president from going beyond his authorized responsibility. But Speaker John Boehner has led the House to pass a resolution authorizing a lawsuit challenging the president's actions on the grounds that his actions infringe on Congress's legislative power.

Regardless of the outcome of this lawsuit, Congress has other ways to protect the rule of law. Article III of the Constitution authorizes Congress to make rules for the judiciary. It can—and should—directly change the scope of standing to permit courts to restrain the president from rewriting laws ...

To help strengthen the rule of law, Congress could require that all regulations above some specified cost be approved by both houses. That would provide oversight by elected officials who could reject special privileges and cronyism. It could also insist that all spending by any agency for any purpose requires direct congressional authorization, a fundamental principle of the Constitution.

I bet there are plenty of Republicans who don't want this challenge against the President won; it will be handy for them to be able to decide which laws they want to enforce and tweak in the future.

posted by Paul Tuns at 12:01 AM

 
Democratic lawfare

PJ Media's Bryan Preston: "A Disturbing Pattern: Eight Times that Democrats Used Court Shenanigans Against Republicans They Couldn’t Beat at the Ballot Box." If you can't beat them, take 'em to court.

posted by Paul Tuns at 11:26 AM

 
Full House as conservative television fare

At The Federalist Greg Collins explains that 1990s sitcom Full House espoused conservative values. Generally I dislike the exercise of finding one's political views in pop culture, as it often requires cherry-picking isolated episodes and events. But Collins makes some intriguing (one might say clever and cute) arguments and has a valid point that a television show can display traditional values in unconventional ways.

It should also be noted that even if Full House espoused conservative values, it still sucked.

posted by Paul Tuns at 11:21 AM

 
Rick McGinnis shoots Metallica

At Some Old Pictures I Took, Rick McGinnis recalls shooting the hard rock group Metallica, who demanded McGinnis sign a contract "agreeing that the band had the right to review and reject the results of my shoot":

About a week later I got a call from the magazine; the slides had come back from Metallica's management. The band had put a lit cigarette through every frame they rejected, burning a hole through the negative sleeve and the film, leaving only the single frame they liked intact. My whole shoot had been reduced to a single shot, which I don't think I ever picked up from the magazine when they were done.

I'd once been a fan, but after this experience - and a bunch of crap albums - I soured on Metallica, so you don't need to guess whose side I was on when the band, led by Ulrich, decided that the best way to deal with file-sharing was to sue their fans.

I never sent in the roll of black and white film from the end of the shoot, however, and sat on the pictures for years. This is frame #33, four shots from the end of one of the unhappiest shoots I ever did. Not the biggest bunch of dickheads I ever photographed, but pretty close.

posted by Paul Tuns at 9:48 AM

 
2016 watch (Elizabeth Warren)

Senator Elizabeth Warren gives her Sherman pledge. Maybe. Breitbart reports:

Sen. Elizabeth Warren's (D-MA) lawyer disavowed a super PAC that formed to draft Warren to run for president in 2016.

The Ready for Warren PAC has had a presence at left-wing conferences like Netroots Nation, but Warren's lawyer, according to CNN, wrote the Federal Election Commission on Friday stating "this organization will focus its attention and energy on maintaining Democratic control of the U.S. Senate and not confuse donors about a non-existent run for President."

"The senator has not, and does not, explicitly or implicitly, authorize, endorse, or otherwise approve of the organization's formation or activities," attorney Marc Elias reportedly wrote. "To the contrary, Senator Warren has publicly announced that she is not running for president in 2016."

posted by Paul Tuns at 9:20 AM

 
The Obama vacation

Matthew Continetti, editor-in-chief of the Washington Free Beacon, writes about "Obama's endless vacation," at NRO, which is about a lot more than his time on the golf course during a series of international crises:

Attacking the president for vacation is usually the job of the out party. But these days it is the job of all parties. Ukraine, Syria, Iraq, the Islamic State, Ebola, child migrants on the border, racial strife in Ferguson, an American murdered by the caliphate — critics say the president who danced to every song at Ann Jordan’s birthday party seems remote and aloof from, and even mildly annoyed by, such concerns.

I disagree. Not with the judgment that Obama is detached, dialing it in, contemptuous of events that interfere with his plans. I disagree with the idea that this August has been different, in any meaningful way, from the rest of Obama’s second term. For this president, the distinction between “time off” and “time on” is meaningless. For this president, every day is a vacation. And has been for some time. He is like Cosmo Kramer of Seinfeld. “His whole life is a fantasy camp,” George Costanza says of his friend. “People should plunk down $2,000 to live like him for a week.” Imagine what they would pay to live like Obama.

The president doesn't care about X because he's not working at the White House is a staple of American politics, and a stupid one at that. But Continetti's larger point is not that Obama enjoys spending time on the links or cavorting with celebrities, but that he seems uninterested in the job of president, in actually governing. That seems true. Recall back during the efforts to get Obamacare through Congress, there were reports that the President was often not involved in negotiations and did not meet with Republicans to listen to their concerns or to cajole them to accept his plan. It may not be accurate to call it his plan considering how hands-off he was in the process. Often Obama seems uninterested in his job.

Continetti writes:

And he is interested in television. He watches HBO. Last winter, when the network’s CEO visited the White House for a state dinner, the president asked him for copies of True Detective, and of Game of Thrones. Obama watches House of Cards. He subscribes to the theory that we are living in the rather oxymoronic “golden age of television.” According to CBS, “his go-tos include ‘Breaking Bad,’ ‘Mad Men,’ and ‘Homeland.’” So we know how Obama has spent at least 275 hours of his presidency.

It is stunning how much television the President watches. But it is part of the parcel: the President's priorities are being hip and cool, not engaged.

Obama has been on vacation for five years; America desperately needs a vacation from Obama.

posted by Paul Tuns at 9:15 AM

 
'6 Things The Most Organized People Do Every Day'

There is a lot of wisdom, including counter-intuitive wisdom in this blog post by Eric Barker, "6 Things The Most Organized People Do Every Day." I think a lot of executives do a poor job managing because they are inefficiently busy (and many erroneously believe they operate better when they are in crisis mode because they over-estimate their abilities). Among the key pieces of advice by Barker is to "empty the brain" by following David Allen suggestions for getting things out of your head: "Do it, Delegate it, Defer it, Drop it." Also, "assign every to-do a block of time on your calendar" and learn "the art of quickly picking the option that is 'good enough'," for all but the most important decisions. A lot of human misery and failure is a result of the bad decisions we make, including how we work.

posted by Paul Tuns at 7:29 PM

 
What slut walks are really also about

Fighting capitalism!

@SlutWalkChicago tweets:

"Smashing Rape Culture requires smashing capitalism." #SlutWalkChi

The left-wing view believes everything is connected and fighting one injustice means fighting them all.

And Robert Stacy McCain responds: "Because no one ever got raped by a socialist, right?"

posted by Paul Tuns at 6:06 PM

 
On this day in Canadian history

On August 24, 1922, Rene Levesque was born in Campbellton, N.B. He would serve as the separatist premier of Quebec from 1976 to 1985. A former Liberal cabinet minister in the government of Jean Lesage he quit his post and formed the Parti Quebecois in 1968. The PQ won 23% of the vote but just 7 of 108 seats in the National Assembly. They increased their support (30%) but lost a seat in 1973, before forming government in 1976, garnering 41% of the vote and 71 of 110 seats. Levesque died in 1987.

posted by Paul Tuns at 3:00 PM

 
UNRWA as welfare racket for Palestinians

Lawrence Solomon writes about the United Nations Relief and Aid Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) in the Financial Post:

In the West, it’s known as welfare fraud. In the Palestinian Territories, it’s called refugee relief. In both places, the fraud can become a way of life, seen as an entitlement that children and then grandchildren adopt. Only in the Palestinian Territories, though, does the welfare agency see its goal as putting more people on welfare and keeping them there, the better to keep “the Palestinian refugee crisis” alive.

Solomon concludes that neither Palestinian leaders nor UNRWA cannot countenance solving the refugee problem because it stokes politically useful grievances.

posted by Paul Tuns at 11:15 AM

 
Congressman calls out race hucksters

Breitbart reports:

Rep. Steve King (R-IA) slammed "race hustlers" like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson for trying to "monetize" the civil unrest in Ferguson and raise their profiles.

"They're race hustlers," King said this week on Iowa's WHO radio. "Tawana Brawley, the one who falsely accused rape that Al Sharpton made the beginnings of his career off of, he's never apologized for that." Jackson was reportedly booed when he asked for donations during a Ferguson rally.

"All the violence that was perpetrated in the name of a rape that never existed," King said, while speaking of Sharpton, who is reportedly the White House's man on the ground in Ferguson. "So, when people pit people against each other on the basis of race, Jan, that is a sin to do that. It costs lives in this country and it causes social unrest and it keeps this country from healing together."

More elected officials need to call out self-appointed, self-serving "civil rights leaders."

posted by Paul Tuns at 10:30 AM

 
Funny line

Dinesh D'Souza tweets: "Civil rights and wrongs: MLK had a DREAM; Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson have a SCHEME." Rhetorically, that is a very Jesse Jackson-like line.

posted by Paul Tuns at 9:53 AM

 
'Stop Obsessing About Global Warming'

Amartya Sen, a liberal Nobel economist and author of books such as Development as Freedom, argues in The New Republic that environmentalists should stop worrying about global warming and begin looking at sustainable but practical provision of the energy needs of the developing world. Sen says:

First, the recent focus of energy thinking has been particularly concentrated on the ways and means of reducing carbon emissions and, linked with that, cutting down energy use, rather than taking energy use as essential for conquering poverty and seeing the environmental challenge within a more comprehensive understanding. There would appear to be an insufficient recognition in global discussion of the need for increased power in the poorer countries.

Fetishizing the Earth often results in diminishing the very real needs of the world's poor. Says Sen:

The environment is sometimes seen—simplistically, I believe—as the “state of nature,” including such measures as the extent of forest cover, the depth of the ground water table, the number of living species, and so on. It is tempting to go from there to the conclusion that the best environmental planning is one of least interference, of leaving nature alone—that the urgent need is for inaction ...

The essay is thoughtful and thought-provoking throughout, even if one does not agree with it. It is also a plea for real scientific exploration and rational discussion, but one could easily imagine liberals, for whom such exploration and discussion are (rhetorical) lodestars, rejecting Sen's thesis.

posted by Paul Tuns at 9:45 AM

 
Robots and human suffering

The Daily Mail reports that engineer Nell Watson told a Swedish conference that droids could kill people in the future if not taught the value of human life, including altruistically to end human suffering. "The most important work of our lifetime is to ensure that machines are capable of understanding human value," Watson warned. "It is those values that will ensure machines don't end up killing us out of kindness." Maybe we should start with teaching this value to human beings.

posted by Paul Tuns at 9:09 AM

 
On this day in Canadian history

On August 23, 1916, the Ontario cabinet of Sir James Whitney passed an order-in-council allowing the city of Berlin to change its name to Kitchener, effective September 1. There was a movement led by the Berlin Board of Trade during World War I to distance the city from any identification with Germany and in June Kitchener was chosen by 346 of 892 referendum voters (in a city with a population over 15,000) among six choices that included Adanac (Canada backwards), Brock, Benton, Corona, and Keowana; maintaining the name Berlin was not one of the choices. Kitchener did not even appear on the original list of more than 100 proposed names presented by the select committee of city council), but was added after Lord Kitchener, Britain's Secretary of State for War, died when his ship hit a sea mine during the Great War. Following the referendum, a petition submitted by opponents of the name change and signed by more than 2,000 people was presented to Queen's Park but dismissed.

posted by Paul Tuns at 7:59 PM

 
No Chinese baby boom after relaxation of one-child policy

Bloomberg reports:

Nine months after stock-market wagers on a baby boom in China reached record levels, the bets have turned into some of the nation’s biggest losers as living costs deter couples from having more than one child.

While milk-powder producers Biostime International Holdings Ltd. and Yashili International Holdings Ltd. surged to all-time highs after the ruling Communist Party relaxed its one-child policy last November, the stocks have lost at least 41 percent this year, with Biostime leading declines in the MSCI China Index. Hengan International Group Co., a diaper maker, has dropped 8.1 percent even as the MSCI gauge rose 5.5 percent.

Less than 3 percent of the 11 million Chinese couples eligible for another child applied for permission by the end of May, jeopardizing government efforts to bolster a population that the United Nations predicts will start shrinking by 2030. Raising a child from birth through to 18 years of age costs about 23,000 yuan ($3,745) a year, according to Credit Suisse Group AG, equivalent to 43 percent of the average household income in China.

In China, a second baby is a luxury item, or at least that is the view of Bloomberg’s Stephen Engle (see the accompanying video). Here are three other possibilities: the one-child policy is deeply ingrained culturally and couples do not want a second child, the fact that couples still need bureaucratic permission indicates the one-child policy is not all that liberalized, and (relatedly) perhaps the boom is stalled by bureaucracy -- it's not like every interested couple would have applied immediately and received a response -- so waiting precisely nine months and declaring a policy defeat is stupid.

posted by Paul Tuns at 5:08 PM

 
Cities that produce the most billionaires

Business Insider: "The Cities Where The Most Billionaires Were Born." Predictably, New York tops the list with 52. You might be shocked at what is tied for fifth. And this will change over time: Detroit, Shanghai, Pittsburgh, San Francisco, Houston, and Jiangsu (China) have all produced five.

posted by Paul Tuns at 4:51 PM

 
Considering Obama's incompetence isn't this a good thing

Business Insider: "Cheney: Obama Would 'Rather Be On The Golf Course' Than The Situation Room."

posted by Paul Tuns at 4:42 PM

 
The creation of Rubik's cube

Mental Floss: "How Ernö Rubik Created the Rubik's Cube." Sometimes successes occur accidentally:

A year later, a Magic Cube was sitting on a café table outside Budapest. It caught the attention of Tior Laczi, a Hungarian businessman living in Austria who had a soft spot for math. He bought it off the waiter for about $1. There was nothing like it on the toy market, he knew, and he thought he could popularize it. But first, he wanted to meet the mind behind the block. When he did, he was underwhelmed. “When [he] first walked into the room, I felt like giving him some money,” Laczi told Discover. “He looked like a beggar. He was terribly dressed, and he had a cheap Hungarian cigarette hanging out of his mouth. But I knew I had a genius on my hands. I told him we could sell millions.” Rubik agreed to let him try.

posted by Paul Tuns at 3:49 PM

 
There are so many upsides to genetically modified foods

From a Wall Street Journal profile of Monsanto COO Brett Begemann:

[I]n the 1980s biotechnology allowed scientists to add desirable traits from other organisms into a plant's DNA. The result: seeds that can, for instance, tolerate drought or resist pests. "It's scientific evolution," Mr. Begemann says. "We can do surgeries in ways we couldn't do them before." So can we now in agriculture.

The use of biotechnology has skyrocketed since GM crops were first commercialized in 1996, and more than 90% of all acres planted with corn and soybeans are now GM crops. These crops, typically fed to livestock and used as ingredients in other foods, are in nearly 80% of the products on grocery-store shelves.

The switch to GM crops happened so rapidly because farmers favored the new technology over the traditional. "The seeds that were available back then are still available today," Mr. Begemann says. "Farmers just choose not to buy them." In 2011 farmers earned $19.8 billion added economic benefit from GM crops, according to a 2013 report by the U.K.-based PG Economics. Genetically modified seeds are more resilient, yield more crops on less land and require less labor. A July Thomson Reuters report said by 2025 "price fluctuations and food shortages will become things of the past," as GM technology proliferates.

It is more than strange that many of the same people who oppose GMOs also fret about over-population.

Many of the worriers say that GMOs are not properly regulated. That's not true:

"The biotech-derived products that we eat are the most highly tested and regulated components in what we consume," Mr. Begemann says. A new seed must be reviewed by the Department of Agriculture. Then there's a voluntary check from the Food and Drug Administration. If the GM seed includes insecticides or pesticides, as most do, the Environmental Protection Agency gets a look. It takes about $100 million to get one seed from discovery to market. Crops that are bred conventionally, on the other hand, undergo no government testing. None.

posted by Paul Tuns at 9:30 AM

 
Dependency nation

From an Investor's Business Daily editorial:

New data on federal public assistance programs show we've reached an ignominious milestone: More than 100 million Americans are getting some form of "means-tested" welfare assistance.

The Census Bureau found 51 million on food stamps at the end of 2012 and 83 million on Medicaid, with tens of millions of households getting both. Another 4 million were on unemployment insurance.

The percentage of American households on welfare has reached 35%. If we include other forms of government assistance such as Medicare and Social Security, almost half of all households are getting a check or other form of government assistance. The tipping point is getting closer and closer.

posted by Paul Tuns at 9:22 AM

 
Protester to Jesse Jackson: 'we don’t want you here'

Breitbart has video from Ferguson of a protester calling out Jesse Jackson.

posted by Paul Tuns at 8:59 AM

 
Great news for India

Reuters reports:

U.S.-based economist Arvind Subramanian is poised to be named as chief economic adviser to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government, two sources at the finance ministry said on Friday.

If confirmed, the appointment would bring a second economist of international renown to a key policy post following the naming of former International Monetary Fund chief economist Raghuram Rajan as Reserve Bank of India chief last year.

Both are great economists. Past Marginal Revolution posts on Subramanian are located here.

posted by Paul Tuns at 8:42 AM

 
Best The Simpsons politics

To mark the beginning of FXX's The Simpsons marathan (all 522 episodes plus movie in chronological order), National Review has a slide show of "The Simpsons Get Political." The best political commentary in The Simpsons is when the teachers go on strike and a town hall meeting witnesses the descent of political debate from reasoned argument to gestures.

posted by Paul Tuns at 10:17 AM

 
Chris Rock on 'how to not get your ass kicked by the police'

Video is NSFW. Start with "obey the law" and "just use common sense."

posted by Paul Tuns at 7:57 AM

 
On this day in Canadian history

On August 22, 1935, William Aberhart leads the Social Credit to victory over the incumbent United Farmers government in the Alberta provincial election to become the world's first Social Credit government. The Social Credit Party won 56 of 63 seats with 54% of the vote, while the UF went from 39 seats to none. Under Aberhart and Ernest Manning, the Socreds stayed in power until 1971.

posted by Paul Tuns at 6:00 AM

 
Best The Simpsons geek episodes

To mark the beginning of FXX's The Simpsons marathan (all 522 episodes plus movie in chronological order), Popular Mechanics has the "Essential Geek Episodes of The Simpsons."

posted by Paul Tuns at 12:39 AM

 
2016 watch (Hillary Clinton edition)

Peter Beinart in The Atlantic on why Hillary Clinton might not face a formidable opponent: "given the Clintons' reputation for retaliating for betrayals, it's just not worth it in 2016." Beinart says:

The winning-by-losing strategy works best when it gains you some influence over the person who defeats you for the nomination. Sometimes that means earning a place alongside them on the presidential ticket, as Edwards did in 2004. Sometimes it simply means convincing their supporters that you have a bright future and may be worth supporting down the line. The strategy works less well if the person who defeats you becomes your sworn enemy, committed to doing you political harm. It’s the fear that the Clintons may do exactly that that is limiting the pool of willing challengers.

And for good reason. Throughout their careers, Bill and Hillary Clinton have shown a willingness to remember, and punish, political betrayals. In 1980, then-President Jimmy Carter sent some of the Cuban refugees who had arrived in the United States as part of the Mariel boatlift to Arkansas. Held in prison-like conditions, the detainees rioted and some escaped, which ensured Clinton’s reelection defeat as Arkansas governor. As Carl Bernstein details in A Woman in Charge, the Clintons retaliated more than a decade later by refusing to give anyone in Carter’s inner circle a job in the Clinton White House. In their book HRC, Jonathan Allen and Aimee Parnes note that in 2012, Bill Clinton repeatedly intervened in Democratic primaries to help candidates who had backed Hillary against rivals who had backed Barack Obama—thus reminding Democrats that opposing Hillary carries a price.

According to Bob Boorstin, who ran communications for Hillary’s health-care task force, when Hillary is slighted, “she gets angry, and she remembers it forever.” When people prove loyal, by contrast, they reap rewards. As Allen and Parnes put it, “Loyalty, for better and worse, has been the defining trait of Hillary and her tightly woven inner circle, from her days as first lady through the Senate and State.”

posted by Paul Tuns at 12:27 AM

 
Thinking of moving you might want to check out these lists

Business Insider: "The 10 Most Livable Cities In The World." Canada and Australia are well represented. There is also "The 11 Least 'Livable' Cities In The World," which includes seven African cities.

BuzzFeed: "What Kind Of Home You Can Buy For $300,000 Around The Country."

posted by Paul Tuns at 12:20 AM

 
Medicare: Big and ripe for fraud

Investor's Business Daily editorializes:

The Government Accountability Office believes fraud was involved in 8% of all Medicare spending in 2012, or $44 billion. It calls Medicare a sieve, a high-risk program vulnerable to "fraud, waste, abuse and mismanagement."

The fraud, waste and abuse is probably worse. Nicole Kaeding at the Cato Institute pointed out Tuesday that Malcolm Sparrow, a Harvard public management professor, estimates that closer to 20% of annual Medicare claims are improper.

That means that of the $600 billion the program spends in a year, as much as $120 billion is frittered away in scams, deceptions and swindles. Some analysts believe Medicaid fraud is about as bad.

posted by Paul Tuns at 12:09 AM

 
The Obama(care)conomy

Obamacare is a job-killer. Jed Graham in Investor`s Business Daily:

ObamaCare may be among the reasons why the economic recovery is still searching for its third gear, suggest Federal Reserve surveys of businesses in five states.

While the law hasn't prevented solid job growth this year, it appears to have slowed gains at a sizable minority of firms.

In a Philadelphia Fed survey of regional manufacturers out Thursday, 18% said they employ fewer workers due to the Affordable Care Act than they would in its absence ...

Further, 18% said part-timers make up a greater share of workers due to ObamaCare, which absolves employers of responsibility for health care for those who work fewer than 30 hours a week ...

The New York Fed released two surveys on Monday showing that 22% of manufacturing and 17% of service firms are carrying fewer workers in response to ObamaCare. The part-time share of the workforce is higher at about 20% of firms in each sector and lower at about 5%.

posted by Paul Tuns at 12:05 AM

 
California women's college to enroll dudes

Campus Reform reports:

Mills College, located in the San Francisco Bay Area, approved a new policy that lets applicants who self-identify as women enroll, making it the first single-sex college to let applicants specifically pick their gender.

“Mills shall not discriminate against applicants whose gender identity does not match their legally assigned sex,” the policy states. “Students who self-identify as female are eligible to apply for undergraduate admission. This includes students who were not assigned to the female sex at birth but live and identify as women at the time of applications. It also includes students who are legally assigned to the female sex, but who identify as transgender or gender fluid.”

(HT: My summer intern)

posted by Paul Tuns at 4:00 PM

 
An example of the broken window fallacy (Somalia TV sales edition)

The Associated Press reports that TV sales are "booming in Somalia, in part because of fears by people of gathering in public places like restaurants that are targeted for deadly attacks by the al-Qaida-linked militant group al-Shabab." Even though service providers have to hire more technicians, the fact that movie theatres are being shuttered and people are avoiding going outside cannot be good for society or the economy.

* This broken window fallacy, not the broken window theory of fighting crime.

posted by Paul Tuns at 3:30 PM

 
Such exquisite sensitivity to BS will serve these young journalists well in the future

NRO's Katherine Timpf reports:

A Virginia university has decided to stop calling its newspaper “The Bullet” over concerns that the name was so insensitive and inappropriate that it could even make people violent.

The University of Mary Washington’s 96-year-old newspaper will now be called The Blue and Gray Press.

“The editorial board felt that the paper’s name, which alludes to ammunition for an artillery weapon, propagated violence and did not honor our school’s history in a sensitive manner,” newspaper staff said in a release issued Monday.

(HT: Small Dead Animals)

posted by Paul Tuns at 3:23 PM

 
Milking Layton's death to create a new generation of young socialists

An email from the NDP:

Tomorrow, on the third anniversary of Jack Layton’s passing, a special memorial celebration will be hosted by Ryerson University – and you’re invited to attend.

In his letter to Canadians in 2011, Jack wrote: “Young people have been a great source of inspiration for me.”

Ryerson’s upcoming memorial tribute is titled Living Jack’s Legacy: Young Canadians Inspired by Jack Layton ...

Friday August 22, 12:30pm–2 pm

A lunch reception will begin at 1:30pm

Sears Atrium, George Vari Engineering and Computing Centre

Ryerson University

245 Church Street, Toronto

Young, engaged Canadians will speak about Jack’s influence, and the path it led them on. There will also be music and guests sharing memorable moments.

This event is organized by the Jack Layton Chair at Ryerson, Professor Myer Siemiatycki, with members of the Layton family in attendance.

posted by Paul Tuns at 2:36 PM

 
There are almost no hate crimes in Washington DC and most race-based hate crimes are against whites

The Washington Times reports:

Race-based hate crimes jumped in Washington, D.C., last year even as most other types of bias crimes decreased, with analysts saying such incidents could be vastly underreported among minority groups uncomfortable coming forward to authorities.

D.C. police say that of the 18 race-based hate crimes in 2013, the majority of victims were white and the majority of suspects black. The number of incidents was up from the 13 race-based bias crimes reported in 2012 ...

The number of hate crimes reported in the District fell overall from 81 in 2012 to 70 in 2013.

There are twice as many whites as blacks making complaints about hate crimes (despite the fact that Washington is almost 50% black). The Anti-Defamation League assumes it is because visible minorities do not trust the police and won't make complaints.

The takeaway about these numbers is actually that there is no need for hate crime laws.

posted by Paul Tuns at 12:03 PM