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).

 
Market failure

Donald Boudreaux at Cafe Hayek:

They [market failures] are mirages created by Progressives’ habit of assuming that everyone has the same tastes and preferences as those of Progressives.

I think there are market failures,* but many of so-called market failures are simply the name slightly economically literate progressives give to outcomes that they, the Left, don't like.

* It is folly to believe that the exchange mechanisms of buying and selling would always produce beneficent results.

posted by Paul Tuns at 2:58 PM

 
Porn is bad for the environment

New Scientist reports:

The transmission and viewing of online videos generates 300 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, or nearly 1 per cent of global emissions. On-demand video services such as Netflix account for a third of this, with online pornographic videos generating another third.

This means the watching of pornographic videos generates as much CO2 per year as is emitted by countries such as Belgium, Bangladesh and Nigeria.

That’s the conclusion of a French think tank called The Shift Project. Earlier this year, it estimated that digital technologies produce 4 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions and that this figure could soar to 8 per cent by 2025.

posted by Paul Tuns at 2:50 PM

 
Qu'ils mangent de la brioche (2019 edition)

The (Sunday) Times reports on the opulent lifestyle of President Emmanuel Macron's Environment Minister, François de Rugy, and his wife, Séverine Servat, following revelations by Mediapart and other French outlets. de Rugy, who used to serve as president of the National Assembly (like the Speaker in a parliament), spent tens of thousands of dollars on lavish parties and renovations of his official residence. The salacious highlight is a gold-leaf encrusted hair dryer for Lady Gala (Servat), but two other details warrant greater attention:

Ouest-France, alleged he had held an “informal” dinner in March for energy industry lobbyists and insisted it not be included in public records.

In a further twist, Mediapart managed to get hold of de Rugy’s financial records, which showed he had managed, through the use of allowances, legally to avoid paying any income tax for 2014.

The first allegation indicates an attempt to avoid accountability, while the second story illustrates the problems of tax codes that allow comfortable politicians to avoid taxes that are foisted upon the commoners.

For now, Macron is backing de Rugy, technically the second most senior official in the administration. Peter Conradi, The Times Paris correspondent, writes, the allegations "threaten to revive the old trope of an overprivileged Parisian political elite highlighted by the gilets jaunes." The trope of the overprivileged Parisian political elite is a not so charming French tradition.

posted by Paul Tuns at 9:23 AM

 
Vacation

Hope to return to blogging on or around July 13.

posted by Paul Tuns at 12:03 AM

 
The joy of flying?

I love the comment by "Faze" at Marginal Revolution on the joy(s) of flying:

I find flying so stimulating that I can't focus on reading - at the airport or in the air. Mostly I look out the window and agree with Joan Didion, who once said, "The most beautiful things I've ever seen have all been from planes.

Everything about flying is too marvelous to read through.

I don't necessarily enjoy the TSA lines, but it's an opportunity to observe fellow human beings in their various clothing, classes, occupations and relationships. I appreciate it as a kind of spiritually beneficial leveling activity - people taking off their shoes, as they do at the door to a mosque.

I love studying the passengers in the waiting area who will soon be joining me in the big tube, and once I'm on the plane, I love their solemn, anticipatory faces as they board. As we taxi and take off, I think about what a privilege it is to experience this amazing thrill being rocketed off the earth. And once we're in the sky, I am exhilarated by the whole Louis C.K. shtick: "Sitting in a chair. In the air!" - something that my heroes from Da Vinci and Samuel Johnson fantasized about.

Zooming along at cruising altitude, I snuggle inside myself, contemplating the fact that statistically, even though I am 40,000 feet in the air, I am in one of the safest environments on or off the planet. Even the turbulence is comforting, inasmuch as it demonstrates the miracle of the aircraft's engineering and resilience.

As the sun slants through the windows, I look around at my fellow passengers, seated in rows like people in a church sharing a temporary communion high up over the earth -- a large, random group of strangers elevated above the clouds.

All of this holds true even when there is a crying child - or as on a recent flight to Florida - a whole kindergarten full of joyously noisy children in the back of the plane. A baby crying! Halfway to space!

All of this is made more poignant by my suspicion that this age of popular air travel will curtailed at some point in my lifetime, probably for environmental reasons or as environmentalist or anti-elitist theater.

We fly in a privileged historical moment, where cheap air travel is available to almost everybody. Much as I love reading, I can't bear to miss a minute of it.

We should all appreciate the wonders and miracles in our lives.

posted by Paul Tuns at 3:36 AM

 
Best. Headline. Eva.

From PJ Media: "Thanks, HGTV: Americans VASTLY Overestimate the Gay Population in U.S., Gallup Finds." Good story, too.

PJ Media's Paula Bolyard's article begins by rehearsing the origins of the propaganda campaign to normalize homosexual behaviour, which Bolyard says has been fantastically successful. For as Gallup finds, "Americans Still Greatly Overestimate U.S. Gay Population." Gallup reports:

U.S. adults estimate that nearly one in four Americans (23.6%) are gay or lesbian. Gallup has previously found that Americans have greatly overestimated the U.S. gay population, recording similar average estimates of 24.6% in 2011 and 23.2% in 2015. In each of the three polls in which Gallup has asked this question, a majority of Americans estimated this population to be 20% or greater.

Americans' estimate of the proportion of gay people in the U.S. is more than five times Gallup's more encompassing 2017 estimate that 4.5% of Americans are LGBT, based on respondents' self-identification as being lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender.

posted by Paul Tuns at 6:55 PM

 
Happy Birthday Canada

Mark Wegierski has an essay, "In Search of Canadian Identity," online at The Interim. His argument is that Canada has a pre-1967 history, a story that predates the two Trudeaus. Here's a snippet:

In the last 40 years, Canada has experienced a massive repudiation of traditional notions of national identity, which had flourished for hundreds of years before. The English-Canadian and French-Canadian nations had indeed existed long before the formal establishment of the Dominion of Canada in 1867. However, today Canada is a cultural laboratory, having severed its roots – in history, Christianity, and the countryside. While it may not be surprising that British identification has melted away since the collapse of the British Empire in the 1950s, there has been little attempt to construct a more positive identity for English-speaking Canadians.

posted by Paul Tuns at 3:36 PM

 
Happy Birthday Thomas Sowell

Thomas Sowell turned 89 today. Mark Perry of The American Enterprise Institute pays tribute to economist and columnist who has influenced several generations of conservatives:

In my opinion, there is no economist alive today who has done more to eloquently, articulately, and persuasively advance the principles of economic freedom, limited government, individual liberty, and a free society than Thomas Sowell. In terms of both his quantity of work (at least 46 books and several thousand newspaper columns) and the consistently excellent and crystal-clear quality of his writing, I don’t think any living free-market economist even comes close to matching Sowell’s prolific record of writing about economics. And as I’ve mentioned previously on CD, as a writer Thomas Sowell is truly the “Master of Idea Density” – he has the amazing talent of being able to consistently pack more ideas, insight, and wisdom into a single sentence or paragraph than what typically takes an entire essay or book for even the best writer!

As Perry notes, 22 of those books have been published since 2002. Sure, some of those books get a tad repetitive, but that's still impressive. Perry has 15 of his favourite Sowell quotes in the aforementioned tribute, including (probably) my favourite:

The first lesson of economics is scarcity: There is never enough of anything to satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.

I also like Jeff Jacoby's favourite Sowell quote: "Intellect is not wisdom."

Four of my most heavily marked up books are Sowell's A Conflict of Visions, The Vision of the Anointed, Knowledge and Decisions, and The Quest for Cosmic Justice, and I strongly recommend young conservatives read the first two.

posted by Paul Tuns at 10:04 PM

 
The Democratic presidential debate (Part 1)

I didn't watch it. I might get around to it later, but it seems like it was precisely what one would expect it to be. Some of the commentary on the debate -- or as Roger Kimball calls it, the "debate" -- worth reading is highlighted below.

John Podhoretz in the New York Post:

Section 1325! Section 1325! For a few crucial minutes in the middle of the first Democratic presidential debate, Julián Castro (polling average: 0.8 percent) took over the proceedings by challenging his fellow candidates to endorse the repeal of Section 1325 of the Immigration and Naturalization Act.

What’s it about? Don’t ask.

He yelled at Beto O’Rourke about it and expressed his deep disappointment that O’Rourke wasn’t joining him in supporting the repeal of Section 1325.

O’Rourke is at 3.3 percent in the Real Clear Politics polling average, so you can see why Castro thought it was so important to nail him. If he really cuts into Beto’s support, Castro might rise to a whole 1.5 percent.

Meanwhile, Elizabeth Warren — poll average 12.8 percent — could barely get a word in edgewise.

Later, Tulsi Gabbard (0.8 percent) got into a kerfuffle with Tim Ryan (0.6 percent) on whether we should even have gone into Afghanistan in the first place. Gabbard, who seemed to be bidding for the goth vote with her dramatic shock of gray hair, said the Taliban didn’t attack us, al Qaeda did. Ryan’s expression was like Mugatu in “Zoolander” asking if he’d been taking crazy pills.

Meanwhile, Warren — remember, with a poll average of 12.8 percent — still wasn’t getting a word in edgewise.

And Roger Kimball in The Spectator:

The best comment I heard tonight came from my 11-year-old daughter. Walking into my study at one point and overhearing something Elizabeth Warren said about ‘corporations’ or ‘Medicare for All,’ she asked ‘does she know about a thing called money?’ We exchanged a meaning glance because it was clear that neither Sen. Warren nor her Democratic colleagues know the first thing about money, a prerequisite for the job of president of the United States. Which is a major reason why none of them will have that title on their resumes, and thank God for small mercies.

More Kimball:

Because the entertainment that was beamed out tonight from NBC was not a debate. It had nothing to do with debate. It was an exhibition — partly pathetic, partly amusing in a surreal sort of way — of sclerotic virtue-signaling.

At The Bulwark, Jonathan Last comments on every Democrat's performance. This is disappointing, or at least should be for Democrats: "Amy Klobuchar: Was she even there?" This, too, was disappointing because it is such as Bulwarkian comment: "John Delaney / Tim Ryan: Any chance one of these guys wants to switch up and go as a Republican running to primary Trump? Because they’d get a lot more votes that way." According to Last, last night's winners were Joe Biden, Donald Trump, and Mitch McConnell. The big loser: America.

Lastly, a headline from The Corner: "Democrats Lurch Left on Abortion, Immigration, and Health Care in First Debate." that seems to capture what happened (gleaned from the coverage I've read). This is hardly news. The party seems to be drifting leftward so it is hardly news that the party's "debate" for the party's activist and voter base. In other words, Bernie Sanders won the 2016 Democratic primary.

That said, progressives don't think the candidates are Left enough, at least on the environment. See Emily Atkin's New Republic essay, "The First Democratic Debate Failed The Planet." (Psst: a debate cannot save the planet.)

posted by Paul Tuns at 10:42 AM

 
Thank God for polls

A ComRes poll for the Sunday Telegraph finds that Conservatives like Boris Johnson and Brexit and dislike Jeremy Corbin:

Boris Johnson is more than 20 points ahead of Jeremy Hunt among grass-roots Conservatives, a new poll suggests.

A ComRes survey for The Sunday Telegraph found that 61 per cent of Tory councillors intended to vote for Mr Johnson in the party's leadership contest, compared to 39 per cent planning to back the current Foreign Secretary.

The poll also reveals an overwhelming preference for a no-deal exit from the EU if the next Conservative leader fails to secure a better deal with Brussels.

Some 83 per cent of councillors said the next Conservative leader must deliver Brexit on or before October 31, when the extended Article 50 notice period is due to expire, while 80 per cent said that if the EU refuses to make any further concessions the UK should leave without a deal.

Some 77 per cent disagreed that the next Tory leader must extend Brexit if the alternative is a no-deal exit, compared to 23 per cent who agreed. Meanwhile, 62 per cent said they would support an electoral pact between the Conservatives and Nigel Farage's Brexit Party if it was likely to keep Jeremy Corbyn out of Downing Street.

posted by Paul Tuns at 4:28 PM

 
Grade 8 student didn't know about Hitler

The Toronto Star reports on an incident involving a school's graduation display:

A Catholic elementary school has removed a quote attributed to Hitler that was part of a Grade 8 graduation picture display — after it hung in the gym for nearly two days.

Staff at Holy Rosary Catholic School were made aware of the quote — “Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened. (Adolf Hitler)” — after basketball players, who use the gym for evening games, complained ...

She said staff at the school, located near Bathurst St. and St. Clair Ave. W., spoke with the student who is “deeply apologetic,” adding, “We believe the student made an honest mistake.”

I think this is pretty innocuous. Probably shouldn't use a quote from Hitler in school displays, but the quote itself wasn't offensive or reflective of Hitler's actions or ideologies. But I find the explanation deeply problematic:

The boy had searched online for an inspirational quote and didn’t know who Hitler was, the board spokesperson said. He didn’t know Hitler’s German Nazi regime was responsible for the murder of 6 million Jews — and millions of others, including Gypsies and homosexuals — in the Second World War.

This is quite the indictment of the school.

posted by Paul Tuns at 2:10 PM

 
BoJo controversy

The Daily Telegraph reports:

Police were called to the home of Boris Johnson and his partner Carrie Symonds in the early hours of Friday morning after a neighbour heard screaming during an apparent row between the couple.

Miss Symonds was reportedly heard telling Mr Johnson to “get off me” and “get out of my flat”.

A neighbour living next door to Mr Johnson made a recording of the row before dialling 999, saying they were concerned for Miss Symonds’ safety.

Of course we don't know what really happened but I wanted to note that the neighbour was so concerned about Carrie Symonds safety that he or she made a recording of the altercation before dialing for help.

posted by Paul Tuns at 8:13 PM

 
Conservative leadership vote

Boris Johnson has 143 votes -- as much as the next three combined. Jeremy Hunt has 54 MPs supporting him, Michael Gove has 51 and Sajid Javid won the backing of 38. Rory Stewart fell off the ballot with 27 votes. Stewart lost 10 votes between the second and third ballot and 14 of Dominic Raab's 30 supporters publicly declared for BoJo. It is fair to assume that Stewart's backers will not be going to Johnson. With talks between Stewart and Gove to combine forces becoming public, it is probably fair to assume the Environment Minister will get most of the International Development Minister's backers (indeed, some of Stewart's backers probably jumped ship while he was still on the ballot) and that Gove will leapfrog Hunt to face Johnson in the vote by party members. I think Johnson will have a slightly harder time against Gove than he will Hunt.

Two quick Tweets that are wise observations, one about why Conservatives (I would add, particularly Johnson) needs Stewart and the other about why the (I think now inevitable) Gove-Johnson race is bad for the party.

Memo to Conservatives
You're getting hit on two flanks. Farage is sinking roots in Leave Land but resurgent Lib Dems are eating into what's left of your leafy Remainia@RoryStewartUK is out but you'd be wise to keep ppl like him on the front line for next battle
You'll need them

— Matthew Goodwin (@GoodwinMJ) June 19, 2019

I disagree with Adrian. I fear a Gove Vs Boris final round would be an ugly psycho-drama. Hunt or Javid in the final round would be a more collegiate affair, https://t.co/LulPyjFi0C

— Tim Montgomerie (@montie) June 19, 2019

posted by Paul Tuns at 1:47 PM

 
Ratcheting up the rhetoric

The New York Post editorializes on Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's recent comments on the US border, invoking memories of the Holocaust:

Democrats don’t like the camps but refuse to OK funds to upgrade them or to expand the immigration courts to speed up resolution of the claims — and won’t even think about updating laws that never anticipated this situation.

The only “answer” that leaves is to just wave the migrants on in — and, presumably, allow them to collect public assistance just like citizens or legal immigrants do.

If you won’t go along with that, AOC believes you’re just like Hitler.

Fascist. Concentration camp. Never Again. “I don’t use those words to just throw bombs,” the congresswoman insisted. Yet that’s exactly what she’s done.

Many on the Right want to focus on the appropriateness of comparing detention of illegal aliens to genocide, and that's a fair discussion to have. But what seems to be lost is the way in which AOC and some of her allies on the Left are trying villainize political opponents by turning a legitimate and complex policy difference into something that cannot be debated because one side is literally Nazis. This not only cheapens the historical analogy, but is fundamentally anti-democratic by placing some topics off limits in what should be a deliberative democracy.

posted by Paul Tuns at 10:05 AM

 
Conservative leadership race

I agree with the Daily Telegraph's Daniel Capurro that Sajid Javid won the debate yesterday, but disagree with his notion that Michael Gove performed poorly because he was making his pitch too directly to his fellow MPs; that's who Gove must win over immediately. Can't campaign for the votes of the membership before you make the final two, and he's in a three-way race for that privilege. BBC is reporting that Gove and Rory Stewart are talking about joining forces. Gove would probably lead the ticket with Stewart promised a plum post, although perhaps Gove shouldn't be trusted. The BBC quotes an unnamed source that Stewart wants to lead the combined forces of the two. Perhaps any deal is dependent on who finishes ahead in the next round (that would make sense). Stewart admitted on TV that they are talking although Gove sources initially denied the reports. Key sticking point in negotiations according to Stewart is how to approach Brexit negotiations. Of more than 1200 respondents of Conservative activists to the ConservativeHome poll, more than 61% want Boris Johnson as leader. That looks like a prohibitive favourite now (Gove is a distant second at just under 15%), but will look less so once he faces a single opponent in a poll.

posted by Paul Tuns at 9:54 AM

 
Tory leadership vote

A lot of the coverage says that Rory Stewart had a good result, jumping ahead of Dominic Raab, with 37 votes compared to 30 for the Member of Parliament for Esher and Walton. Stewart nearly doubled his vote among his colleagues (from 19 to 37). As ConservativeHome's Andrew Gimson noted, that's a real bandwagon. Two others gained at least 10 votes: Boris Johnson (14) and Sajid Javid (10). Michael Gove gained four MPs and Jeremy Hunt three. Those are small but real gains but the story might be that they lack momentum which could become self-fulfilling. The Daily Telegraph has good snapshots of each candidate, and it reports that bookmakers put BoJo at an 88% chance of winning the leadership -- to be decided by the Conservative Party membership after the MPs whittle the field down to two candidates -- followed by Stewart (10.3%), Hunt (6%) and Gove (3%). The bookmakers may like Stewart (10.3%) more than anyone but BoJo, but that percentage takes into account the fact Stewart has a difficult path to facing the membership vote. It seems unlikely he will jump ahead of Hunt to get on the final ballot. Most of Raab's votes -- which are hard Brexit votes -- are going to go to Johnson and it's highly unlikely any will be headed toward Stewart, who is only nine votes behind second-place Hunt, but has two others he must also jump ahead of. Indeed, it is hard to imagine Stewart picking up more votes from either Sajid Javid's suporters (33 votes) or Gove's (41), than would Hunt, who is currently at 47 votes. Stewart will have to gain four more MPs from Raab and Javid voters in the next two rounds than does Gove to remain on the ballot. I'd bet against that happening.

posted by Paul Tuns at 2:31 PM

 
Leadsom backs BoJo, and other Tory leadership news

The (London) Times has the report. No surprise here. That makes three former opponents. That is a bit of surprise and takes the wind out any Stop BoJo campaign.

Of note from the Times report:

Mr Johnson’s camp deny that he will seek to manipulate the contest by “lending” votes to Jeremy Hunt, the candidate he is said to be most confident of beating when Tory members choose between a final two selected by the parliamentary party.

Of course, Boris Johnson would say that. It might even have the virtue of being true. As strategic as it might be to face Hunt, it is also a good strategy to have as strong a victory going into membership portion of the campaign.

The second round of the Conservative MPs voting is this afternoon.

posted by Paul Tuns at 11:12 AM

 
Because Sweden and Canada are not socialist

Toby Young: "Socialism always begins with a universal vision for the brotherhood of man and ends with people having to eat their own pets." Great quote, but that describes Venezuela and Ethiopia, not Scandinavia and Canada. Ego Sweden and Sweden is not socialist. Nor is the mixed-economy, fundamentally Western European, vision of Bernie Sanders or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

posted by Paul Tuns at 3:46 PM

 
Boris Johnson promises to tackle the digital divide

Conservative leadership contender and Daily Telegraph columnist Boris Johnson uses his perch in the esteemed paper to do some politicking:

I was speaking to some Lincolnshire Conservatives the other night, and there was one thing those farmers wanted me to do to improve their lives – and they wanted it done as fast as possible. Yes, they want a good Brexit by October 31, and if I am elected, that is certainly what we will do. Yes, they want a government that will champion British farming and British food production; and as someone who partly grew up on a family farm (milked cows, dipped sheep) I am totally committed to supporting farming and rural life.

But when I mentioned another priority of mine – almost casually – those farmers smote their weatherbeaten hands together and roared their assent. They want better broadband. They are indignant at the current failure to provide it – and they are absolutely right.

A fast internet connection is not some metropolitan luxury. It is an indispensable tool of modern life. You need it for your medical prescription, for paying your car tax, for keeping up with the news and with your family and friends. It is becoming the single giant ecosystem in which all economic activity takes place. It is the place you find bargains. It is the place you find customers. It is not only the place you can find a job. It is the means by which you can be interviewed, and your talents uncovered, without incurring the cost of a rail ticket. If your area has a truly fast broadband connection, that area will be a better place to live, to invest, to set up a business; and that area will have a better chance of retaining talented young people, and allowing them to start up businesses and bring up their families.

It is therefore a disgrace that this country should suffer from a deep digital divide, so that many rural areas and towns are simply left behind. They can’t rely on teleconferencing. They can’t skype properly. Sometimes the coverage is so bad that they can’t even email properly. This is 21st century Britain – the country that helped to pioneer the very idea of the world wide web – and yet we have only seven per cent coverage of full fibre broadband.

To fully participate in modern life -- or more accurately, for the opportunity to fully participate in modern life -- people must have access to high-speed, reliable internet. The private sector has determined that it is not worth the cost to bring high-speed to rural areas at a cost that people are willing to pay. Free market purists would say that is the end of the story, and it might very well be. But if there was a public utilities case for state interference in delivering electricity and indoor plumbing to the masses outside major cities, it might be applicable to high-speed internet. It might well be in the public's interest to bring the opportunities of the internet to isolated or otherwise economically depressed areas. As parts of England -- and Canada and the United States -- reap the economic and cultural rewards of a deep and rich internet, other parts have only meager access to components of the digital world while being excluded (by technology) from the experience. That is why BoJo vows "full fibre in all the towns of Britain" by 2025:

It cannot go on like this. The government has just set a new target for the 100 per cent roll-out of full fibre broadband – by 2033! Tell that to rural Lincolnshire. As a deadline, that is laughably unambitious. If we want to unite our country and our society, we should commit now to delivering full fibre to every home in the land not in the mid 2030s – but in five years at the outside ...

It is outrageous that places such as Boston and Mansfield and Bishop Auckland and Newcastle-under-Lyme are currently being asked to wait until the mid 2030s to have a speed and richness of internet connectivity that, say, Londoners take for granted.

In some ways, BoJo is pandering. He wants to win over rural voters to his leadership bid and the Conservative Party. But in other, more important ways, he is trying to bring those back-row, left-behind, outsiders closer to the front and inside. A digital divide is a wall separating modern haves and have-nots. BoJo wants to tear down that wall and strengthen the bonds of community amongst groups that haven't felt them in a while. Also, while Esther McVey did not address internet access, this fits nicely with her Blue Collar Conservatism.

posted by Paul Tuns at 10:34 AM

 
Cowen on the Balkans

Tyler Cowen likes Marie-Janine Calic's new book The Great Cauldron: A History of Southeastern Europe and concludes his brief post thusly:

I think about the Balkans a great deal (and enjoy visiting there), if only because they are one simple alternate scenario for what the rest of world history will look like.

Cowen's eccentricism sometimes gets the better of his analytical side, and this might be one of those times.

posted by Paul Tuns at 10:14 AM

 
Conservative leadership: First round to BoJo

The Daily Telegraph reports:

Rory Stewart, who had been expected to fall short, scraped through with 19, followed by Matt Hancock on 20 and Sajid Javid on 23.

Jeremy Hunt, Mr Johnson's closest rival, appeared to fall short of expectations, securing 43 votes, whilst Michael Gove finished third with 37.

Dominic Raab, initially expected to challenge Mr Johnson as a hard Brexiteer candidate, secured 27 votes.

Commenting on the result, Mr Johnson said: "Thank you to my friends and colleagues in the Conservative and Unionist Party for your support. I am delighted to win the first ballot, but we have a long way to go."

At the next round of voting on June 18, candidates will need 33 votes to remain in the contest.

Before the vote, ConservativeHome estimated Johnson had 84 MPs backing him followed by Hunt with 37, Gove 34, and Dominic Raab with 23. Johnson exceeded expectations by quite a bit, while the others were pretty close to the estimated level of support.

It's too bad that Esther McVey, a principled and articulate conservative, finished last with nine votes, just behind Mark Harper (10) and Andrea Leadsom (11). Some of McVey's potential supporters certainly were backing Johnson and Raab on the first ballot. That might have been true for Leadsom, too. I assume that some commentators will note that the only two women in the 10-person race were eliminated on the first vote. Contra the Telegraph description Rory Stewart did not merely "scrape through" but finished well ahead of the trio at the bottom.

Henry Zeffman of The (London) Times explains what is likely to happen next, with the next round of MP balloting coming June 18:

It is probably fair to assume that Ms McVey’s nine votes will head towards Mr Johnson, although some of them might take a detour via Mr Raab. Backers of Mrs Leadsom, who received 11 votes, are likely to flow to one of those two Brexiteers too, while Mr Harper’s ten backers are fairly diverse and will move in different directions ...

The game for Mr Gove and Mr Hunt is to jostle with each other for second place in Tuesday’s ballot, while the rest will hope to catch light and surge ahead of them.

Matt Hancock, a distant sixth with 20 votes, and Sajid Javid, fifth on 23, face the dilemma of whether it is better to stay in the race and risk their supporters abandoning them for more obviously viable candidates or to pull out and endorse another candidate quickly in order to exert influence and display clout. The fear for Mr Javid and Mr Hancock is that if they stay on to the second ballot they could be embarrassed by a poor performance below the threshold of 33 votes required to advance in the process, diminishing their claim to a top cabinet job under the next prime minister ...

Rory Stewart will want to use the debate to engender public pressure on Conservative MPs to put him through.

Dominic Raab finished with 27 votes, good for fourth, but his position might be the weakest. He is in direct competition with Boris Johnson as the most stridently anti-EU leadership contender and presumptive leader for the ready-for-No-Deal-if-necessary contingent of the party. He is also economically and culturally conservative, maybe a little more so than BoJo. Johnson's better-than-expected showing probably means he has little chance to gain traction and he should probably drop out quickly and endorse the front-runner. It could prevent this from dragging on any longer than necessary and put him in the future leader's good graces. That does not mean, as James Forsyth reported in his Sun column last week, that some in the party want the MPs to just coronate Johnson if he is far ahead:

There is increasing talk among senior figures in the party that if the former Foreign Secretary comes out on top in the parliamentary rounds, it would be best to skip the members part of the contest and make him Prime Minister straight away.

The argument goes that the polling shows that Johnson is the members’ choice, and so they wouldn’t mind him being crowned.

Also, by ending the contest early, the new Prime Minister would have a chance to get cracking on Brexit.

Theresa May never faced a vote from the membership. Boris Johnson is not Theresa May. He has political skills and intelligence that allude her. But it is a good exercise for a leader to go through and the party deserves to have its say. It can only help the eventual winner and his legitimacy to face the membership for a vote.

posted by Paul Tuns at 2:29 PM

 
On the genocide label

Writing at PJ Media under the pseudonym Nathan S. Roseman, "an untenured professor working in the field of mental health and behavioral science somewhere in Canada," dissects what is wrong with using the term genocide to describe the problems facing Canadian indigenous people. The essence of the argument is:

There is no question that Canadians of First Nation, Inuit, and Métis descent — particularly those living in remote areas — continue to face many daily stressors from economic marginalization that places them at high risk for poor physical, psychological, and nutritional health. The ongoing discrimination and racism faced by many indigenous Canadians certainly contribute to these problems. Framing primarily cultural and socioeconomic issues in terms of "genocide," however, promotes the false notion that active perpetrators of organized murder are to blame, and encourages indigenous people to adopt a counterproductive and divisive victimhood narrative.

And:

As it stands, our Government’s official invitation to conspiratorial hatred and victim ideology will further impair a vulnerable community and plant the seeds of division our already polarized nation.

I recommend reading the whole article.

posted by Paul Tuns at 9:27 PM

 
Tory leadership race

There are ten official candidates for the Conservative Party leadership in the UK. Former foreign secretary Boris Johnson is the early favourite and Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt looks to be the likely ABB candidate (Any But Boris). Michael Gove desperately wants to be that candidate, and is trying to change the page from the story about sniffing cocaine to an all-out assault on Johnson. The Daily Telegraph reports:

In a further blow to Mr [Michael] Gove, Penny Mordaunt, the Defence Secretary, chose to back Jeremy Hunt instead of him, as the Foreign Secretary overtook Mr Gove as the main challenger to Mr [Boris] Johnson.

Asked whether he should now “call it a day” after three days of headlines about his cocaine snorting, Mr Gove instead taunted Mr Johnson by suggesting the former Mayor of London does not “believe in [his] heart” he is up to the job of prime minister.

Having betrayed Mr Johnson by sabotaging his 2016 leadership run, Mr Gove mocked him by saying: “Whatever you do, don’t pull out - I know you have before.”

That is not only a reference to Johnson's abandoned 2016 leadership bid, but his extra-marital affairs (although the Environment Minister denies that was what he was alluding to). Gosh, British politics is fun. Relatedly, there was an accidental use of the c-word on TV in relation to the Tory leadership race, thanks to Victoria Derbyshire.

I'm terribly torn between wanting Boris Johnson to win and wanting to see Michael Gove lose. Fortunately these are not mutually exclusive, but if I had to chose, I would probably abandon my two-decade wish to see BoJo become PM to stop Gove from becoming leader and Prime Minister.

Also high on my list of what I want/don't want, is keeping Sarah Vine out of 10 Downing. Again, thankfully none of this is mutually exclusive.

Telegraph columnist Andrew Mitchell says there are only four real contenders: Johnson, Hunt, Gove, and Dominic Raab. The brilliant and principled Tory Ian Duncan Smith has endorsed BoJo. IDS says that the Tories risk the sort of repudiation that the Kim Campbell-led Canadian Progressive Conservative Party faced in 1993 if they do not deliver on Brexit. IDS writes:

We have to leave the EU by October 31 or I fear the British people will finally leave us, once and for all.

That is why I have decided to vote for Boris Johnson in the Conservative Party leadership election. I believe of all the candidates he is the most likely to deliver on the requirement to leave the EU by October 31. He has grasped that imperative. While there are other good candidates standing, too many speak of how damaging this would be. How, I wonder, will the EU take their discussions seriously if they see frightened negotiators from the UK sitting in front of them?

posted by Paul Tuns at 12:15 AM

 
Donald Trump's view of exchange

Donald Boudreaux at AIER.org on President Donald Trump's view of international trade, and the market:

Trump has pontificated on trade for decades, and every word out of his mouth clearly reveals a man who knows nothing about the economics of trade and who is as clichéd an economic nationalist as can be imagined.

Behold this line from a 1990 interview he did in Playboy: “The Japanese double-screw the US, a real trick: First they take all our money with their consumer goods, then they put it back in buying all of Manhattan. So either way, we lose.”

Let’s examine this unalloyed gem of economic witlessness.

Overlooking Trump’s outrageous exaggerations, such as his claim that the Japanese buy up “all” of Manhattan, we start by stating an obvious truth: the voluntary purchase of a good is not a transaction in which the buyer is “screwed” or has his or her money “taken.” Instead, the buyer’s money is voluntarily spent. While every person of good sense sees a foreign seller who makes attractive offers to domestic buyers as someone who improves the well-being of each buyer who accepts the offer, Trump sees this seller as a con artist or thief.

Perhaps because that's how he behaved as a seller.

posted by Paul Tuns at 8:43 PM

 
Ownership

Fox News reported a few days back:

NBA teams reportedly have had multiple conversations over the last year about moving away from the term “owner” when describing the person who controls the majority of the franchise.

The conversations over whether to do away with the term “owner” center around the racial connotations in a league where the majority of the players are black, TMZ Sports reported Monday.

Talks gained more traction when several athletes and celebrities discussed the connotation of the word “owner” on an episode of HBO’s “The Shop” in September, according to TMZ Sports.

“The fact that they still call people with those teams owners, when does that change?” comedian Jon Stewart asked in the episode.

While Snoop Dogg insisted he wanted to be called an owner if he owns his own team, product or brand, Stewart responded: “When your product is purely the labor of people then owner sounds like something that is of a feudal nature.”

Good grief. They team owners do not own the players, they own the team. The players play for that team. They are not owned by it. FFS.

Also, it's sad that comedians are so influential in driving the national discussion on issues.

posted by Paul Tuns at 10:16 AM

 
Global cities are not becoming the same

Contra Megan McArdle ("London is now New York, with better scones"), Tyler Cowen says, "I don’t find all global cities increasingly the same." Cowen notes:

Even central London and central Manhattan have fundamental differences, and that is without bringing Harlem or East Harlem into it. I almost always feel pleasant and relaxed walking around London. In central Manhattan, I often feel a bit stressed. I go to Manhattan to hear jazz, to visit contemporary art galleries, to soak up the energy of the streets. When I am in London (less frequently), I visit well-stocked bookshops, eat Indian food, and absorb a very different vision of government and politics.

To be blunt, if the two cities are so similar, why do I much prefer spending time in London?

And:

Among the more populous cities I have visited are Lagos, Tokyo, Mexico City, Delhi, Sao Paulo, Shanghai and Cairo. I can find very real similarities among their gyms, coffee shops, hotels and smart phones used by the locals. Still, it is hard to argue they are converging on some common set of experiences or cultural memes.

Read Cowen's full Bloomberg column.

posted by Paul Tuns at 11:09 PM

 
Generation gap in American politics

New York Times columnist David Brooks notes:

For much of the 20th century, young and old people voted pretty similarly. The defining gaps in our recent politics have been the gender gap (women preferring Democrats) and the education gap. But now the generation gap is back, with a vengeance.

This is most immediately evident in the way Democrats are sorting themselves in their early primary preferences. A Democratic voter’s race, sex or education level doesn’t predict which candidate he or she is leaning toward, but age does.

In one early New Hampshire poll, Joe Biden won 39 percent of the vote of those over 55, but just 22 percent of those under 35, trailing Bernie Sanders. Similarly, in an early Iowa poll, Biden won 41 percent of the oldster vote, but just 17 percent of the young adult vote, placing third, behind Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.

Notice that young Democrat voters are not backing Peter Paul Montgomery Buttigieg or Robert "Beto" O'Rourke or Corey Booker. They are supporting Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden, and Elizabeth Warren. The average age of the three favourites among younger Democrats is 74. Both ideology and strategy are driving this divergence, but more of the former. Polls show that older Democrats want someone who can beat Donald Trump while younger Democrats want, in Brooks' words, "a more progressive candidate who they think can bring systemic change."

This generational divide is even worse for Republicans. Putting aside turnout rates amongst younger voters -- Justin Trudeau in Canada showed that if you give them a reason to come out, they may not vote at the same rate as seniors but their turnout increases -- the numbers show millennials favour Democrats. As Brooks writes, "The generation gap is even more powerful when it comes to Republicans. To put it bluntly, young adults hate them." In 2018, 67% of those under 30s voted for Democrats for the House of Representatives and polling shows that nearly six in ten millennials identify of lean Democrat; fewer than one in three identify or lean Republican. Ideology explains why. 57% of millennials call themselves liberal or mostly liberal while only 12 of them identify as consistently or mostly conservative. Gen Z (those under 23) are even more liberal.

These ideological leanings could change over time, but my guess is that the parties will change to chase these voters: the Democrats and Republicans both moving leftward and/or emphasizing/de-emphasizing certain issues. That might work, it might not. Younger people tend to be more liberal generally and then they grow up (become employed and pay taxes, have kids, take on a mortgage and the responsibilities of car ownership). The Peter Pan Generation might change that, though. More importantly, the slight skew toward the Left is now a hard skew toward progressive politics and politics is not just something voters dabble in as much as becomes part of their identity. It might all be too much to overcome over time.

posted by Paul Tuns at 11:16 AM

 
NYT: the future of bookstore is Indigo. The market: wait a minute

On May 1, the New York Times ran a story, "How a Canadian Chain Is Reinventing Book Selling: Indigo is expanding to the United States with its new model for how a big bookstore chain can thrive in the era of online retail." Replicating the fawning style of Canada's media when covering Heather Reisman and her "book" chain, the Times reports on a conversation between Reisman and Canadian literary icon Margaret Atwood that led to the development of "reading socks," which opened the door to more non-book products for the bookstore chain to sell:

Over the last few years, Indigo has designed dozens of other products, including beach mats, scented candles, inspirational wall art, Mason jars, crystal pillars, bento lunchboxes, herb growing kits, copper cheese knife sets, stemless champagne flutes, throw pillows and scarves.

Indigo is positioning itself as a “cultural department store” where customers who wander in to browse through books can make impulse purchases of cashmere slippers or crystal facial rollers.

It may seem strange for a bookstore chain to be developing and selling artisanal soup bowls and organic cotton baby onesies. But Indigo’s approach seems not only novel but crucial to its success and longevity. The superstore concept, with hulking retail spaces stocking 100,000 titles, has become increasingly hard to sustain in the era of online retail, when it’s impossible to match Amazon’s vast selection.

Indigo is experimenting with a new model, positioning itself as a “cultural department store” where customers who wander in to browse through books often end up lingering as they impulsively shop for cashmere slippers and crystal facial rollers, or a knife set to go with a new Paleo cookbook.

Today the Canadian Press reports: "After general merchandise sales 'hit a wall,' Indigo decides to change its creative direction." CP reports on the conference call Reisman had with reporters and analysts following the companies annual financial report:

Partly due to the lack of recent growth, Indigo decided to change its creative direction and take a fresh look at how it approaches the category, she said.

“There’s a real need for newness on a continuing basis and that’s our job,” she said, adding the company wants to put its efforts this financial year into the overall evolution of its general merchandise and lifestyle products ...

She noted the future of the business does not lie in returning to books, which remain the base, but in making sure the general merchandise category is strong and growing. Once that’s established, she said, the company will return to look at its U.S. strategy.

Indigo opened its first American store this past financial year in New Jersey.

“It’s going to do okay,” she said. “It’s not knocking it out of the park.”

Reading socks aren't going to save the bricks and mortar bookstore. The Times got duped by Indigo's optimistic press releases about how wonderful they are doing and strong they are positioned for the future, ignoring the harsh, cold financial reports.

 
The creepy spectacle of government's anti-Big Tech crusade

Terrence Corcoran in the Financial Post on the granstanding committee of parliamentarians haranguing Big Tech:

Rapid technological change and the rise of the Internet have created scores of serious and unresolved legal and political issues. There are matters of privacy, freedom of expression, terror risks, national and international governance, corporate and government conflicts, and copyright issues, to name a few.

Into this complex world comes something called the International Grand Committee on Big Data, Privacy and Democracy, a band of pompous Canadian and international politicians who, in Ottawa Tuesday, delivered absurd demagogic harangues as they bullied and insulted junior executives of the main players in the tech revolution, namely Facebook, Google and Twitter.

The “grand” in the committee’s overblown title apparently stands for grandstanding. Through most of the hearings, the politicians who are members of the committee — culled from more than a dozen countries from Singapore to the United Kingdom to Mexico — ritually engaged in self-aggrandizing and condescending putdowns of the unfortunates who appeared before them.

The most obnoxious performers were the Canadians.

No wonder Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg declined their invitations to show up. The only reason they were invited was to subject them to verbal abuse and cheap political interrogations aimed at their humiliation. The lower-level executives who did show up — particularly Facebook’s directors of public policy Neil Potts and Kevin Chan — acquitted themselves admirably through the constant sneers, putdowns and interruptions.

At the end of the afternoon session, the chair of the hearing, Conservative MP Bob Zimmer from B.C., called out “shame” over Zuckerberg’s failure to appear. One politician (it was unclear who) called it “abhorrent.” Zimmer, apparently doing a Trump imitation, said that “As soon as they step foot — either Mr. Zuckerberg or Ms. Sandberg — into our country, they will be served (with a summons) and expected to appear before our committee.”

Former Stephen Harper policy adviser Rachel Curran is right in her tweet-sized take:

This might be the most ignorant take yet. Social media is no threat to democracy, but it is a threat to elite control of channels of communication and organization. These "experts" are actually objecting to the results of the exercise of democratic rights. https://t.co/5PdVb2LaX1

— Rachel Curran (@reicurran) May 28, 2019

Social media is a threat to elite rule and opinion is more on the mark than social media is a threat to democracy. The clerisy is upset it is being challenged.

What I found so disturbing was Big Tech's willingness to cooperate (Zuckerberg and Sandberg's no-show notwithstanding) with government in suppressing online content. Efforts to prevent foreign agents from influencing domestic elections are welcome, but parody and mocking stories and memes should be beyond what politicians try to censure. Politicians don't like being made fun of, but too bad. Having private corporations work with governments to determine what should and not be shown and shared is creepy, collusion, and dystopian.

posted by Paul Tuns at 1:22 PM

 
Rick McGinnis on the end of The Game of Thrones

Rick McGinnis in the forthcoming (June) edition of The Interim on the end of The Game of Thrones series and about Daenerys:

The councilor recalls how the heroine had been cheered when she had slaughtered people considered evil – slavers and slave owners, the leaders and soldiers of the armies that opposed her. “Everywhere she goes, evil men die and we cheer her for it,” he says. Sure he’s talking about the heroine’s allies in the show, but also about the audience that had, for seven and a half seasons, longed for the heroine to triumph over her enemies in just this way.

The most depressing thing I read in the final weeks of Game of Thrones was how parents had named their daughters after the character, and were suddenly defensive about that choice when the heroine turned tyrant. Even U.S. senator and Democratic presidential hopeful Elizabeth Warren was forced to publicly backtrack on her public expression of fandom for the character: “Oh, I am so blue about Daenerys,” said Warren at a campaign stop in New Hampshire. “You know, what can I say?”

“She grows more powerful and more sure that she is good and right,” the councilor tells the hero. “She believes her destiny is to build a better world – for everyone. If you believed that, if you truly believed that, wouldn’t you kill whoever stood between you and paradise?”

The article is worth reading even if, like myself, you did not watch the series.

posted by Paul Tuns at 10:14 AM

 
India's election: the decline of the House of Gandhi and the Congress Party

Just a few months ago, Indian businessmen were telling me that Congress was likely to win. It wasn't even close. The Guardian: "Rahul Gandhi loses his seat in Congress party landslide defeat." Three different members of Gandhi's family have represented Amethi, although the Congress leader won in Wayanad in Kerala (because party leaders do in India what Canadian party leaders did in the 19th century, namely run in more than one riding to ensure they would be elected), so he will be returning to the Lok Sabha. While Congress marginally improved upon its 2014 showing -- gaining eight seats, for a total of 52 compared to 303 for the ruling BJP -- Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata made breakthroughs in numerous regions across the country and has, as The Guardian notes, "superseded [Congress] as India’s only national political force."

posted by Paul Tuns at 1:01 AM

 
Every new detail makes this story better

The New York Post reports:

A bungling felon from Washington state made a series of blunders when he shot himself in the testicles and tried to hide the weapon — all while storing drugs in his anus, a report said Wednesday.

Click on the story and read. It gets progressively better.

posted by Paul Tuns at 9:36 PM

 
More 'too white.' And 'too male' (of course)

The Guardian: "Museum art collections are very male and very white." By "very" the headline-writer means "too." The subhead basically explains the article: "A large-scale study found just 12% of the artists in US museums were women – and figures from the UK tell a similar tale." Permanent collections should reflect the best artistic endeavours in history, which until recently was a field dominated by men. It also reflects what was collected, and in the West that was the work of white men. (It should also be noted that Europeans and east Asians collected in a way that most of the rest of the world did not, at least until recently.) This will change over time as more women enter the field and their artistic contributions are appreciated. Even though more women and blacks have been making great art in the last (say) century, it will take time to overcome the disadvantage of the head-start men had, which the author (grudgingly) admits:

Just 15% of the artists in the Tate’s permanent collection were women when they shared this data in 2014. To be generous to the Tate, things have improved. Looking at the year of the artist’s birth, a slow change appears in the collection.

There's a nifty chart to show the growth of women artists curated at the Tate. It definitely shows a move toward greater equality (with women representing the majority of new artists added).

The great museums are not snapshots in time but the accretion of the best a culture has to offer. It will take time to make their collections more representative, although one can question whether it need be. Great art should not speak to black women or Japanese men or whatever. It should speak to humanity. Presumably, men and women of any colour are capable of creating such pieces. But it is the beauty and profoundness of any work, not the biological details of the creator, that should matter.

posted by Paul Tuns at 10:38 AM

 
'Too white'

Steve Sailer notes that the BBC asks, "Are Our Weddings Too White?" and observes:

You could write a computer program to generate these headlines: just take a noun that has positive connotations and then add “too white?” at the end.

Is recycling too white?

Is being concerned about climate change too white?

posted by Paul Tuns at 10:12 AM

 
The revolt against liberalism

Three from the New York Times, although the reporters at the paper spin it as a rise of worrying far-right politics rather than the revolt against global liberalism:

"Prime Minister Scott Morrison Seizes a Stunning Win."

"European Elections Will Gauge the Power of Populism."

"India’s Narendra Modi Appears Headed for Re-election, Exit Polls Show."

That's news stories from one day from Australia, Europe, and India.

And let's add one from CNN for good measure:

"The rising wave of abortion restrictions in America."

posted by Paul Tuns at 8:03 AM

 
The market is lovely and loving

Jeffrey Tucker writes about his new book The Market Loves You; Why You Should Love It Back. Tucker is essentially making the argument that I do about free market economics: it is another name for cooperation. Tucker writes at American Institute for Economic Research:

Every unforced decision to trade represents a spark of insight, a hope for a better future, and the instantiation of a human relationship that affirms the dignity of everyone involved. Sometimes that relationship is personal; it is even more awesome to consider the enormously complex impersonal relationships that make up the vast global networks of exchange that make our lives wonderful.

We take the results for granted because they are so much part of our daily experience. If they suddenly went missing, any aspect of what we depend on to live a better life, we would experience demoralization and even devastation. The lights go out. The gas stations close. The shelves are empty. The doctors run out of medicine. There is no one to fix the plumbing, no one to repair the heater, no one to do the surgery on my heart. This is a world that is less lovely than the world of plenty we’ve come to expect ...

Economics is about human life. Exchange is about forming human relationships and connections, so that everyone benefits. Social order is an extension of these relationships.

The more complex these connections are, the greater the chance for wealth creation, reparation of social and personal problems, and the realization of the good life. To love and feel loved – there are so many layers to what that means, so much more than the common use of the term denotes – is at the foundation of what we call the good life.

The institutional setting in which human relationships become real in our lives is the market. This does not entail reducing human life to dollars and cents. It is about the recognition that our value as human beings is bound up with our associations with others, our trading relationships, and the opportunities we have to value and be valued by others.

Looked at this way, the moral aesthetic of the market is lovely. It fosters love. It needs love.

The free market is cooperative and beautiful and lovely. And loving.

posted by Paul Tuns at 9:16 PM

 
Front-runner Boris Johnson faces uphill battle for Conservative leadershp

The Sunday Times reports that Boris Johnson is the "clear favourite" of more than 850 party members* YouGov surveyed for the paper, being the first choice of 39%, followed by Dominic Raab who has 13%. Johnson is the second choice of 15%, Raab the second choice of 21%. Michael Gove and Sajid Javid are both at 9% and Jeremy Hunt has 8%. Gove is the third most popular second choice with 14%. The newly appointed Defense Minister Penny Mordaunt, the most recent media darling, is the first choice of 5% and second choice of 7%. In head-to-head competition between Johnson and Raab, BoJo leads 59%-41%. BoJo probably would not unite the party. About one in six respondents placed Johnson last among the nine (potential) candidates polled and The Times reports that he is the first choice of half of Leave supporters within the party but only one in ten Tory Remainers. But Johnson is also given the highest ratings in all five leadership qualities polled (likeable personality, win an election, up to the job, strong leader, and competent). Javid, Raab, and Gove are together in the next tier for all five qualities. Boris Johnson is easily the best candidate to lead the Conservative Party.

It's a little odd that Amber Rudd, Damian Green, and Nicky Morgan, leaders of the 60 MP-strong Remainer One Nation Caucus, were not included among the nine candidates in the Times poll. It should also be remembered that the leadership field will be narrowed to two candidates by the Conservative caucus before the membership gets its say. Johnson might face an uphill battle winning the support of his colleagues. The Daily Telegraph reports that the One Nation Caucus is trying to prevent a hard-line Brexiteer like Johnson, Raab, or Jacob Rees-Mogg (also not included amongst the nine) from winning the leadership by drawing moderate, liberal, and Remain Tories behind a declaration of values that includes prioritizing climate change and rejecting a "Nigel Farage no-deal Brexit." If the 60-member caucus, that includes eight former cabinet ministers, stays united, it makes it a little more difficult for Boris Johnson or Dominic Raab from being one of the finalists.

It's way to early to make predictions. The European Parliament elections (in which the Conservatives are polling fifth right now, although the EP elections are a good way for voters to express dissatisfaction with the Tories) will change the political landscape, as will dozens of other events between now and Theresa May's exit. But Johnson is both a strong candidate and someone who faces an uphill battle.

* There are between 100,000 and 150,000 party members. The Times poll tacks pretty closely to the most recent ConservativeHome "panel" of 1700 party members.

posted by Paul Tuns at 10:24 PM

 
Cowen on Ronald Sullivan firing

You are probably aware of the story of Ronald Sullivan, the Harvard lawyer and faculty dean at the school's Winthrop House that was was dropped from the latter position following protests that he is part of Hollywood sexual predator Harvey Weinstein’s legal team. As Vox noted, "A college dorm getting a new top administrator managed to touch on practically every hot-button issue in the world." Seldom do administrative decisions at universities make much news, although admittedly Harvard is different. Riffing off the Vox piece, Tyler Cowen has some tempered comments on the controversy:

Let’s say I hired a TA for my Econ 101 class, and then I learned that TA would be defending Edward Snowden in his or her spare time. Probably I would ask for another TA! And that has nothing to do with my view of Snowden, one way or the other, or whether my students have rational views of Snowden or not (I genuinely do not know if they do).

With the Sullivan/Weinstein episode, it is not difficult to imagine the media becoming “too interested” in Winthrop House and Sullivan’s role, for media-prurient reasons, and to the detriment of student focus. It is not crazy for Harvard to choke this off before it gets started, with no animus required toward Sullivan or any particular defendant ...

Overall, I don’t think this is the right cause for free speech advocates, opponents of PC in universities, etc. It seems to me like a private institution making an entirely defensible governance decision, on a matter which does quite genuinely fall under its governance purview.

Cowen also says the college snowflakes might be complainers but that does not mean that all his complaints are wrong. It might feel wrong (to some) to cave into the demands of the perpetually aggrieved but that doesn't mean all their grievances are wrong or that there might not be other reasons (see Cowen's comments above) that make accommodating the complaints reasonable. I can't say I'm happy about Harvard's decision, but it might not be as cowardly as it seems at first glance.

posted by Paul Tuns at 9:41 AM

 
Brilliant

Babylon Bee, which some call the Christian Onion: "Man Identifies As Woman Just Long Enough To Voice Valid Opinion On Abortion." I wonder if it would work in real life.

posted by Paul Tuns at 10:08 PM

 
Gender ideology and life and death -- but not in the way the ideologues would have you believe

PJ Media's Tyler O'Neil: "Baby Died Because the Mother's Medical Records Listed Her as Male." O'Neil reports:

This week, The New England Journal of Medicine published a bizarre story. A "transgender man" entered a hospital with severe abdominal pains. Because she was identified as a man, the doctors naturally did not think to treat her for labor and delivery, so she tragically lost the baby. Rather than emphasizing the danger of placing gender identity over biological sex, both the journal and The Washington Post made the absurd claim that the hospital should not have ruled out pregnancy for a man.

There are more details and links in O'Neil's article, including the case against recognizing transgender self-identity. The article also critiques the ideologically tainted coverage in the Post and NEJM, concluding:

The tragedy in this case is not "those bigoted doctors and nurses" but the prevailing fiction that this woman is "really a man." Had the medical records not listed her as male, her baby might be alive today.

posted by Paul Tuns at 10:55 PM

 
Liberals and the right of women to make their own health decisions

The Liberal Party of Canada sent a fundraising email out today that focuses on abortion and it implies there is a scary faction of pro-life politicians noting that 12 Tory MPs attended last week's National March for Life in Ottawa. A dozen MPs who provided some encouraging word to a few thousand pro-lifers on The Hill. Frightening indeed.

The Liberal email includes this line: "Liberals know that women in Canada have the right to make their own health decisions." I guess that means the Liberals will begin fighting for the right for Canadian women to purchase their private health care. I look forward to it. There is, of course, a certain irony to my sardonic observation. Abortion is one of the few procedures that Canadian women have been able to purchase out-of-pocket (in some provinces). I can only hope that the Justin Trudeau government would amend the Canada Health Act to make it easier for Canadian women to access health care in the free market and direct its Ministry of Health to get out of the way of provinces that permit one of half of the population to exercise their right to make their own health decisions outside the taxpayer-funded public system.

I also assume this means Liberals are open to women assessing their own risk levels when deciding whether or not they should wear a seat belt or light up a cigarette. After all, these are health decisions, too.

posted by Paul Tuns at 2:00 PM

 
Trickle-down socialism

The Daily Mail: "Cuban government announces it will ration food and everyday goods amid 'grave economic crisis'after Venezuela was forced to cut its aid to the communist-run island." Although Havana blames Washington's sanctions against the island prison state, Commerce Minister Betsy Díaz Velázquez announced that lower-than-expected production of eggs and pork is part of the reason there are food shortages. Typically, Caracas makes up for the predictable Cuban shortfalls, but the petro-state's petro isn't selling and Venezuela has its own problems right now.

posted by Paul Tuns at 1:37 AM

 
The separation of school and home

Bethany Mandel writes in the New York Post:

This is why, ever since winter break, [the author's friend] Mary has decided to ignore the school notifications about upcoming bake sales or gifts she’s supposed to have her kids make for their teachers. She deletes the multiple emails sent to parents about “volunteering” to staff and cater the spring social. She will now do two things during the day with her kids: drop them off at school in the morning and either pick them up or arrange for someone else to do it.

It’s not that she doesn’t care about her kids or their education, but she has reevaluated how she spends her time. Where once she would multi-task during dinner fashioning a costume, making crafts or baking for a sale, she now simply spends that time focused on herself and her kids. She realized that all the expectations set by her kids’ school weren’t actually part of her kids’ education but just busy work given to parents by teachers and administrators.

“I’m an involved parent who would like to give my kid a sphere of independence from me,” Mary said. “School would be an ideal place for that, but the school sets the expectation that parents should be buzzing around doing things there far too often.”

Of course, it's not possible to completely separate school and home, but there must be limits. Homework should not intrude unnecessarily on family time and non-school activities. It is imperious of school to assign homework and make demands of parents. Other than studying, projects and unfinished class work, assigned homework represents the teacher's assault on the family saying that his or her work takes precedence over what parents think children should be doing. If the time outside school is fair game for teachers to encroach upon families, families should have the home number and address of teachers to reciprocate the blurring of the distinction between school and home. Parents should be able to drop kids off for dinner at teachers while the parents complete the various assignments the teachers have given to mothers and fathers (many of which have nothing to do with schoolwork). I think the proper reaction to schools that make these impositions on parents to tell teachers and administrators to go away. Or give us home numbers and addresses so we can invade your time, too.

posted by Paul Tuns at 12:22 PM

 
Doesn't fit the narrative

The New York Post reported that women make up nearly half of Donald Trump's individual contributors:

More than 45 percent of the itemized individual contributions to Trump’s campaign for the first three months of the year came from women, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan research group that tracks money in US contests.

Woman accounted for nearly $1.5 million in Trump contributions. The president collected almost $1.8 million from male donors, bringing the total to more than $3.2 million.

posted by Paul Tuns at 10:12 AM

 
Sluggish demand for non-subsidized electric cars

The (London) Times reports:

Sales of cars powered solely by battery were more than twice as high in France and Germany, adding to concerns over “sluggish” demand in the UK and questions over how the government will reach its targets for phasing out new petrol and diesel cars.

Norway sold three times as many electric cars as Britain while the Netherlands had sales that were 70 per cent higher, even though both countries have much smaller populations.

A report by the European Automobile Manufacturers Association (EAMA) also showed that the rise in sales recorded in the UK last year was smaller than for any European country apart from Switzerland. The increase — 13.8 per cent year on year — was about a quarter of the European average.

Last autumn the government made the controversial decision to cut the grant for buyers of new ecofriendly cars, making them more expensive. The grant for pure electric cars was reduced from £4,500 to £3,500 and incentives for plug-in hybrids, which run on a combination of battery power and combustion engines, were abolished.

Electric cars cost up to £10,000 more than their petrol or diesel equivalents and the government has acknowledged that the gulf in price is unlikely to close until the mid-2020s at the earliest.

This apparently follows a familiar pattern. Last summer, after the Ford government nixed the generous $14,000 subsidy for EVs, the CBC reported:

David Adams, president of the Global Automakers of Canada industry association, said Friday that experience elsewhere shows that sales of electric vehicles take a hit when subsidies are removed, such as when British Columbia stopped and then restarted its program.

"When they cancelled it, sales went down dramatically, and then when they reinstated it sales went back up again. That is the same pattern that we've seen in other jurisdictions internationally," he said.

Customers generally look for some kind of assistance in overcoming the extra cost of electric vehicles, Adams said.

And EVs are not a particularly efficient way of reducing greenhouse gasses. As the Fraser Institute's Kenneth Green recently wrote:

But a study for the Montreal Economic Institute pegged the cost of emission reductions from electric vehicles at an estimated $523 per tonne of averted GHGs in Toronto and $288 per tonne in Quebec — an absurdly large number, when carbon offsets in North America were selling for about $18 per tonne.

Here's the MEI study Green references.

Bribing consumers to buy a car they will not buy without the government subsidy is a bad idea. A correctly priced carbon tax would lead consumers to make these decisions without the "rebate" governments give typically high-income customers to buy electric vehicles. If gas prices were high enough, the calculus would be in favour of spurring EV purchases. But no government wants to tax carbon at the level that would actually significantly change behaviour. The fact that EVs are not a cost-effective way to reduce GHGs makes EV subsidies pure policy madness. But most importantly, the fact that virtue-signally "green" car buyers are not really interested in purchasing such cars without a government handout betrays their rhetoric about the need for everyone to make sacrifices to save the planet.

posted by Paul Tuns at 12:57 PM

 
Tariffs are self-destructive

Pierre Lemieux at EconLog:

For more than two centuries, economists have shown that protectionism hurts most of the residents of the country that is supposedly “protected,” irrespective of whether the governments of other countries do the same to their subjects or not. Joan Robinson, the famous Cambridge economist, suggested that retaliation is as sensible as it would be “to dump rocks into our harbors because other nations have rocky coasts.”

In the short-term, trade wars produce only losers. There is little evidence it produces the desired results over time. Regardless, President Donald Trump cannot declare any sort of victory at this point, and promises only to produce more American losers (consumers) with his chest-beating.

George Will's most recent column is also about the Trump administration's protectionist fetishes. Will points out the costs of the benefits of the trade war fought with tariffs:

A report from the Trade Partnership, a free-trade advocacy group, estimates that tariffs would increase jobs in the U.S. vehicle and parts sectors by 92,000 — but that for each of those jobs, three jobs would be lost elsewhere in the economy. And about $6,400 would be added to the price of an inexpensive ($30,000) car.

The economy does not exist to make entrepreneurs rich or to give people work. These are nice benefits of the economy, but not the reason it exists. An economy exists to meet the needs and wants of people by offering goods and services at the best prices. Not only do tariffs seldom work efficiently in achieving the usual stated goal of protecting jobs, they always -- always -- add to the price that domestic consumers pay for foreign goods and services. The Chinese don't pay tariffs; American consumers pay them on Chinese products. That's dumb. As dumb as dumping rocks into our harbours because other nations have rocky coasts.

posted by Paul Tuns at 7:24 PM

 
'Lesser of two evils' looks a lot like just supporting your (winning) team

Nancy French, wife of David French, writes about The Religious Right in the public square in the Age of Trump in the Washington Post:

Although Christians claimed that voting for Trump did not entail endorsing his panoply of bad character traits, that’s exactly what happened. Turns out, people don’t want to support the “lesser of two evils.” Instead, they want to support a winner. Consequently, evangelicals began to rationalize behavior that they would have vociferously condemned in a Democratic president.

I'm not entirely sure this is just about supporting a winner, as much as it is tribal loyalty.

posted by Paul Tuns at 11:24 PM

 
Vox imitates Salon

Vox: "Ranking celebrity chef cookbooks ... by how many animals their recipes kill." I found this helpful, but probably not for the reasons the author thinks so.

posted by Paul Tuns at 9:43 PM

 
Canada's pot experiment: legalize it, more people will use it

CBC: "First-time cannabis use up after legalization, StatsCan reports." The CBC reports on the StatsCan report on marijuana:

About 18 per cent of Canadians aged 15 and older, or about 5.3 million people, reported pot use in the last three months, the federal agency said in its quarterly report on Thursday.

Early indications point to more use right after it was legalized last October, when the reported use stood at 14 per cent.

"One of the things … unique with this survey is the number of respondents who said they're using for the first time. So they started, in this case, in the post-legalization period," said Michelle Rotermann, a senior analyst in Statistics Canada's health analysis division.

In the first three months of 2018, about 330,000 Canadians said they'd tried cannabis for the first time. A year later, it was up to 650,000, she said.

If you decrease the cost of something -- and cost can include the social costs of stigma or criminal sanction -- you usually find a greater demand. Advocates of legalizing pot argue their position is just a matter of ensuring users do not have a criminal record. But making it easier to consume weed will inevitably lead to more people using the stuff. Is that okay? Perhaps that's a tradeoff worth making: fewer people having criminal records so they can travel freely or get a job easier, but also more people using a drug, that as J.J. McCullough has pointed out, "is a personal health hazard, a public nuisance and a habit-forming depressant that routinely hurts families, friendships, careers and other important relationships." And, to make it crystal clear, there are now more people susceptible to these harms because marijuana is legal. Maybe we as a country are okay with that. But we should be honest about it.

posted by Paul Tuns at 12:10 PM

 
"50 years of abortion in Canada"

That's the headline on my cover story for the May edition of The Interim, and the subhead is: "The Day of Infamy and Canada’s enduring shame." The first half looks at how the abortion law was liberalized under Lester Pearson/Pierre Trudeau and concludes with Justin Trudeau's celebration of abortion as a great Canadian accomplishment. The excerpt below focuses on the enduring shame: the social, political, and economic costs of abortion:

In the 50 years since abortion was decriminalized, approximately four million preborn babies have been killed by abortion, a number equivalent to the population of the fourth most populous province, Alberta. About 100,000 preborn children are killed annually by surgical and chemical abortions. That’s equivalent to the loss of a city the size of Moncton, Milton, or Red Deer each and every year.

The pro-life movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s said that if children could be killed by abortion at the beginning of life’s journey, it would not be long until euthanasia became legal as a solution to problems at the other end of life. Euthanasia became legal in Canada in 2016. Meanwhile, schools are being shuttered in parts of the country, especially Atlantic Canada and in rural communities, where depopulation has begun. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, an average of 24 Ontario schools closed each year, but by the early 2000s that number grew to 52 schools annually. Considering abortion was legalized in 1969 and came to be used as a form of backup birth control by the 1980s, it is not difficult to link cause and effect with the accelerating school closures.

There is a growing literature that women’s physical and psychological health are negatively affected by abortion, a phenomenon given living witness to in the personal stories of the mothers who are Silent No More. Getting figures for the financial cost of abortion is difficult – in 1995, the Library of Parliament Research Branch said determining the cost of abortion is a “complex and inexact process” – but pro-abortion and pro-life groups seem to agree that procuring an abortion costs the system about $1,000 a piece. At 100,000 abortions annually, we’re talking about an approximately $100 million annual price tag for abortions before taking into account dealing with immediate side-effects such as infections or long-term consequences such as fertility problems or mental health issues.

Abortion is also impacting public finance. With declining birth rates (which are also affected by birth control and other lifestyle choices), there are fewer workers per retiree and fewer taxpayers to cover the costs of Canada’s socialized health care system. In recent years, Canada has more people joining the ranks of seniors over 65 than are being born, creating a population pattern that most demographers do not consider sustainable.

For five decades abortion has seemed to corrupt our politics and our culture. Often the pro-life view is censored, from universities disallowing pro-life student groups or speakers, to provincially enacted bubble zone laws. Abortion often seems the third rail of politics, with media gatekeepers, party leaders, and senior staff colluding to prevent discussion of pro-life and even punishing those few politicians willing to raise the issue. It is generally assumed that no pro-life politician can be elected party leader or premier/prime minister even while socially conservative candidates continue to win leadership races.

Please do read the full article.

posted by Paul Tuns at 1:26 AM