Deinonychus antirrhopus: terrible claw

Monday, December 30, 2002

 
The Democrats: Are they Bankrupt of Ideas? With Eric Alterman joining the ranks of lefties who think there is something terribly inconsistent and/or its only about the oil I have to wonder if the Left and Liberals are just plain unsure of what sorts of ideas to put forward. After all Alterman is a "real journalist" who happens to run a web blog, not like most bloggers who are not journalists and just want a place to inflict their political twaddle on the world. Still Alterman has joined the growing ranks of those on the left who just don't seem to be able to formulate a cogent alternative to the Republicans/Conservative. The only think I see coming from the Left right now is race baiting and accusations of Anti-Semitism (for an example of this see Joshua Marshall's blog). I'd be shocked if a day went by where Marshall (another real journalist who happens to run a web log) didn't make some sort of reference to racism, bigotry or anti-semitism coming from the Right. (Note: I just checked and his posts on 12/27/02, 12/24/02, 12/23/02, 12/22/02, 12/21/02 all discuss racism or anti-semitism on the part of Republicans, i.e. except for the post on the 28th all other posts have focused on racism or anti-semitism). In other words, they have practically nothing to talk about.

I don't blame them for shying away from the economy. Afterall it was Bill Clinton that sat in the Oval Office doing nothing to prevent a huge bubble economy from expanding to the bursting point. And even when they did discuss it during the last election and try to lay all the blame on Bush it didn't really pan out for them. Similarly with the Social Security scare tactics; not to mention that trying to scare retired people was the sum total of their policy on Social Security and Medicare.

Frankly the Democrats/Left seem alot like a ship at sea with nobody at the helm.
Steve 1:01 PM

 
Alterman Joins the North Korea vs. Iraq Idiots Club Alterman starts off his post today with a classic example of the liberal mantra on "Iraq vs. North Korea implies inconsistency and/or its only about the oil". Here is what he says

Quote of the Day: “In the case of Baghdad, the United States is preparing to go to war with a country that has just readmitted a hundred or so United Nations weapons inspectors. In the case of Pyongyang, the White House has said it has no intention of resorting to the military option, even though Pyongyang has just ordered the last three U.N. inspectors to leave.”

Cut to Donald Rumsfeld, George H. W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, all wearing cheerleader outfits. Ready, action! Everybody together now! “Saddam, Saddam, he’s our man.”

Yeah, just ignore all the other issues...like say the People's Republic of China that would take a real dim view of an invasion on North Korea, or the fact that invading North Korea probably would be a blood bath (a complete cynical bastard would wonder if perhaps some out there might actually be hoping such a blood bath...I am not that cynical).

Eric then compounds his amazing lack of clarity on the issue with this:

Can Saddam be contained? Realist political scientists John Mearsheimer and Steve Walt say yes. Bush Administration and Neocon-soaked media say “Don’t bother us with facts. We want a war.” (Warning the link on Eric's site is a pdf file and can cause you computer to lock up, I recommend a straight download then read it.)

Let us assume this ture. What I want to know is can Saddam be deterred form developing weapons of mass destruction? The answer appears to be no. If this is the case it points to some rather unpleasant conclusions. Clinton was incompetent. Consider the fact that Saddam has not just been renewing his wMD program in the last year or so, but probably in the last 8-10 years. Even if it has only been 6 years the bulk of that falls under Clinton's watch. Further, we have additional evidence that Clinton dropped the ball on North Korea.

Further, the authors of the article that Alterman links to do not argue that Saddam will be deterred from using his WMDs, but the more specific claim that Saddam will be deterred from using them against the U.S. Further, they do acknowledge that Saddam's world view may not be the same as ours and hence he might not be deterred. Their response? Lame ass crap about how the U.S. supported Iraq back in the 80's when Iraq was fighting Iran. Yep, that's is their response to that argument...or I should say non-response.

Moreover, the authors do not address this possible scenario. Iraq develops nuclear missiles with a limited range (say a few hundred miles) then under the protection of his "nuclear umbrella" decides to start a conventional war with a neighbor, say Kuwait again. Now, if the U.S. tries to intervene it is a hugely different and more complicated scenario where the possible outcome is very, very devastating. Is there a high probability of this?

The authors also make this claim:

Yet there is no good reason why the United States cannot contain a nuclear Iraq, just as it contained the Soviet Union during the Cold War. None of the nightmare scenarios invoked by preventive war advocates are likely to happen in the real world.

The problem is that the Soviet Union isn't the same as Iraq. It had a much larger bureaucracy that could put constraints on what the top government officials could do. In Iraq there is no such constraint on Saddam. He runs the show, you don't like him or suggest his ideas are bad and you might very well find yourself with a bullet in your brain. The analogy is extremely weak at best.

Finally when you consider that North Korea was able to pursue it's nuclear weapons program with U.N. inspectors in the country I am not terribly persuaded by this analysis. Parts of it are probably true. For example, even with a nuclear weapon I don't think Saddam would try to attack the U.S. Nor do I think he would give such a device to terrorists (once they have it Saddam has very little control over it and it could be used against him). Still, Saddam has been a very serious destabilizing influence in the region. This destabilization is the source of many problems today (how about the problems in Isreal, the West Bank and Gaza?). Is it in America's (the World's) interest to have that region become more stable? I think so. Is war the only way? No, and I think even President Bush realizes that.

Of course, you wont get that from Alterman's site. Basically its just a bunch of puffery, IMO.
Steve 12:18 PM

Saturday, December 28, 2002

 
Update on Liberals and North Korea vs. Iraq I have decided that I am going to link to articles by left leaning bloggers that try to make the case for the Bush Administration's inconsistency and opportunism with regards to Iraq (and oil) and North Korea (i.e. why the case can be made for an invasion of the former, but the case is much more...grim for the latter).

Here is our first new entry. Lean Left is discussing an article by Jim Hoagland but he makes this comment paranthetically:

but not North Korea, see, because the potential death at the hands of Saddams secret police is much worse than the almost certain death by starvation combined with the potential death by North Korean secret police. Apparently, since you are probably going to starve to death in North Korea, the uncertainty is reduced, making your situation bearable. Or something. Look! Saddam is eating a puppy!

The implication here is clear...why invade Iraq when we aren't planning on invading North Korea and the two are obviously equivalent.

The Daily Kos does it again just yesterday. Kos writes

But North Korea is not coveted by Bush's oil friends, so the administration can't be bothered by a nation that can already nuke Alaska. Heck, a nuclear-armed North Korea helps the Administration sell their missile defense boondoggle.

Ignoring what he written just a few paragraphs earlier

North Korea is far more a threat than Iraq at the moment. Not only does it have a confirmed nuclear weapons program -- with knowhow and technology provided by nuclear power Pakistan, but:

North Korea has repeatedly threatened South Korea, launching small scale military attacks and sabotage raids throughout the past years.

North Korea has multi-stage rockets with a range of 3,000 miles. And they are but a technological bunny hop from developing ICBMs -- rockets with the ability to reach targets in the United States.

North Korea has shown a willingness to trade and sell its technologies to anyone who can pay. For example, its missile technologies were bartered to Pakistan in exchange for help in building up its nuclear program.

So the Bush Administration is being inconsistent and also simply doing this just for the sake oil. These considerations play no part in the calculus.

Brian Linse posts this under the title of "Dicking Around with Saddam".

Old monsters like Libya, North Korea and Iran have proved — well, not ephemeral, but at least changeable, less terrifying today than they used to be. And the Iraqi threat, for which we're now prepared to sacrifice hundreds or thousands of American casualties, just a few years ago was simply another tinhorn dictatorship where C.E.O. Cheney was earning his bonus.

Now there is no commentary, so I can only surmise that Brian approves of this line of thought. Never mind that while it might have been conventional wisdom that North Korea was changable for the better, it now seems they just changed to being far more sneaky.

As I find more, I'll post them here.

Update: Yep there is more. I found this at Desmonthenes site. Clearly Desmonthenes thinks that the fact that North Korea is developing nuclear weapons undermines the case for possibly dealing with Iraq via military might. The implication is simple, that when it comes to trying to prevent nuclear arms proliferation the same policy should be used in all cases.

I haven't included anything by Hesiod, but he's in there. No big surprise there.

Ah-ha! A liberal who gets it! CalPundit to the rescue.

NORTH KOREA....With all due respect to those on both the left and right who keep nattering on about North Korea, will you all please just shut up?

To the lefties: the fact that we are not attacking North Korea has no particular bearing on whether we should attack Iraq.

To the righties: there are no options for dealing with North Korea other than negotiation. Military action is not possible, unless you're thinking we should just unilaterally lob a nuke at Pyongyang.

Steve 9:26 AM

Friday, December 27, 2002

 
Thimerosal Update at Trash Talk Some new and interesting posts have been added in that thread. Looks like the hand wringing over thimerosal may be just that. Is it dangerous? I don't know, but concluding it is poison is just ludicrous...at least not without more research.
Steve 1:35 PM

 
Krugman Watch Well, we see Krugman is off to a bad start right away. The news all over the palce is that Christmas sales were bad this holiday season. But Glenn Reynolds is linking to some sources that say otherwise.

In a weekly report on Tuesday, the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishiand UBS Warburg forecast holiday sales in November and December would be up an anemic 1.5 percent over last year, the smallest gain since the banks began tracking weekly sales in 1970.

In other words, the increase in sales is the worst in 30 years, not that sales were actually down. Of course, this is a forecast and the actual data could come in that sales were down. But what it looks like is that Krugman is looking only at headlines and then banging on the keyboard zipping out another screed.

This article that Reynolds links to also has the same conclusion. That sales will be either flat or only a very slight increase over last year.

Is this disappointing? Well I guess it is if you were expecting a large increase. But why expect that? Krugman and many others have been running around saying, "The economy sucks," and so when you see some less than exceptional data why is it disappointing. If I were expecting a 3% pay raise and got a 3% pay raise should I be disappointed? Now if I was expecting a 6% pay raise and got a 3% pay raise I'd be disappointed.

So, we have the following situation. The economy is in trouble of tipping back into recession. Consumer confidence is lagging, unemployment has had some slight increases, interest rates are about as low as they can go, and yet things still look rather bleak. So why expect growth rates in sales that are on par with the years 1999, 2000 and 2001?

Krugman then points to the possibility that oil prices might go up and that could send the economy back into recession. I am doubtful of this. Perhaps if both oil prices rise and consumer spending decline. I have been rather busy over at Rick DeMent's blog, The Rant posting that past decreases in oil output has not had the debilitating effect on the economy...at least by itself.

Finally, there's the desperate plight of the states. New estimates by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities show that state governments are facing their worst fiscal crisis since the 1930's. Since Washington shows no interest in helping, states will be forced into desperate expedients. Taxes, mainly taxes that fall most heavily on the poor and the middle class, will go up. Spending on education and, especially, health care will be slashed, with the heaviest toll falling on struggling low-wage workers and their children.

Yep, here in California the Democrats spent like money was going out of style and the economic bubble was going to last forever. Now the State faces a deficit of around $30 billion. Funny how Krugman, liberal buffoon, can't seem to point out this idiocy on the part of the Democrats. Nope, it is all Bush's fault. Bush and conservatives and everybody else but the Democrats. Memo to Paul Krugman: The Democrats control the state of California, they determined past budgets and spent as if the money from the dotcoms was going to last forever. Granted the Republicans probably would have done the same thing, stupidity and bad decision making goes on in both parties. As a leading economist it would be nice if Krugman stopped reading the Democratic Talking Points and focused on providing some help with finding a solution instead of always looking to assign blame.
Steve 1:18 PM

 
Michelle Malkin on Joel Mowbray Visa Express at the State Department and Mowbray's articles was one of the reasons I started blogging. I just found the whole thing so ridiculous I wanted to say something somewhere. Then I remembered Robin Roberts over at Final Protective Fire telling me about his blog...

Anyways, Michelle points out that Mowbray did some really good work exposing the amazing program at the State Department that allowed Saudi's who wanted to come to America to get their visa through their travel agent with little or no reveiw by the State Department. Never mind that without the visa the travel agent makes no money (hey there are those perverse incentives again...wonder if Kevin Drum still thinks they are nothing to worry about?) we'll just let these people come over here with practically no questions asked.

Link via Croooow! Blog.
Steve 9:32 AM

 
Going to North Korea in a Handbasket North Korea has expelled the inspectors with the International Atomic Energy Agency today and told them they are going to reopen their plant for reprocessing spent fuel rods and that can also produce weapons grade plutonium. Just great. Another tin pot dictator and this one with a tenuous grasp on reality is trying to develop nuclear weapons. Not only are the South Koreans worried, so are the Japanese. Back in 1998 North Korea sent a missile over the main island of Honshu.

According to this story there are over 8,000 spent fuel rods in North Korea, enough to make 5 nuclear weapons. The North Koreans are claiming they are reopening the reactor to generate electricity due to suspended oil shipments. The oil was promised to North Korea as part of a 1994 deal arranged by the Clinton Administration. Of course, North Korea was supposed to stop development of its nuclear weapons program. It is clear now that this was just a lie.

The funny thing is the liberal reaction to this. The want to know why we don't want to go to war in North Korea. How about the deaths of many, many South Korean civilians? How about the deaths of thousands of American troops and North and South Korean troops? That North Korea might already have a nuclear weapon and could concievably use it? That the Chinese would take a very dim view of any military action in North Korea. Trying to compare the North Korea situation to Iraq and conclude that the same policy should be used highlights the complete and utter idiocy on the left. The two situations are not the completely the same. As such the policy probably should not be the same. Yes there are similarities, but there are also differences and it is the differences that are more important. You don't see that form the left side of the blogosphere and the left in general. Why? Because they are trying to score political points. I don't know I find trying to score political points while a nation is perfectly willing to engage in nuclear brinksmanship rather disquieting.

Update: Here is an example of the stupid reasoning on the left. This is from the Daily Kos, note that the implication is that the implication is that those who think military force against Iraq maybe necessary should also be advocating it for North Korea. That is the implication with these paragraphs.

North Korea has nukes, missiles able to hit Hawaii and Alaska, and it is just a hair away from developing intercontinental ballistic missiles able to hit the continental US. And it has been led by a two (father-son) Communist megalomaniacs that have systematically starved their own people for the past few decades.

In addition, North Korea has been a belligerant nation, violating the UN armistice numerous times. In the past decades it has staged numerous small-scale forays into South Korean waters and territory.

So why is the Bush Administration obsessed with Iraq instead?

Yeah, yeah, I know the answer.

Oil.

Now the Kos doesn't really think that we should be going into either Iraq or North Korea, but he is trying to make the case that the Bush Administration is being inconsistent and/or is only interested in Iraq's oil. Ignore any of the problems with invading North Korea that are not present in an invasion of Iraq. Now that is stupid.

Here is another example from Too Much Logic (actually I'd say not enough logic, but that's just me).
Steve 8:41 AM

Thursday, December 26, 2002

 
Molly Uses the Kids Molly Ivins, in attacking Bush's budget decides to use children and the elderly as her weapon this time. See, it is the government's job to make sure that people have enough to eat (hmmm, exactly where is that in the Constitution and when can I expect a check for my past grocery expenses?), a roof over their head (hmmm, where is that in the Constitution?), educate the children (I don't see that provision in the Constitution either, and when am I getting reimbursed for my son's school expenses?). Oddly enough Molly closes out her article with this

Pretend that they can call you and tell you how desperate their needs are. And if you can only save one orphan or help one homeless kid or feed one hungry family once, well, that's something, isn't it?

Odd how an advocate for the Nanny State is exhorting us to engage in charitable giving. See there are two things going on here with charitble giving. First is that taxes reduce the individual's income thus reducing their ability to give to charities overall. However, if there are tax deductions built into the tax code this can promote charitble giving. The question is then, which effect is dominant. The latter effect depends on the price elasticity of giving, if the price elasticiy of giving is -1 then a dollar decrease in the cost of giving means there is a dollar cost increase in giving. That is tax deductions will incrase giving. However, the price elasticity of giving is believed to be less than one. One estimate I have seen is that the price elasticity of giving in -0.4. So, if the tax deduction reduces your tax burden by 28% of whatever you have given the deduction will increase the amount given by about 11%. But whatever money is given is from after tax dollars, that is it is that part of your paycheck that the government hasn't already taken a bite out of. That initial bite reduces your income and also your ability/willingness to give to charities. So it is possible that a tax cut can either reduce charitble giving (although that is unlikely given the low price elasticity of giving) or increase it.

Note also that if the price elasticity of giving is less than one in absolute value, then the treasurey is losing money by having a charitible deduction. Some more research on this can be found here. But be warned, this paper is not easy going, the mathematics get pretty intense. One thing this paper notes is that giving to "social welfare organizations" (say a homeless shelter) have a price elasticity of giving greater than one in absolute value.
Steve 1:39 PM

 
C.I.A. Uses "Stress and Duress" Interrogation Techniques At "secret" interrogation locations outside the U.S. the C.I.A. is using such tactics as sleep deprivation and other stress and duress inducing techniques to get Al Qaeda and Taliban prisoners to talk. The most recalcitrant prisoners are occassional "rendered" to other governments that are less kind in their approach to interrogation.
Steve 12:51 PM

 
Looks Like the Democrats are going to Challenge Republicans on Anti-Terrorism Measures Several Democrats who are being thought of as possible presidential candidates have voiced concerns that the Bush Administration is not doing enough to prevent future attacks. They haven't offered much so far other than suggesting more money for local police departments and creating an additional intelligence force. Of course, the first one makes me wonder what good is additional money for police departments. Responding to terrorists doesn't strike me as quite the same as dealing with gangs or other run-fo-the-mill criminals. Terrorists are not going to engage in criminal behavior until the last minute. Further, these perpespective presidential candidates have not called for new incursions on civil liberties, and have even indicated that the White House has already gone to far. Of course, they praise the increased incursions into civil liberties in airline travel. Anyhow, this looks to be the new issue for the Democrats. Perhaps they have decided that they can't win on just the economy and have to address concerns of terrorism as well.

The contenders have offered a few, though not many, details on what they would do differently. Mr. Edwards, for example, urged creation of a domestic intelligence agency with the specific directive to work against terrorism at home, making up for what he asserted were the now-demonstrated weaknesses of the F.B.I. and C.I.A.

I can see what would happen if the Bush Administration suggested this. There'd be screeching and wailing about the New Gestapo or Stazi. That Big Brother is actually George W. Bush.

Update: Just thought I'd clarify the problem I have with spending more money on local police departments as a means to combating terrorism. Police departments and police officers are not terribly proactive in stopping crime and violence. That is police do not cruise around looking for people who are thinking of committing a crime and then arresting them. Such people have committed no crime. I might think about committing a horrible crime, but until I actual do there is no crime and the police are impotent. For example, I may have a detailed plan that I have thought up for murdering somebody and I might start carrying out parts of that plan such as purchasing a handgun. Still nothing illegal has occured. Until I do something illegal the police can't do much other than watch me. And is this really what the Democrats want? Local police departments to start watching people? I can here those shrill cries of Gestapo and Stazi again...and if I recall correctly many of those uttering those shrill cries were Democrats. Talk about confused.
Steve 10:10 AM

 
The Costs of Redistribution Or more accurately the costs of redistribution done badly. Robert Mugabe, the President of Zimbabwe, has finally put an end to the dominance of Zimbabwe's agricultural industry by whites, but at a cost of starving the population of Zimbabwe. Mugabe through use of force and violence removed the whites from their farms with no compensation and has "given" the land to poor blacks. The problem is these new tenets, for the most part, don't have much seed, no fertilizer, and no equipment. The U.N. estimates that half the population will need emergency food relief. Nearly half of the nations fleet of tractors that were to be used to plow the fields are out of commission due to lack of fuel and spare parts.

So, the end of white dominance has occured, but it seems to me that the price is rather high.
Steve 9:51 AM

Wednesday, December 25, 2002

 
USS New York to be Built with WTC Scrap Mettal The USS New York is a San Antonio amphibious transport dock ship (pictured below)



The ship is scheduled to be ready for duty on 2007. The metal that is being salvaged will be melted down and used to configure the edge of the bow that cuts through the water.

Click here to read more about the San Antonio class specifications.
Steve 7:50 PM

Tuesday, December 24, 2002

 
New Blog Added to the Links I have added a new link Democratic Underground Monitoring Blog a.k.a. DUMB. The blog is going to be posting idiotic comments made at DU. The guy running it is a long time friend and has had the longest running sock puppet that I know of at DU. Check it out!
Steve 11:05 AM

Sunday, December 22, 2002

 
New Idiocy from Democratic Underground Take a look at that post and shudder. Now your first thought might be, "Ahhh so what, so there are some kooks at the fringes on the left." I suppose that could be true, that this is just a kook on the fringes. The problem is that this is typical of Democratic Undergound, not the exception. Go ahead, click up one level and read any thread there at DU in the economics forum (if you are like me and know about economic theory it will be enough to almost make you weep). In fact, the more accurate portrayal is that those who are logical, rational, and understand some things about economics and statistics are the exception at DU not the rule. Further, my hunch is that eventually these types get banned at DU because they point out the moronic nature of the majority of posters there.

Sure people say, "You get the same thing at Free Repubic.com!" But I just went there and it just doesn't seem quite as kooky or stupid. Sure they have their stupid idiotic puerile stuff. But not the level of utter idiocy that I see over at DU. I mean I see nothing at Free Republic.com that makes me want to post like there is at DU. I do admit it might be my own bias, but I generally take a dim view of economic ignorance irrespective of political affiliation (don't push me on this one or I'll link to my discussion with Caral AS Thompson on discounting, smoking, and measuring social benefits/costs--something like 300 posts).

Frankly I think the left needs an enema in terms of economic policy and thinking on economics. So much of it is based on the discredited shibboleths and bormides of socialism that it is no wonder the Democratic party doesn't have an economic platform (aside from "Its the economy, stupid," which is just campaign rhetoric and not a platform).

Update: Rick DeMent raises objection I tried to head off in that I am being selective here. Well, as I said this is not an isolated post. Some examples

The second example.

Here we have "rapier" who is worried that the link I provided to an economics site has a bias or agenda. However a quick glance at the authors of the essays there will show that they are drawing on a wide array of economists from a wide array of schools of thought. For example they have Paul Krugman, N. Gregory Mankiw, Allan Meltzer, Jack Hirshliefer, Laurence Kotlikoff, Murray Rothbard, Gary Becker, Josheph Sitglitz, George Stigler, and Alan Blinder. (By the way there are at least 4 Nobel Laureates on that list). If there is a bias/agenda it is towards providiing an understanding of modern economics.

Economc Dynamics vs. Statics

This thread is a hoot. Never mind that I have given the text book description of what dynamic economics is its just bad...evil...something Republicans have cooked up to screw the little guy.

Tax Reform and Elementary School Mathematics

Read that post and my followups (I'm EconomicsDude). This idiot flunked out of elementary school is the only thing I can think of; 90% is greater than 10%.

Trouble with Dates

Here these nitwits don't know when recessions/expansions begin and end. It is not uncommon for these idiots to claim that the 1990/1991 recession went well into 1993 and if it weren't for Clinton we'd still be in it.

Now not all the posters there are complete idiots, but most are. Of those who aren't that bad are yankeedame, acerbic, and rogerashton to name a few. But by and large the typical post is just garbage, and fewer are just out and out wrong.
Steve 11:55 PM

Saturday, December 21, 2002

 
From Calpundit

And digby's comment is right on target:

Hiring minorities is a problem because:


1955 - They are an inferior race
1965 - They aren't good workers
1975 - They make old white customers uncomfortable
1985 - Affirmative action means their diplomas are bogus
1995 - They are a litigation risk for discrimination


When it comes to equal rights it's always something, isn't it?

Hmmm...it is okay to complain about a group of people (conservatives), but if you complain about a group of people (racial minorities) you are a bigot. Lets go through the list:

1955 - They are an inferior race--No
1965 - They aren't good workers--No (well I assume the distribution of good to bad is the same across groups)
1975 - They make old white customers uncomfortable--Maybe they did once, but not anymore
1985 - Affirmative action means their diplomas are bogus--Unfortunately this is/was the stigma attached to many minorities
1995 - They are a litigation risk for discrimination--hmmm doesn't it seem this is a shade different than the first one?

Lets consider. You have worked hard, very hard and your start-up is not pulling in $2 million a year in revenue. You have 20 people working for you. You aren't a Fortune 500 company, but you have done pretty good. Suddenly a lawsuit comes in that threatens to destroy your company. A customer claims your use of a certain chemical caused a problem. You fight the lawsuit and win, but still incur lawyer's fees and othe costs. Now, do you

1. Keep using the chemical given that there is a suitable substitute that does not pose any risks.
2. Switch to the substitute?

Seems to me the answer is obvious. Seems to me that trying to draw an equivalence between the claim that minorities are the inferior race and minorities might sue for discrimination is bravo sierra. Especially when one considers that there are special institutional structures for suing for discrimination. Typical, no serious discussion of the potential perverse incentives that might crop up with a policy. Nope, just call them bigots and be done with it and hope they shut up so it looks like you won whatever discussion there was.

Update: Some "white condescension" from Calpundit:

UPDATE: Lots of mail on this, so I should clear up the point I was making: a small subculture is (or should be) allowed to do things that a dominant culture is not. Bosses are not allowed to proposition their underlings. Monopolies are not allowed to try and put small companies out of business.

This is not to say there can't be black racism. Of course there can be. But the bar is considerably higher: Jim Crow was racist, while affirmative action to help a disadvantaged minority is not.--emphasis added

Yes, for white people the bar (for racism) is lower, i.e. 'we' don't expect as much from non-whites (i.e. it is okay if non-whites are a little bit racist, but not for white people). Please.

Also, look at the half-assed examples. Bosses do not comprise a "culture" or "sub-culture" in the same sense of Japanese culture vs. Ainu culture. Similarly for the monopoly comment (which is also just stupid, a monopoly has no competitors to drive out of business. Jesus, does Kevin have a dictionary...somebody send him a dictionary for Christmas).

Update II: I was thinking about this, this morning and this part kept bothering me

Whites band together to make sure whites are elected to office and get their "fair share" of jobs and perks.

Blacks band together to make sure blacks are elected to office and get their "fair share" of jobs and perks.

Combined with this statement

UPDATE: Lots of mail on this, so I should clear up the point I was making: a small subculture is (or should be) allowed to do things that a dominant culture is not. Bosses are not allowed to proposition their underlings. Monopolies are not allowed to try and put small companies out of business.

Now I am going to make an inference here. Based on these quotes Kevin Drum thinks it is okay that minorities do things that may have a negative impact on the majority. Okay fair enough. But the guy really should do some frigging research before he opens his mouth and inserts foot. Asians. Prior to Proposition 209 at UC Berkeley if admissions were based just on academics the number of Asians admitted to Berkeley would increase (by a rather large amount, IIRC), the number of Black students admitted would decrease. So what we have is a program that not only has a negative impact on the white majority, but mainly on another minority...Asians. Further, if you look at admissions prior to Prop. 209 you see that the percentage of Asians admitted is well above their percentage in the populations. What the fuck? If whites are such goddamned bigots why are 'we' letting in Asians?

How about this, many blacks applying to the UC system are coming from crappy schools. Schools that have major problems with drugs and gangs. They come to the University ill prepared (note that is ill prepared not inferior or stupid) and what happens? Has Kevin looked at graduation rates/drop out rates. Yes, sadly it is higher for blacks, latinos (and incidentally Filipinos) (at least at UCLA when I was there). Further, many of these students have to start out in remedial classes to get caught up on subjects they should have been prepared in in high schools. So resources are taken and used to bring under-prepared students up to speed and those who are prepared at turned away.

Let me also point out that California has an excellent junior college system that is designed to allow under-prepared students to get up to speed in these basic subjects (and cheaply too--my estimates that in tuition alone going to a junior college saved me over $5,000) and that are supposed to help feed into the UC and Cal State system. UCLA, UC Berkeley and other campuses are impacted at the freshman and sophmore levels (i.e. it is very hard to get in), but much easier to get in as a junior (i.e. transfer from a junior college).

So to recap, I think it is highly unlikely that racism is a factor in the UC admissions (by the way, for those of you who believe this, you have just implicitly stated that the admissions people at the UC system are racists...how very kind of you), that part of the problem with some low minority admissions are the crappy public schools in parts of California, and that many of these kids are being pushed into the deep end to basically sink or swim (my calculus class at UCLA was over 400 people, do you think the teacher even knew my name or could spend much time helping me? Classes at the junior colleges are often much smaller). Does this sound like a good method for increasing minority enrollments at the UC system?
Steve 11:06 PM

Thursday, December 19, 2002

 
Just Great I wonder if they will ever be able to avoid stuff like this, generally speaking (i.e. I am not looking for arguments that Microsoft is lazy and/or stupid). Seems like it is like a chess game and you can't always anticipate what your opponent is going to do.
Steve 12:04 PM

 
Two Prison Inmates Face Hate Crimes Charges The two men beat a third inmate after the third iname accused one of the two of stealing his pet spider. Since the two men were using racial slurs while beating the third inmate the crimes have been elevated to a felony and both inmates face the possibility of life in prison.
Steve 11:58 AM

 
Light Blogging Today Have to get ready for my son's birthday party tomorrow.
Steve 11:41 AM

Wednesday, December 18, 2002

 
Thimerosal and Autism This issue seems to be rather popular in the blogosphere recently. Click here for Ted Barlow, click here for Hesiod, click here for Jane Finch, click here for Dwight Meredith, click here for Medpundit.

Anyhow, I decided to run over to Trash Talk (the discussion board for Junkscience.com) and see what anybody there knew about the issue. Looks like this is a major issue among the anti-vaxers (i.e. kooks). Still, this does not mean there isn't a connection. However, I was pointed to this article in the Wall Street Journal's online Opinion Journal. So while Dwight Meredith might be right about the amounts exceeding the EPA's "safe level", often times these levels are set ridiculously low to ensure nobody gets poisoned.

Basically, while the stories of people like Dwight Meredith and his son Bobby are heart wrenching, I am not convinced by their claims it was the Thimerosal. It looks alot like post-hoc-ergo-propter-hoc reasoning to me. Also, the post at Trash Talk by jkeller rings true. While my son didn't have any illnesses, he was quite a handful when he was younger and we had our own whacky rituals to get him to sleep.

Update: At the Trash Talk link above a link to this report by the National Alliance for Autism Research found no link between the MMR vaccine and autism.

I also recommend this link to an Institute of Medicine report that finds no connection between Thimerosal and autism. The press release has alot of "cover your ass" verbiage such as:

Current scientific evidence neither proves nor disproves a link between the mercury-containing preservative thimerosal and neurodevelopmental disorders in children, says a new report from the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies.

The problem with the "disproves" part is that you cannot disprove something scientifically. If there is no connection, the data (i.e. evidence) is not going to show positively that there is no link. These are media-person weasal words so that if something does crop up latter (say a certain segment of the population is hypersensitive to Thimerosal) then they can point to this kind of stuff to say, "Hey, we didn't say it was safe!"

From the Executive Summary though you have this (i.e. the findings of the guys with science degrees and not media-people):

The hypothesis that thimerosal exposure through the recommended childhood immunization schedule has caused neurodevelopmental disorders is not supported by clinical or experimental evidence because:

Update II: Dwight Meredith has written a comment. Dwight in unhappy with what I have written about his posts on autism and Thimerosal; namely the suggestions that he claimed Thimerosal was the cause of his son's autism. I think the simplest way to rectify the situation is to post Dwight's own words, thus removing the possibility of error. Here is what Dwight said:

Your post sugests that I have claimed that my son's autism was caused by thimerosal. It also suggests that I have claimed that thimerosal causes autism in others.

I have never made either claim. In particular, I have specifically and repeatedly stated that the science has not yet determined whether or not a causal link between thimerosal and autism exists. That point is perfectly plain in my writing. We would appreciate it if you would update you post to make it perfeectly plain that you have inadvertantly misrepresented my position. At PLA is an index to every autism post we have written. Please review them and you will discover that we have never made the claims you suggest.

In my defense, I wrote my initial post shortly after reading Dwights post on Autism, Pure Rage and Thimerosal when I read this section

It is possible that Bobby is autistic and will never lead a normal life because the medical establishment did not make the effort to add up a row of numbers to determine how much mercury they were injecting into his body.

I am not a person who is quick to anger. Nevertheless, every time I even begin to think about the fact that NO ONE DID THE CALCULATION, pure blinding rage wells up inside me.

That and the statements about injecting a poison into children. One of the things I have learned in my discussions with several toxicologists is that the dosage makes the poison. So while mercury is indeed something that can lead to very real problems (i.e. is a poison) the dosage is also crucial. One of the things the government typically does when determining safe minimum levels is to set that level ridiculously low. So low that even exceeding this "safe level" probably will not result in any harm at all.

Dwight's posts do have a number of excellent points, such as

It is important, however, to stay focused on what is actually known about the relationship, if any, between mercury in vaccines and autism. There have been no studies of which we are aware that demonstrate that thimerosal in vaccines causes autism. Thus, it would be wrong, or at least premature, to conclude that vaccines have caused autism in any child.

and

The people who believe that autism is related to vaccines and/or thimerosal need to take care not to allow their rhetoric run ahead of the science and thereby unduly alarm parents. If thimerosal is related to autism, the solution is to remove the thimerosal from vaccinations not scare parents into refusing to have their children vaccinated.

However, he also makes statments that...well are not so good. Such as in this post

Both Glenn and Dr. Manhattan have indeed missed the seeing the forest. Each is quick to declare that no link between thimerosal and autism has been shown and that there is no such link. Dr. Manhattan goes on to imply that the entire issue is driven by greedy lawyers eager to bankrupt Eli Lilly.

First, neither Glenn and Dr. Manhattan nor any other research have to show there is no link. That is scientifically impossible to do. It is up to those who feel there is a link to provide evidence that there is a link, until such evidence is provided the default is that there is no link. Further, I submit that Dr. Manhattan may have hit the nail on the head. We have seen this type of behavior before with silicone breast implants and the driving of Dow Corning into bankruptcy by lawyers who relied on very shakey evidence at best.

And there is this comment as well

Please allow us to state, once again, the actual status of the science in this area. The best scientific evidence to date neither proves nor disproves that thimerosal included in childhood vaccines causes autism. The causal relationship, if any, between thimerosal and autism remains an open question. It is a question we should answer though science and not through politics.

It is my opinion that the only thing we can hope for in terms of a positive result is Thimerosal causes autism. We can never, ever be sure that Thimerosal did not, in some cases, cause autism. We will never be able to "exonerate" Thimerosal with certainty. Politics is the last stage here as it was with silicone breast implants. First, somebody thinks there might be a connection, then the lawyers get involved and then everything goes to Hell in a Handbasket. The final stages are political you have the F.D.A. involved and various special interest groups trying to influence bureaucrats and politicians. By that stage science is no longer the main driver in the process. At best science will have a marginal impact.
Steve 11:12 PM

 
D-Squared's Bigotry

The world and his wife is shouting “why are CONSERVATIVE REPUBLICANS being so much louder in their condemnation of Trent Lott’s racism than LIBERAL DEMOCRATS??? Ever notice that nine times out of ten, the guy who’s making most of the noise about that terrible smell, is the guy who farted?

In other words, if you complain about Trent Lott and are a Republican you yourself are a bigot. Of course, since this applies to a group of people based solely on their membership in a group, this too is bigotry. Perhaps D-Squared should stop farting on his blog.

Update: Dean has this very good point in the comments section.
Steve 11:21 AM

 
U.S. Task Force Hunting for Al-Qaeda on the Horn of Africa The U.S. is looking for a connection between a Somali Islamic group, al-Ittihad al-Islami, and Al-Qaeda. There are over 400 Navy, Marine, Army and Air Force personnel on the U.S.S. Mount Whitney as well as 900 troops at Camp Lemonier in nearby Djibouti.

Sudan was bin Laden's home in the 1990s; Yemen is his ancestral home, and Somalia has not had an effective government since 1991.

Steve 10:48 AM

 
Wow, Don't Mess with Other People's Food in China The head of a nursery school is to be executed for poisoning 70 students and 2 adults at a nearby school. What makes this rather shocking for me is that while the children and adults became severly ill none of them died. Seems like the punishment is a bit excessive.

This reminds of a movie my wife rented, the Story of Qiu Ju. Qiu-Ju starts a small crusade to get some shred of justice for her husband who has been kicked in the groin by the village's political leader. She makes several journies each longer than the next. Her goal is to get the village political leader to simply apologize for kicking him in the groin. Each time she is rebuffed. Finally something is done. The village political leader is taken away for "re-education". The irony is that Qiu-Ju (very late in her pregnancy) starts her journies all over again. This time to secure the release of the village political leader. A complete over reaction by the state when something much simpler and less harsh would have sufficed.
Steve 10:34 AM

 
New Al-Qaeda Camps in Eastern Afghanistan Looks like the mess that Afghanistan is still makes it a good home for terrorists.

More than a year after a United States-led coalition ousted Afghanistan's former Taliban rulers, who harboured the al-Qaeda leader and his followers, the report says ``one of the most recent developments is the apparent activation of new, simple, training camps in eastern Afghanistan'' for al-Qaeda supporters.

Mr Chandler said the camps may have sprung up near the eastern town of Asadabad, in Kunar province. He said since US-led coalition forces in Afghanistan were constantly looking for such facilities, these camps were ``small, discreet and mobile'' and did not stay in one place for too long.

This is my one worry about the focus on Iraq, that focus will be lost on Al-Qaeda.

Update: Hamid Karzai has denied the claims.

Update II: Robert Crawford points to this article that there is a real fear that if a mission goes bad the commanding officer could be prosecuted and his career ruined.
Steve 10:17 AM

Tuesday, December 17, 2002

 
Julienne Malveaux I heard this quote on Larry Elder's radio show today.

The insufferable black "USA Today" columnist Julienne Malveaux, on a political TV talk show said, "There's no great, white bigot; there's just about 200 million little white bigots out there."

Well, I don't know about you, but I do know who the bigot is and that person sure isn't white. What Julienne Malveaux is saying that if you are white you are a bigot. There was no outrage over what Malveaux said. There has been, to the best of my knowledge, no apology. So what gives? Clearly this statement marks Malveaux as a bigot of a staggering magnitude (either that or an incomprehensible idiot), why is Malveaux not reviled? Rank hypocrisy.

Here is another quote from Ms. Malveaux:

Julienne Malveaux, columnist told a television audience, "I hope [Thomas's] wife feeds him lots of eggs and butter, and he dies early, like many black men do, of heart disease - he's an absolutely reprehensible person."

Gee, what a nice thing to say. Check out that link you can see the intolerance and hate that the left supposedly decries shining through nice a brightly.
Steve 8:12 PM

 
Kevin Drum on Why Blacks Don't Trust Republicans Kevin claims that one of the reasons blacks don't support Republicans is the Republicans push for school vouchers. The only problem is that many young black voters who are also parents want vouchers. Click here, here, here, here, and here.

That point is merely silly, but the serious reason that most people don't trust Republicans on race issues is made clear from Preston's #1 source of Republican pride:

School choice, the granting of vouchers to needy students enabling them to pay for tuition in private and parochial schools, would allow those students to escape the crumbling schools which current circumstances force them to attend.

Now, I'm not a die-hard opponent of vouchers, but the history of vouchers is clearly not based on any kind of commitment to racial justice. Republican conservatives began fighting for them two decades ago, and the fight was led primarily by members of the Christian right, who wanted public funding for Christian schools. Then, sometime in the mid-90s, after it became clear that this argument wasn't resonating with enough people, the GOP hit on a new argument: vouchers are good for black people!

So what the freaking Hell is Kevin Drum talking about? Maybe he needs to get out of Orange County a bit more. Try South Central Kevin.

Let me also add that Kevin's protrayal of the the history of vouchers is a bit misleading. Milton Friedman proposed them back, IIRC, in the 1960's as a way of injecting competition into the state monopoly on education. One has to admit that many of today's public schools are a complete disgrace (try visiting L.A. Unified Kevin) with problems with crime, drugs, violence, budget problems, and incompetent administrators. Maybe the initiating reason for the Republicans push for vouchers was based on the Christian Right, but it seems blacks want them too so that their children can have a better education. Denying this and pointing to the initial reason for Republican support for vouchers is rather peculiar.
Steve 3:30 PM

 
The Humor Stylings of Hesiod Theogeny I have to admit I enjoy (in a sort of perverse way) reading Hesiod's site. It is simply amazing to see how his mind...well 'works' isn't quite the word...opersates? Yeah that is it, how is mind operates.

In a letter to Henry Waxman, last month, Daniels flat out lied about his tenure and potentially, about his knowledge of of Thimerosol.

"I also want to make clear that I personally had no involvement whatsoever with these provisions. I spoke to no one about these provisions, either inside the administration or outside the administration. . . . I did not have any communications with anyone from Eli Lilly regarding the issue. Indeed, I had not even heard of Thimerosal until I received your letter, which is not surprising because Eli Lilly stopped making Thimerosal a decade before I began working there and the lawsuits appear to have been filed after I left."

But...according to internal Lilly documents, the company was actively studying the health effects of the additive as late as 1999!...

And also according to internal documents, Eli Lilly didn't stop manufacturing the drug until 1991.

No Hesiod, it isn't Daniel's statements about his tenure that are incorrect, you blithering moron, it is his statements about when Eli Lilly stopped making Thimerosal.

Here is another example of Hesiod, this time being dishonest. Hesiod quotes this part by Andrew Sullivan (and is vague as to whether it is a quote of Glenn Reynolds or Andrew Sullivan):

"I'm second to few in believing that Trent Lott should step down as SML. But that doesn't mean I like the racial politics of the current Democratic Party. In fact, the way some far-left Democrats use race is no less repulsive than the way some far-right Republicans do. The equation of opposition to affirmative action or hate-crime laws or any other number of leftist policies with racism strikes me as a massively cheap shot. (I was on WBUR last night and paleo-lib Jack Beatty went straight to that knee-jerk point. Grrrr.) And the blithe assumption of moral superiority is equally galling."--emphasis added by Hesiod

Note that Hesiod's emphasis leaves out the word some. It is clear that Andrew Sullivan is not talking about all Democrats or all Republicans, but only some. Further, he is right. Look at this post by Desmonthenes, clearly a liberal, who thinks fanning racial annimosity for political gain is a good idea. Then there is this crap at Democratic Underground.

There exists in a large portion of the population an innate fear of change, and also a fear of the "other"...whether that other is someone of another race, different sexuality, different religion, etc.

Gee, Hesiod you're right no Democrats/liberals play the race/bigotry card[end sarcasm]. What an utter and complete dunce. Sullivan is right, some on the left employ these tactics, we have proof.

So I admit, I get a good laugh from what Hesiod writes he is the acme of "so stupid its funny".

The Minute Man has more. I recommend this one as he debunks two of Hesiod's idiotic "posts".
Steve 2:07 PM

 
Spike Lee Opens His Mouth...and inserts his foot up to his knee. He claimed that Trent Lott is a card carrying member fo the Ku Klux Klan. Even Diane Sawyer jumped in and told Lee, not in these terms, that he is full of horse crap and that such statements without any proof are quite stupid. Well no kidding Diane, Spike Lee has been and idiot and all around a--hole for sometime...your just figuring it out now? With people like Spike Lee you don't need the Ku Klux Klan around, Spike Lee's bigotry is more than sufficient.

Link thanks to Croow! Blog.

P.S. Just in case you are wondering, Lee is the jackass who said he likes to give visual daggers to interracial couples in public. What a guy.
Steve 1:07 PM

 
Krugman Watch Krugman is like a pitbull with this Lott thing. Like the Democratic Party in lacking any stance on issues to make interesting and thought provoking column, Krugman is going to run with the race baiting. There was brief hope we'd start to get some good stuff from Krugman when he wrote this Op-Ed piece. But then the Lott thing came up and I guess it was just too tempting to not jump on the wagon of fanning racial animosity.

Let's be clear that last week's remarks were in no way out of character. On the contrary, they were entirely consistent with Mr. Lott's statements on many other occasions.

Many other occasions? Such as? I know Lott filed an amicus brief with the courts when Bob Jones University was in court, I know Lott made a similar statement back in 1980, and I know he opposed the making of Martin Luther King Jr. day a holiday. Is that enough to constitute many? I don't know. Maybe there is more and Krugman is just too lazy to list them (or maybe it was a space consideration).

Still does this make Lott a racist and/or bigot? I dont know, I am inclined to think he is, but at the same time some of his positions I don't find that onerous. For example, the Bob Jones University issue over the interracial dating poicy. A private university...Hell any private institution, should have the right of deciding what it wants in terms of policies. I don't think it is the governments job to try and dictate morality. That is what some of these issues boil down too, IMO. Now, don't get me wrong, I would never support such an interracial dating policy, I would never support any institution that had such a policy, and I'd openly condemn it just as I am now. My personal feeling is that such a policy is wrong and ugly. But, just as I don't want the government telling me what to do in my own house I don't want the government to have the right to make similar dictates to other private instituitions either.

The Republican Party's longstanding "Southern strategy" — which rests on appealing to the minority of voters who do share Mr. Lott's views — is no secret. But because the majority doesn't share those views, the party must present two faces to the nation. And therein lies the clue to Mr. Lott's role.

Yes, and back a few generations the Democrats used to rely heavily on the Solid South. Further, if the "Southern strategy" rests on a minority of voters who share Lott's view then how do the Republicans win? If they are the minority how are the getting elected? Cheating I guess. And what about Clinton's admiration for Fulbright, not exactly a paragon of racial harmony and a supporter of Civil Rights.

To win nationally, the leader of the party must pay tribute to the tolerance and open-mindedness of the nation at large. He must celebrate civil rights and sternly condemn the abuses of the past. And that's just what George W. Bush did yesterday, in rebuking Mr. Lott.

Yet at the same time the party must convey to a select group of target voters the message — nudge nudge, wink wink — that it actually doesn't mean any of that nonsense, that it's really on their side. How can it do that? By having men who manifestly don't share the open-mindedness of the nation at large in key, powerful positions. And that's why Mr. Bush's rebuke was not followed by a call for Mr. Lott to step down.

Ahhh I see. Of course, lets forget about Senator Byrd's comments (the man who actually is 4 heartbeats away from being President). Senator Byrd who just last year used the 'N'-word. It is clear from his use that the implication was somebody of low character...somebody black, why else did he use the phrase "white ni**er"? Sure his staff had an apology ready immediately, but there was nowhere near this level of hue and cry about it. Byrd got a pass. How about Donna Brazil who stated that the Republican Party is the party of the "white boys". Recently she tried to polish that turd of a statement by saying she meant that her mentors were white. What? She isn't a Republican, but a Democrat...so were her mentors Republicans. Still no apology.

Okay, I have zero respect for Krugman anymore. He notes here that Atrios is a valuable source. Puhlease.

I don't mind the focusing on Trent Lott's stupid and by all appearances bigoted comments. What really gets to me is the bullshit sanctimonious hypocrisy we get from people like Krugman and his preferred bloggers such as Josh Marshall and Atrios. Lott's statements were very stupid. At the very least he should step aside as Senate Majority leader. However, I don't see these lefties taking a hard look at their own ranks and applying the same standards. Add on top of this the rather blatant attempts to fan racial animosity for political gain and it is downright despicable.
Steve 10:00 AM

Monday, December 16, 2002

 
Good Gravey Code_Name_D at Democratic Underground is a scraming moron. He has responded to my post. Amazing! He is accusing me of being ignorant, but here is a real howler

Oh, so now we know that you know little of the Laffer curve, but also little over the concept of experimental thinking. A critical foundation in economic sciences. And an out right lie to boot. The curve of witch you speak is part of that fundamentalist crap that you keep spewing out. How in the world could Laffer have measured tax to income ratios of witch to apply to this chart? Laffer himself died long before the computer age, so he didn't have the advantage of running computer simulations.--emphasis added

Now I suppose Arthur Laffer could be dead, I have looked to see if there is anything on him dying and have found nothing. But, if Laffer has passed away, it was well after 1989. In fact, I'd say it would have been within the last 10 years (note: this has Laffer alive and well and his age listed at 62). So the above claim about Laffer dying long before the computer age is just...ignorant bullshit.

And even if he did, the whole argument would then be on what the simulation would look like? If he did take measurements, than the "curve" must be incomplete. Especially at the top end senses it is inconceivable he could have explored the extremes.

Code_Name_D is now reiterating my point. Nobody really knows what the curve looks like except at the end points. When the tax rate is 0% then the tax revenue for that tax is $0. It shouldn't take a rocket scientist to figure this out...but obviously a moron can't figure it out. As for the 100% income tax rate, why work when you aren't going to get any of the wage? Do people right now work for a zero wage rate? No. So this seems like a pretty save bet as well.

I wrote:
No this is false. The curve looks at tax revenue as a function of the tax rate. The idea is that at the out tails of the tax rates (low/high) revenue is lower than in the middle.

Code_Name_D replied:
As I said, you would debate long and hard against the existences of the two extremes in taxation. Hardly a prophetic statement.

I am not sure what Code_Name_D is smoking, but it must be good. My comment in no way indicates a denial of the tails of the Laffer Curve.

Here is another gem:

Me: This is false. The Laffer curve states that there will be no income tax revenue when then income tax rate is 100%.

Code_Name_D: Perhaps in your textbook. But such a statement falls flat on its face when made to stand on its logical grounds. How can 100% taxation produce 0% revenue? Dude, are you really trying to convince us that if you eat a whole pie, you will in fact starve to death?

Clearly the idea that if you don't get any of your wage you wont work (for pay) is beyond this idiot.

Here is rapier's respones to my response. Most of it is gobbldeegook as far as I can see, but I found this striking:

As to my supposed contraditions, I embrace contradiction. My liberalism is a process, not an absolute view of the exact roles for government or property or anything. As far as junk science, politics nor economics is a science, although they often pretend to be.--emphasis added

Could this be why so many people have a hard time talking to some liberals? They just have shit for brains?
Steve 11:12 AM

Sunday, December 15, 2002

 
Democratic Underground Update In case you are interested I have updated my comments at DU here and here. This now brings my posts as EconomicsDude upto 35. A new personal record for me. Or maybe it is the forum, maybe most of the DUers just ignore it...or maybe the moderators fo the economics forum understand basic neo-classical economics...who knows with that place.
Steve 10:26 AM

Friday, December 13, 2002

 
Steve Chapman on Why War with Iraq is Not Good I was pointed to this article by Jane Finch over at the Daily Rant. I had remarked that I was looking for a good argument as to why we shouldn't consider going to war with Iraq and this was one of her suggested readings. The problem is Chapman actually ends up making a case for war, IMO. Chapman looks at what he calls the worst case scenario and tries to paint a grim picture. To summarize here is his list of "horrors" that should give us pause to consider war with Iraq

Bloody house-to-house fighting in the streets of Baghdad.

A civil war among contending groups in Iraq after Hussein is gone.

A long and difficult occupation in which American forces become the targets of indigenous rebels and al Qaeda fighters.

Unrest that brings radicals to power in oil-rich Saudi Arabia or nuclear-armed Pakistan.

Once we invade, it would be no surprise to see outbreaks of the virus [smallpox] in American cities, unleashed by covert Iraqi operatives already hiding within our borders.

Once American troops set foot on Iraqi soil, they may be bombarded with poison gas.

Attack Israel with either chemical or biological weapons.

Israel responds with nuclear weapons.

Saddam might give weapons of mass destruction to Al Qa'ida or other similar terrorists groups.

That is quite a list (well okay some are inherently contradictory, IMO). However, I don't think it is persuasive. I am not convinced that there will have to be bloddy house-to-house fighting in Baghdad, although it might come to that. In the last Gulf War the Iraqi military crumbled like a house of cards. Would it stand and fight even in and around Baghdad? I don't know and neither does Chapman, he is speculating.

The civil war and American occupation are rather contradictory if you ask me. But I suppose that we could have one or the other, but again I am not sure there would be all that much of a problem. It depends on how the aftermath is handled. Even with American occupation I am not convinced it will have to be another Vietnam. Why every anti-war opponent has to invoke this specter as if it is a fact is beyond me. It is quite possible that the occupation is more like that of Japan.

As for the fear of more extreme groups coming to power in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan that is already a fear. Is it more likely to happen if we Invade Iraq? It seems like a stretch for Pakistan, but not so much for Saudi Arabia, but with so many U.S. forces right there next to Saudi Arabia I don't think it would be that much of a problem.

The smallpox/covert operatives argument is, in my opinion, an argument to go. Are we going to cower in fear of Iraq and knuckle under to such blatant terrorism? That is what Chapman is saying in effect. Don't go attack Iraq because they might do something bad to the U.S. What makes him think Saddam wont do it anyways? Saddam has a history of horrible judgement calls (Invading Iran, Invading Kuwait, thinking he could stop the U.S. in the first Gulf War, etc.). While I don't think Saddam is a bona-fide nutcase, I do think he does not have a completely realistic appraisal of the world and makes some really bad decisions at times.

The use of weapons of mass destruction that Saddam now has indicates now is the time to go if we have to go, not wait till he comes up with nuclear weapons. Once he has nuclear weapons then the situation becomes at least an order of magnitude more difficult. Now he might feel that he can act with even more impunity in the region and do things to further erode what shreds of stability there is. For example, he might decide that the recent unrest in Iran and his new nuclear weapons make it a great time to re-invade Iran.

Yes, he might attack Israel with chemical or biological weapnos and yes Israel might respond. However, first Saddam will have to be able to set up a deliver system and with the U.S. right there watching for such things, it might not be so easy.

The last point of Saddam giving weapons of mass destruction to terrorists again provides a reason for going vs. not going and hoping he doesn't do it anyways. By not going Saddam could see the U.S. as weak and decide to risk such a venture. If Saddam is not there then he cannot give anything to any terrorists. This actually supports the Bush Administrations claim that Saddam is a threat to the U.S. Personally I discount this one, as I noted while Saddam's grip on reality may not be the greatest he isn't completely nuts. He'd know that anything that even hinted at an Iraq-Al-Aqaeda weapon of mass destruction attack could very likely result in an American response that goes right up to an includes a response with nuclear weapons. He may not make the best decisions in the world, but Saddam is not a suicidal maniac.
Steve 3:46 PM

 
Looks Like Lott Is Not Going to Step Down Now I have to wonder, will he try to save himself by selling the conservative agenda as both David Frum suggests and Michelle Malkin suggets.
Steve 12:54 PM

 
Hesiod's Offer Hesiod, still upset over Glenn Reynold's use of "objectively pro-Saddam" has made an offer. If Reynolds stops using "objectively pro-Saddam" then Hesiod will stop using the term Chickenhawk. I personally think Glenn should jump at it. For one, I don't think Hesiod can stick to such an agreement, and second if he does then great, so it is a win-win as far as I can see. If Hesiod breaks the agreement, it allows Glenn and anybody else to use the term "objectively pro-Saddam" without any regrets and also gives people to point out what a hypocrite Hesiod is. If he does stick to it, some rather unpleasant rhetoric will cease to be used.
Steve 10:39 AM

 
More fun at Democratic Underground Last night I paid a visit to DU and decided to have some fun with my sockpuppet. I have to admit I am shocked I have made it to 33 posts there. Anyhow you can check out the fun here, here, here and here.

This resposne is quite telling of the attitudes of DU and the far left. Basically this attitude makes us all slaves to the government. We have our property rights at the governments discretion so it is not right to argue tha government should refrain, whenever possible, from interfering in the market.

Title to land, the most basic form of property, has since civilization developed, been confered to individuals by government. Long ago that was kings. There is nothing 'natural' about claiming ownership of land and property. Without the authority of the government, be it a godlike king or a constitutional democracy, ownership devolves into simple brute force, which is not freedom.

The idea here is people only have property rights if the government decides to grant them. All property is essentially the governments and it is only through their good graces that you can keep and use your property. Further, with this view, it is perfectly fine for the government to tell you what you can or cannot do with your property. All hail (or suplicate yourself) before the government.

In this response Code_Name_D decided to advertise his stellar stupidity in regards to economics. I love this quote

HA! The Laffer curve also doesn't talk about motivations ether. A little homo-economist rhetoric working its way in there? Laffer curve states that at 100% taxation, by definition, will not allow any funds or currency to circulate though the economy, and thus, no economy.

First, homo-economicus is part of all neoclassical economics so no kidding that kind of rhetoric is working its way in there. Second, the Laffer curve states no such thing about 100% tax rates in general. For a 100% tax rate of income you will not get any labor supply that is taxable (i.e. labor done for pay). But this doesn't mean you'll get no labor and zero economic output. If you work for yourself and pay yourself nothing you wont be taxed. However, this type of economy would have very little specialization and hence output would be very low.

Your other assertion that taxing inheritance at 100% will discourage earnings is also bogus as well because the tax is not paid by the person who made the money. HE IS DEAD! The inheritance tax is paid by the person who inherits the money. How is this going to discourage the accumulation of wealth?

What an amazing non-sequitur. I didn't say it would discourage the accumulation of wealth, but that it would discourage the passing of wealth from one generation to the next. That is, if I new I was going to die soon, and that my children wouldn't be able to inherit the money, I might give it to him in the form of gifts, or something else. Sure it'd still be taxed, but not at the same rate.
Steve 10:03 AM

Thursday, December 12, 2002

 
Ted Barlow is Blogging Again Head on over and check him out. You may not agree with him, but he is thought provoking.
Steve 11:37 PM

 
Hesiod the Nitwit Hesiod, among others, got into a snit when Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit made this post that those who are demonstrating against war with Iraq are "objectively pro-saddam". Various people felt that Glenn was using simple smear tactics in that post. That is you are opposed to war with Iraq you support Saddam. But then Hesiod wrote Glenn and e-mail that said in part

"As an astute reader pointed out to me...

According to Glenn['s logic]...anyone who supports an expanded war on terror/radical Islam/Arabs...is OBJECTIVELY pro-Osama Bin Laden.

Why? Because that's exactly what he wants [or wants] to goad the United States into.

Moreover...for those who think invading Iraq absent an imminent threat will HELP Al Qaeda, and hurt the U.S. in the long term...supporting an invasion of Iraq based upon manufactured pretext is ALSO "Objectively" Pro Al Qaeda."

Hesiod is in a snit because he feels Glenn misrepresented what Hesiod wrote. But this is what Glenn wrote:

Okay, that's the reasonable argument. Here are the not-so-reasonable ones. Hesiod emailed me that by supporting war on Iraq I was "objectively pro-Al Qaeda, pro-Arab," etc. This is just dumb. People who oppose war on Iraq want to cover themselves by setting up a false dichotomy: war on Al Qaeda or war on Iraq. But, since there's no reason that one conflicts with the other, that won't wash. Indeed, I think it's more likely that the two reinforce each other.

But as we can see Hesiod did say that those who support war (based upon a manufactured pretext) is "objectively pro Al-Qaeda". It is right there in the last line of Hesiod's e-mail. Furthermore, Hesiod the Idiotic, goes on to make the very case that Glenn is making. Hesiod argues, in short, that a war with Iraq will take resources that could be used against the war on Al-Qaeda and the side effect is to help Al-Qaeda. Well, if this line of reasoning is true and correct, then so is Glenn's point and you Hesiod are pro-Saddam. Live with it. The problem is that Glenn has spotted the problem with Hesiod's (as usual) faulty reasoning. It is a false dichotomy. While it might be true that some of the resources that are used in any possible war with Iraq could come from the efforts against Al-Qaeda they don't have too.

Further, Glenn's overall point was that those who oppose war with Iraq are in effect helping Saddam. Suppose those opposed to war "win" and Bush decides not to pursue war with Iraq and follows another policy such as deterrence. Does this not help Saddam. Granted, I think it isn't because (most of) the anti-war with Iraq crowd like Saddam, but that they think such a policy is wrong and would rather not undertake such a policy even though it leaves a tin-pot dictator in power. In other words and more simply, just because I help you doesn't mean I like you. We can see something similar with the Cross burning case before the SCOTUS. Suppose the court says, "Cross burning, when done on private property, though repugnant, is protected speech." Does this make the SCOTUS pro-KKK? In a sense, yeah it does. It means they have affirmed the KKK's right to express themselves. It doesn't mean that the SCOTUS believes in the philosophy (using that term loosely) of the KKK.

Not that I suspect Hesiod to understand all of this. Once something goes beyond the level of a Dr. Suess book Hesiod is considerably out of his depth.
Steve 3:18 PM

 
Democratic Undergound Morons Can you believe the stupidity? I love this quote:

if (probably more likely "when", but that's for another discussion) we go to war against Iraq, I've heard that it will cost anywhere from 100 billion to over 200 billion dollars. Ok now who exactly is getting this money? It's obviously not going to personel is it?

Nope, none of the money is going to the personel. None of it is going to them in terms of pay, medical care, food, or housing. None of them are going to qualify for G.I. college benefits, and none will qualifiy for veterans benefits later on. Obligate mouth breather.


Steve 12:25 PM

 
Larry Elder on Trent Lott I was listening to Larry Elder the other day and he has raised an interesting point. He doesn't care if Trent Lott is the most racist person on the planet (for those of you who don't know, Larry is black). He just doesn't give a crap if Trent Lott goes home and tells racists jokes, puts on black face and sits there looking over his backyard with a lawn jockey. What Larry does care about are what kinds of policies Trent Lott favors, supports, and puts forward. So long as Larry likes them (e.g. lower taxes, less government regulation, less intrusive government over all, etc.) then Larry doesn't care if Trent Lott goes home and puts on a white sheet with a pointy hat and insist on being called the Grand Wizard of Lottdom. However, if Trent Lott did something to try an roll back the civil rights (say reintroduce segregationist policies) then Larry would be right there clamoring for the son-fo-a-bitch to be run out of town on a rail.

I think Larry has an interesting point. So what if Trent Lott is a racist, what really matters is what he does in terms of setting/shaping policy. Unless that can be shown to be racist then what is the big deal? I don't hear anybody calling for the resignation of Sen. Robert Byrd. Considering his recent use of the "N-word" I'd say the case is at least just as strong that he is as much a racist as Trent Lott is. I find this ridiculous posturing by the LIberals/Lefties/Democrats just ridiculous given the presence of a rather despicably character within their own midst (and to be clear this does not justify Lott's comments) just a bit hypocritical.
Steve 12:12 PM

Wednesday, December 11, 2002

 
Justice Thomas Goes on the Offensive In a rare display Justice Thomas spoke out during the arguments phase today during the "Cross Burning Case" and said the following:

A burning cross is indeed highly symbolic, Justice Thomas said, but only of something that deserves no constitutional protection: the "reign of terror" visited on black communities by the Ku Klux Klan for nearly 100 years before Virginia passed the law, which the Virginia Supreme Court declared unconstitutional a year ago.

A burning cross is "unlike any symbol in our society," Justice Thomas said.

"There's no other purpose to the cross, no communication, no particular message," he continued. "It was intended to cause fear and to terrorize a population."

Well I am a bit surprised. It also seems that his impassioned oratory had an impact on the rest of the Justices who listened to Justice Thomas with rapt attention. I have to admit, the idea of the Ku Klux Klan and burning crosses is something I find very repugnant. Still I am leaning a bit towards it being Constitutionally protected speech when done on private property.

Steve 7:52 PM

 
Republican Steel Protectionism This is one area I think the Republicans goofed up and show that they need somebody with a better grasp of economics in there making/proposing policy. Anybody with just a basic understanding of economics knows that free trade is preferable ot protectionism. Think about it this way, suppose there was nothing preventing individual states from restricting the flow of goods and services across state borders and they could institute inter-state tariffs. Would this result in more economic output or less? Seems the obvious answer is less. The same thing holds at an international level.

Here is another reason I think the Republicans don't have much in the way of economic policy making. The fall out from the protection of American farmers is fairly substantial. Since the American agriculure businesses face less competition due to protectionism/subsidies they have an incentive to rely on more pesticides, herbicides and chemical fertilizers. Also, they will farm land that requires much more irrigation. All of these things are not good environmentally and if they can be reduced without resulting in higher food prices then that is all for the better.

In addition, if the U.S. grew less food the slack could be taken up by foreign countries. Instead of making loans then bailing these countries out when they default, the countries could have stronger economies by taking up the slack from the decrease in American farm output. Moreover, this would help get these countries on the path of development vs. being stuck where they are now.

Another thing that annoys me about Repubicans is the corporate welfare. Corporate welfare, goes on on both sides to be sure, but the Republicans sometimes employ rhetoric saying the corporate welfare is bad, but then turn around and start handing out the corporate welfare candy. For example, the airline bailouts right after 9/11. The airlines were in trouble prior to 9/11 and the huge subsidy handed out after 9/11 just prolonged the problem (it undoubtedly put off United's filing for bankruptcy). Now to be fair, the Bush Administration has cut back on corporate welfare, but a 7% reduction is pretty meager, IMO. This is one way to help reduce the deficit and to help steal some of the force behind the Democrats rhetoric that Republicans are the party of big money corporations. Also, this goes on on both sides. In addition, some of what the Cato Institute calls corporate welfare might indeed be a legitimate area for the government to be spending in. For example, I am not too sure I'd want the private markets to supply air traffic control. I can definitely see how there could be external costs of not having good air traffic control.

This gets back to what was discussed in this post here, at least in part. The libertarian wing of the Republicans feel ignored and that is one reason why they are leaving. Addressing these issues could help, but personally I hold out little hope.
Steve 2:33 PM

 
Partisan Bias of Tapped Tapped posted this comment by Robert Stacy McCain

[T]he media now force interracial images into the public mind and a number of perfectly rational people react to these images with an altogether natural revulsion. The white person who does not mind transacting business with a black bank clerk may yet be averse to accepting the clerk as his sister-in-law, and THIS IS NOT RACISM, no matter what Madison Avenue, Hollywood and Washington tell us.

Well, while we are at it, how about the statment of Congresswoman Diane Watson directed at Ward Connerly:

"He's married to a white woman," Watson said. "He wants to be white. He wants a colorless society. He has no ethnic pride. He doesn't want to be black."

Or this one by Spike Lee on interracial couples:

"I give interracial couples a look. Daggers. They get uncomfortable when they see me on the street."

Yes, those are ugly sentiments to be expressing, but to pretend it comes only from Republicans is idiotic.

Update: Thought I'd add this as well. A caller to the Mark Taylor and Gloria Alred radio show (790 KABC) was talking about how blacks like Colin Powell and Condolezza Rice are not "mainstream blacks", their thinking is not in accord with "mainstream blacks" that they were, and at this point words failed the caller so Gloria Alred chimed in with "uncle Tom Types". Nope, nothing shocking from the left. Oh yeah, and lets not forget our good buddy, Robert "KKK Forever and I like to use the N-word" Byrd who is a Democrat and recieved lots of praise by Democrats for his stance against Bush's policies for Iraq.
Steve 10:20 AM

 
Demosthenes Suggest the Democrats Resort to Race Baiting Demosthenes suggests that the Democrats should be using the Lott fiasco not only to stir up the "faithful", but to also use it to fire up minorities. Now I admit that Lott's comments were stupid and repulsive, but using them to inflame minorities? Seems almost stupidly irresponsible to me.

Demosthenes also stupidly agrees with Krugman's comment that Lott's idioctic comments might have helped turnout, while earlier Krugman was noting there was coverage of the fiasco.
Steve 10:04 AM

 
Atrios the Hypocrite Why is Arios hypocritical? Well he is linking to a post that complains about how some bloggers like to smear others and not attack the arguments. But that is exactly what Atrios has done himself. I noted here that Atrios simply branded the Cato Institute a pack of liars vs. taking on what they said. Same thing, different day, but Atrios proves that he too is a hypocrite. Good job Atrios.
Steve 9:34 AM

 
U.S. Could Use Nuclear Weapons in Response to Weapons of Mass Destruction Attacks I saw that article and my first thought was that the lefty nitwits would pitch a fit about this. And sure enough Hesiod on his Sit-n-Spin did just that. Not only that but he distorted the actual articles claims. The U.S. could respond with massive force upto and including nuclear weapons if the U.S. or the U.S. military is attacked. So we can see this screech by Hesiod was totally false:

My question is...why can't we extend this retaliation threat to attacks on our CIVILIAN population?

The fact that the stated policy covers both the U.S. and its forces means it covers civilians and the military.

Then Hesiod decides to compound his misinformation when he implies China was making a similar statement with this link. The difference is that the U.S. is saying, "If you use weapons of mass destruction on the U.S. or U.S. troops we reserve the right to respond as we see fit and that could include the use of nuclear weapons." China on the other hand was saying, "If the U.S. intervenes on the behalf of Taiwan should the PRC invade Taiwan we might very well nuke Los Angeles." Totally different. That Hesiod sees them as being the same indicates he is either an idiot or is extremely dishonest.
Steve 9:19 AM

 
The Supreme Court Hears Arguments on Cross Burning Today As repugnant as this activity is, I have to agree that when done on private property with the property owners permission it should be Constitutionally protected speech. I see this as one of the prices for having the open society that we currently enjoy; that the speech of sleazy people is also protected along with the speech of much more reasonable people.

Here is a post by Eugene Volokh predicting the outcome. He predicts that the cases will be overturned and that cross burning will in effect become protected speech. Note, that this does not give the Ku Klux Klan the right to start burning crosses anywhere they want, but so long as it is on private property they can burn them if they want.

Professor Volokh has a follow up post that notes the general yuckiness of the Council of Conservative Citizens' (the CCC) position on this matter. The idea that cross burning is simply to demonstrate a lack of support for affirmative action is moronic and stupid.
Steve 8:42 AM

Tuesday, December 10, 2002

 
Krugman Watch I have to wonder...was Paul Krugman drunk when he wrote his last Op-Ed column? He decides to jump on the Pig-Pile on Lott and makes the following statement

It's unlikely that Mr. Lott will be forced to explain himself. The "liberal media," which went into a frenzy over political statements at Paul Wellstone's funeral, have largely ignored this story. To take the most spectacular demonstration of priorities, last week CNN's "Inside Politics" found time to cover Matt Drudge's unconfirmed (and untrue) allegations about the price of John Kerry's haircuts. "Just two days after moving closer to a presidential race, John Kerry already is in denial mode," intoned the host. But when the program interviewed Mr. Lott the day after the Thurmond event, his apparent nostalgia for segregation never came up.

Ignoring? Well lets see. First I called up google in my browser and went to their news search page and then did a search on "Lott" and "Thurmond" and got 641 hits. Granted they aren't all about the stupid Lott comments (and to be clear they are stupid and repugnant). Lets see who some of the hits are:

The Free Lance Star in VA

Mother Jones

UPI

Washington Post

Washintong Post

NY Times/API

NY Times

CNN

CBS News

NBC News

I have found 10 entries in about 15 minutes. What the Hell is Krugman's excuse? Also note that the New York Times and the Washington Post each have two stories on this and they are considered liberal. Also, this leaves out National Review Online, which I know has a couple of things on this decrying Lott's statements as "incandescently idiotic". Krugman is just lying here.

I also find this comment vaguely disturbing too

In the midterm elections, Democratic candidates carefully avoided doing anything to mobilize the black vote, fearing that this would just encourage turnout by rural whites.

Yes, rural whites sit around waiting to see if the blacks are going to vote. Jesus, can Krugman paint rural whites as nothing but a bunch of racist rednecks or what?

But the rural whites turned out anyway, while blacks didn't. In Louisiana, black turnout — the result of a determined get-out-the-vote operation, perhaps helped by Mr. Lott's remarks — was the key to Ms. Landrieu's unexpected victory.

Uhhh, if the "liberal media" isn't covering this, how the Hell did the blacks in Louisiana know about Lott's comments? What a freaking idiotic thing to write. Damn, this latest Op-Ed peice (of crap) by Krugman was a perfect follow up to my post last night about his decline as a columnist.

Update: Henry Hanks at Crooow! Blog has more on this as well. Sure does put the lie to Krugman's claim that the "liberal media" is ignoring this. Oh...wait...I get it, all these media outlets...they aren't liberal. Why they are objective and have no bias at all. Yeah that must be it.
Steve 10:35 AM

 
Sit-n-Spin Idiocy Nice post by Hesiod where he calls Jerry Reiger, the Jeb Bush appointee to head Florida's Deptarment of Children & Families (DCF) a child abuser. Why? Because the DCF hotline system is in trouble from having an over-taxing workload. That is there are so many reports and not enough resources to handle the volume. So a plan is being worked on to reduce the work load by screening out certain calls. Hesiod, then goes on to say that this is why only the Democrats should be in charge of the government, because Republicans like Jeb Bush are "baby killers".

The problem is Hesiod is an idiot of stellar proportions. Yes, it is a tragedy that there is not enough resources to handle this problem in Florida, but running around calling people "child abusers" and "baby killers" is not the solution. The problem is that there are a finite amount of resources that the government has at its disposal. If these resources are not sufficient then what to do. One of the options looked at is screening out the calls from the Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ). Apparently many of these calls (about 95% of them) turn out to be false. When children enter the DJJ they are told that if they feel abused then they can call the DCF hotline, and that there are special phones to do so. But lets think about this for a minute. These false calls take resources away from actually dealing with real calls...are we then to conclude (using Hesiod's twisted logic) that these children are "child abusers" and "baby killers"? Perhaps some really severe penalties for filing false reports, but then the argument goes that this would have a chilling effect on children who really are suffering abuse while in the DJJ system. So we see that there might very well be a perverse incentive here for children in the DJJ system to use the DCF hotline as a way to "get back at" a DJJ employee who has "done them wrong". Basically, it is like tying up the 911 line with prank calls, you could be endangering others by doing so. Is the solution to screen out these calls ideal? No, but everything is a trade off. By doing this resources are freed from investigating what are likely to turn out to be false claims of child abuse and re-directed to investigations that are much more likely to turn out to be real.

So there are some really tough and ugly decisions that have to be made.
Steve 9:55 AM

Monday, December 09, 2002

 
Daniel Drezner on the Decline of Paul Krugman This is very interesting essay on Paul Krugman and how his writings have gone from pretty good (his days writing for Slate and Foreign Affairs), but recently he has become more shrill. Guess I am not the only one noticing this. First Drezner notes that Krugman is tending to repeat himself more and more as he finds that he needs to churn out more articles than when he was writing for Slate.

Also, he points to what I have noted isn't all the uncommon in economists, their naivete when in comes to politics. The amazing thing is that this naivete should not be something one finds in economists, in my opinion. All economists are familiar with the rudiments of game theory. Game theory is the mathematical theory that looks at strategic behavior. Typically economists use it for firms in markets where there only a few firms (oligopoly). Instead of behaving competitively (i.e. each firm assumes its behavior has no impact on the other firms because there are so many firms) firms behave strategically, that is they either watch what the other firms are doing, antipate what the other firms will do, or even both when making their own decisions. So, the question is why should a politician be any different? Answer: They shouldn't, but Krugman acts as if they should behave differently, as if they are some sort of benevolent leader out to maximize "social welfare". Not only is there game theory, but there is the entire field of Public Choice which basically takes many of the assumptions and techniques for analysis economists use and applies them to politics, politicians, and policy making. For example, instead of assuming tha politicians are out to maximize the well being of the public, that politicians are instead out to maximize their own well being. Now if you are sitting there going, "Well duh!" then ask yourself how come somebody who is supposedly as brilliant as Paul Krugman is doesn't realize this.

Here is another post that points out that Krugman is out of his depth when it comes to foreign affairs. In this case, Krugman's calling the Bali bombing a smart move might be quite inaccurate. Now Australia has a glimmer of what the U.S. went through and if it decides to respond to the attack like Americans did it will solidify the Americans and the Australians in fighting terror, and the the Aussies are a hell of alot closer to Bali than the U.S. making them ideal allies in any conflict that may erupt in Indonesia.
Steve 8:46 PM

 
The Lawsuit Against V.P. Cheney by the G.A.O. Dismissed, Okay I have updated the link to the acual story.

U.S. District Judge John Bates said the case filed by Comptroller General David Walker against the vice president is an unprecedented act that raises serious separation-of-powers issues between the executive and legislative branches of government.

Interesting. I was thinking that the main argument would be that it would jeopardize the ability of the Executive Branch to solicit advice from industry and experts in the future. If the advice is going to become public information the advice might very well change. So one could make an argument that the advice/information given by those consulted is skewed (although one could argue that by being confidential it is also skewed to favor the interests of those giving the advice).

"No court has ever before granted what the comptroller general seeks," wrote Bates, an appointee of President Bush.

Oh boy! There is going to become alot of screeching point amongst the lefties.

Update: The story has been expanded.

Update II: Did I call it or what? Looks like Atrios is off an running on the Bush Appointee thing with a twist, Judge Bates was a Starr "Hatchet Man". Cool, was that his official title? Here Lean Left makes the point I thought he would. It was all because he was a Bush appointee. Lets ignore the possibility there might be a good legal basis for dismissing the case (I'm not saying there is one, but Lean Left sure isn't even making a pretext of saying there is legal support for the GAO request), just go for the political connection. The Daily Kos has much better commentary on this, at least they note that the Judges position has some legitimacy.
Steve 11:13 AM

 
New Treasury Secretary John W. Snow, head of CSX, is to be the new Treasury Secretary. Looks like this might be a move towards addressing the problems arising from business ethics and the recent scandals. It also looks like Stephen Friedman, former co-chairman of Goldman Sachs, as the new chairman of the White House's National Economic Council.
Steve 11:12 AM

 
Atrios on Lott, Byrd and the Liberal Media Atrios has a post on the stupid comment by Senator Lott at a party for Strom Thurmond who is 100 years old. Basically Lott's comment appear to be an endorsement of Thurmond's positions in 1948 that were pro-segregation. The comments were stupid and Lott should come out and apologize. However, the strange thing about Atrios is that he firmly believes that the media is not liberal. He claims that the writings of some bloggers is not evidence, and he is right, but what he is over looking is the actual data. Such as this data from a 1996 study that shows that 61% of journalists are liberal/Democrat compared to only 15% who are conservative/Republican. Or this data on the voting patterns of the media elite; granted the study that link is based on is over 20 years old, but in looking at that trend unless there was a major break somewhere since the early 80's to now the media elite still vote largerly Democratic. The data on the "Washington Press Corp" is more recent and shows that that group is indeed liberal/Democrat. This last part is significant in that liberals often tend to portray the Washington press Corp as being conservative (I guess because they don't insult Bush or something). There is this data as well which notes that the largest plurarlity of journalists identify with the Democratic party. Again that is a 10 year old sudy, but I have yet to see anything from liberals/lefties such as Atrios that even comes close in terms of actual data/evidence. Funny how Atrios is guilty of the very sin he acuses others of, but then again consistency and logic have never really been his speciality.

Update: I did find this analysis by FAIR, but after finding this

One of the basic findings of this survey is that most journalists identify themselves as being centrists on both social and economic issues. Perhaps this is why an earlier survey found that they tended to vote for Bill Clinton in large numbers. Clinton's centrist "new Democrat" orientation combines moderately liberal social policies (which brings criticism from conservative anti-gay, "pro-life" and other activists) with moderately conservative economic policies (which brings criticism from labor unions, welfare rights advocates and others). This orientation fits well with the views expressed by journalists.

I have to wonder about FAIR's own bias. Clinton's first major policy proposal was a huge welfare program. Socializing health care. Clinton then morphed into a "New Democrat" when he was dealt a serious set back in the midterm elections. To call this "conservative economic policies..." makes me suspect that the people at FAIR are very far to the left to consider Clinton conservative on economics. Another thing that bothers me about the study is where do they get their information on the public's views? I can't find mention of it in the study. How many forms were sent out and what was the response rate?
Steve 9:56 AM

Sunday, December 08, 2002

 
Latest Carville Memo Looks like Carville, et. al. have decided to stick their heads in the sand vs. facing reality.

The election of 2002 produced a political earthquake. Republicans took control of all the institutions of government, and that will have profound policy and political implications. But 2002 was not an electoral earthquake. With the country divided down the middle, a relatively minor shift to the right – almost invisible to most analysts right up to election eve – gave the Republicans their crucial victory.

On Election Day, Republicans won by 4 points in voting for the House of Representatives (51 to 47 percent). That produced a gain of just 4 seats in the House. In the
Senate, Democrats went from a one-seat majority to being in the minority. That represents a swing of 4 points away from Democratic performance in 2000 (even), actually the
switch of around 2 percent of the voters, not a seismic change.

The problem with this "analysis" is that it ignores the fact that this was a midterm election and historically the party in the White House typically loses ground, it doesn't gain. So this was indeed a surprising outcome. Why do you think everbody was sitting around surprised on November 6th? So this is just bravo sierra spin from Carville and company.

Here we can see the selective memory of Carville and company.

This imbalance of energy and direction produced a unique electorate, which would have been noted election night, had the traditional exit polls been available. The 2002 electorate was more Republican and much more conservative than those that showed up in the Presidential election of 2000 and the off-year election of 1998. Republicans were greatly energized by their campaigns, while Democrats were not.

Yes, lets ignore the 1994 elections which cost the Democrats both the House and the Senate. Also note, that the 1994 election results were partly a response to the serious leftward lurch of the Clinton Administration. After sinking its head in the sand the Clinton Administration, believing that Clinton had some sort of mandate, decided that socializing health care would be a great idea. The voter response was to strip Clinton of the Senate and House from Democrat control.

The rest of the memo highlights what Carville, et. al. think are weaknesses that the Democrats can exploit. Some I agree are weaknesses some I think are nt going to pan out the way they think. For example, health care. Sure the Democrats beat the Republicans on that issue, but I don't think the Democrats can take anymore support from the Republicans there. In fact, the might lose support if they tack too hard to the left. Similarly with retirement issues. Some parts of the issues already see, I think, a polarized voting groups. Those that support the Republicans are just going to be further turned off by another run at socialized health care.

The economy is one big area of weakness. If the Republicans don't do anything in time for the next election (i.e. if the economy slips back into recession) then it will not go as well for Bush. I think the Bush Administration should take a serious look at the work by Kotlikoff on the telecommuncations market. I am having serious doubts about the direction they want to go on that.

Thanks to Henry Hanks at Croooow! Blog for the link.
Steve 3:54 PM

 
Wahhabism Since shortly after 9/11 I have heard that one of the main sources of terrorism and hatred for the West (and others) in the Middle East is Wahhabism, a sect of Islam that is very strong in its views. See for example, this post as well as this one. Anyhow, I decided to take some time today to do a google search on Wahhabism and see what I got (brief note: Wahhabism is the name given to this sect by those who don't agree with the tenets this sect, the followers of this type of Islam prefer the name Muwahhidun).

Link 1: This link is supportive in its view of Wahhabism, but a careful reading shows that it is definitely antagonistic towards other sects Islam, namely the Shia, Sufi, Qadr, etc.

A Salafy is not of the Shi'ah (Shi'ites) because the Shi’ah hate and curse the Prophet's Companions, claim them to be apostates, declare that the Qur'an has been altered, reject the authentic Sunnah and worship the Prophet's family, peace be upon them. A Salafy is also not of the Qadariyyah because they deny Qadr (the Divine Decree). He is not of the Murjiah because they claim Imaan (Faith) to be only in words and not in deed. Likewise, he is not of the Asharriyah who deny Allah's Attributes, and not of the Sufis who worship graves, saints and claim Divine incarnation.

Here we can see the militant nature of Wahhabism

Sheikh Muhammad bin Abd Al-Wahhab refused the British offer for the reason that he wanted the whole region an Islamic State. He wanted to continue expanding and spread Islam and the beliefs of the Prophet and Salaf by the Qur'an and Sword throughout the entire world and not limited to "Saudi Arabia".

Ovarall, while this site seems to support and condone the views of Wahhabism, it sure doesn't paint a very pretty picture.

Link 2: This link offers mostly some background information with little editorializing.

Link 3 This is a link to a PBS page and it paints a rather grim picture of Wahhabism

Can you show me an example of what the [religious teaching is in the schools?

Well, here, this is a book, hadif, for ninth grade. Hadif is a statement of Prophet Mohammed. This is a book that start for ninth graders. This is talking about the victory of Muslims over Jews. This is a hadif that I truly believe it's not true, as a Muslim:

"The day of judgment will not arrive until Muslims fight Jews, and Muslim will kill Jews until the Jew hides behind a tree or a stone. Then the tree and the stone will say, 'Oh Muslim, oh, servant of God, this is a Jew behind me. Come and kill him.' Except one type of a tree, which is a Jew tree. That will not say that." This is taught for 14-year-old boys in Saudi Arabia.

Here are some more excepts from the text books supposedly used in Saudi Arabia.

Here is another quote

And we're told by people we've interviewed that it's the nature of this thought, its fundamentalist nature, that can be easily manipulated, so that people would, for example, become violent or extremist.

I think that the new mood, the new trend, especially after the Gulf War, has become for all these neo-Wahhabis ... [is to use] Islam ... as a platform for political ideas and activities, using Islam to legitimize political, economic, social behavior. These people have been brought up in a country where Islam legitimizes everything. And they have used the teachings from the religious establishment, but became more political in expressing dissent and criticism of the regime.

Link 4 I followed this link to this site which is supposedly run by a famous Wahhabi scholar. Anyhow, if you follow this link you will find the 10 things that put a person "beyond the pale" in regards to Islam. The last one covers a very large number of people

10 – Turning away from the religion of Allaah, not learning it and not acting in accordance with it. The evidence for that is the verse (interpretation of the meaning):

What does it mean to be beyond the pale? Here you go:

The scholars (may Allaah have mercy on them) have said, when discussing apostasy, that a Muslim may apostatize from his religion by doing many acts that nullify Islam, which makes it permissible to shed his blood and seize his wealth, and which will put him beyond the pale of Islam. Among the most serious and most common of these things are ten which were mentioned by Shaykh Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhaab and other scholars (may Allaah have mercy on them all).

In other words, if you engage in any of these 10 things (and the last seems very broad to me) you can be killed and/or your wealth seized.

Well, after all this, I must say I find Wahhabism to be rather unappealing. I am not terribly interested in learning more, because if you do, then it seems to me the tenth form of apostay might apply to you and your life is thereby forfeit (neat trick for gaining converts, eh?).
Steve 10:49 AM

 
Al Gore and Health Care On This Week George Stephanopolous asked Gore about his universal health care proposal. Stephanopolous pointed to this report by the Lewin Group that noted that universal health care that relies on expanding Medicare to cover everybody would require an increase of 9.6 percentage points in the existing Medicare payroll tax. The current Medicare payroll tax is 2.9% which for accounting purposes is split evenly between worker and employer (note the actual split of the burden of this tax depends on the elasticities of the supply and demand curves).

Gore's response was to deny that we'd have to raise taxes to support such a program. He argued that if every third dollar wasn't wasted then it could be funded with...well I am not sure if he thought we could do it without increasing taxes or with a smaller tax increase. I am not sure why Gore thinks this. Here are some problems with this kind of political campaign rhetoric.

The Savings
Lots of times you'll hear politicians say, "Well, if we just didn't have such a wasteful system we could do X, Y, and Z without raising taxes." And I suppose they are right. But, and this is a really big 'but' IMO, why are we wasting this money in the first place? Why isn't government efficient already? Why are we taking more money than we need to from people and using some of it inefficiently? If this has been the case for so damn long then what makes Gore, Bush or anyother politician who uses this line of argument think they can stop this?

I submit that these "savings" are not ever going to materialize. This waste/inefficiency is just part of the system and you just can't get rid of it. For one thing, getting rid of the waste and inefficiency will require new resources, i.e. you are going to have to spend money to find the inefficiency and waste and put into place some sort of mechanism to stop it. After all, if we could get rid of inefficiency and waste by simply saying, "Stop being so gosh darn inefficient and wastefull." Inefficiency and waste would not be problems today. So this right off the bat suggests that this "extra dollar in three" we are going to get is now less than a dollar. Further, I wouldn't be surprised that the more one tried to reduce waste and inefficiency the more it cost. So, I find this argument just plain ridiculous.

No New Taxes
Lets sweep aside the problems above and assume that Al Gore can snap his fingers and get rid of waste and inefficiency (lets ignore the question of, if he could do this why didn't the son of a bitch do it decades ago!) and think about the money we'd now have. It is one third of the current Medicare expenditures. Lets further assume that Medicare expenditures are $100 (to keep the math simple). Now, if the expenditures are equal to the tax revenue then this means the expenditures will have to increase to about $331. But Gore is saying we really only need to spend about $67 and we can use the extra $33 to fund a Medicare style program for everybody. But...the multiplier of about 3.31 is correct overall then we need to increase spending by 3.31*$67. Now, it should take a freaking genius to realize that 33 < (1/2)$67 and since 3.31 > 1/2 it stands to reason Al Gore really is using fuzzy math here. We will need to increase taxes, if no other programs are to be cut.

Now in fairness to Al, he did say he was going to be releasing a more detailed report on this later, sometime after the first of the year, so he might revise his claims based on new evidence. However, I'm skeptical of this. Unless Gore advocates an increase to the income tax such an increase in the payroll tax would be huge and highly regressive. Further, it would come at a time when some Democrats are starting to test ideas of a "holiday" on payroll taxes.

Further, I am disappointed that nowhere does there seem to be any debate by politicians about why medical costs are rising so fast in this country. My suspicioun is that everybody knows, they just don't want to talk about it. Would anybody seem shocked if the government subsidized that segment of a market that is both growing and one that is the largest consumer of goods in that market and then prices went up?
Steve 8:58 AM

Friday, December 06, 2002

 
Lean Left has a Post on the 9th Circuits Recent Ruling on Assault Weapons The basic gist is that Kevin Reybould hopes the ruling is struck down (at least in part) since he thinks there is an individual right to own and bear arms in this country. Clayton Cramer has more on this, but one thing I'l like to point out, the 9th Circuit Court is overturned alot on appeal. I mean ALOT. Don't believe me? Go here and search the current decisions only and search on "ninth circuit". Of the first ten hits you'll see that 9 are either vacated or reversed, and the one that isn't is partially affirmed and partially reversed. I also clicked over to the second page of hits and the results were the same, that is so far based on this (admittedly questionable sample) the 9th Circuit has a 10% "success rate".
Steve 1:49 PM

 
A Foray into Geekdom Well, I haven't posted anything about theoretical economics (the geek oriented stuff) in a while, but this one is on something I am interested in, voting. This paper looks at a game with a large number of players, but each player can only observe the actions of a small sample of the larger population. The authors apply this to the following situation:

We apply the concept to a strategic voting model and investigate the conditions under which a centrist candidate can win the popular vote although his strength in the population is smaller than those of the right and left candidates.

Given that the individuals in this type of game are acting out of partial information this puts the model in the catagory of bounded rationality. Bounded rationality is the idea that you can't know everything so you (rationally) choose to be ignorant in some areas. Anyhow, if mathematics doesn't frighten you check it out (if it does you can still read the introduction and the conlusion to get the gist of the paper).


Steve 10:17 AM

 
Krugman Watch I was just wondering what happened to the Paul Krugman that wrote his articles for Slate. Such as this article on cheap labor in third world countries. Or this one that at least explains the concept of network externalities as related to Microsoft. Anyhow his latest column is almost getting back to the old Krugman...at least temporarily. His latest column on the telecommunications industry sort of fits with what Laurence Kotlikoff is saying on the issue and I have to admit it their story does seem to explain things. As Kotlikoff has said, Greenspan has pretty much shot his clip of ammunition, and we are back to deficit spending, but we see very anemic growth. Perhaps it is time to look at the telecommunications industry and the supposed "deregulation" of that industry. Could it be that Krugman is actually reading Kotlikoff?

Kotlikoff's writings on this are better, IMO. Kotlikoff points out that the telecommuncations industry is a huge part of the economy (for example the number of lost jobs in that sector alone is 500,000). Also, Kotlikoff avoids the needlessly inflammatory rhetoric that Krugman uses and is not quite so blindly partisan (at least he doesn't come of that way in his writing).
Steve 10:00 AM

 
Unemployment Hits 6% in November Although I have to wonder about the headline, "Jobless Rate Surges Unexpectedly" when in the story we see stuff like this

Analysts had been expecting a slight increase in the jobless rate, which stood at 5.7 percent in October, as well as an increase in the number of payrolls. After reviewing the contents of Labor Department report, a number of economists said the unemployment rate could go higher, possibly peaking above the 6.1 percent rate hit in July 1994.

Seems like many analysts were expecting this. Oh well go figure.

I do have to wonder if this report has anything to do with this story about the resignations of two top White House economic advisors, Lawerence Lindsey (National Economic Council) and Paul O'Neill (Secretary of Treasury).

And to top it off there is this story that retail sales were down in November as well.
Steve 9:32 AM

Thursday, December 05, 2002

 
More Democratic Underground This is the DU response to the Bravo Sierra notion that the Wall Street Journal editorial advocated raising taxes on the poor. Warning reading that thread could cause harm from excessive laughter. You will be treated to such gems as

It's all part of the Bushies' plan to get back to the Bible.

and

The system has abandoned the poor for a long, long time. They hold no political clout, therefore they don't matter -- to either party.

Which explains why the income taxes on the poor are so high...oh wait, income taxes on the poor are not high, ay caramba!
Steve 11:27 AM

 
Democratic Underground Yet another economics thread, and man is it dumb. This one notes that there is a deficit (and apparently it is soaring) and the opening post poses the question...will interest rates follow. Well the evidence that deficits increase interest rates is weak at best. The idea goes like this: as the government issues more and more debt the demand for cash increases, this is an increase in demand (i.e. a rightward shift in the demand curve) which for a fixed supply means the interest rate (the price) has to rise. The only problem is that this hasn't always been the case. That is, the government borrowing crowds out the private investment. But is this story "true"? This article says, "No, it isn't necessarily true, it depends what happens with the tax distribution (i.e. who is taxed and how)." This paper says it appears to be true and provides a nice summary of past research (some of which argues yes, and some of which argues no).

But the funny part about the DU thread is that these posters think that this will necessarily have to result in inflation (monetizing the debt). This does not have to be the case. Further, there is no reason to thing that interest rates will approach the levels they did during the early 80's when fighting inflation was a primary concern. Moreover, they ignore the fact that we don't live in a closed economy, and that with global financial markets the impacts of any single country's deficit on that countries interest rate may be considerably lessened. And finally, the deficit is not "soaring".

This post is also amusing. Japan's on-budget deficit is 140% of GDP? Uhhh...do you mean debt?
Steve 11:20 AM

 
Kevin Drum, WSJ and Context Kevin Drum has decided to try to "bust the myth" of runaway government spending. So he puts up some data on federal expenditures, notes the decline since the end of WWII and proclaims the "runaway government spending" claims a myth. However, as you can see some readers have pointed out he has ignored State Government expenditures which have tripled (thanks to Mindless H. Dreck). Now what I find fascinating is that Drum is supposed to be looking at government spending in general and leaves out a major portion of government spending in his myth busting quest. But when getting his panties in a wad over the WSJ flap he wants to include State taxes as well as payroll taxes, when it is quite clear from the context of the Journal article that the focus was on income taxes and not taxes in general. Consistency much? Didn't think so.

Furthermore, Kevin is ignoring the impact of interest payments, Social Security and Medicare in the future, in particular he writes

In fact, when you look at the actual data, it's still Social Security, Medicare, and interest payments that make up most of the increase over the past half century (and will continue to do so in the future). This is a problem, but it's primarily a demographic problem, not a problem of wasteful, runaway government programs — and therefore a subject for another day.

But, projections for the next 70 years or so show an increase in government spending (Federal only) that gets has high as 40% of GDP, but why use numbers when a picture is worth a thousand words (and numbers).



Seems like a runaway locamotive to me, especially when you consider that this does not factor in State spending which could put that figure as high as 50-55% of G.D.P. Of course these are projections and what might really happen could be altogether different. Still, to say this is a complete myth by noting a short term downward trend in favor of a longterm upward trend and an upward trend that is projected to continue, seems misleading to say the least. Sorry Kevin, try again.
Steve 9:21 AM

Wednesday, December 04, 2002

 
J. Bradford DeLong is an Idiot Professor DeLong has decided that he can never be a Republican because of something stupid that William Buckley wrote 45 years ago. Based on that (and apparently that alone) DeLong has decided that the Republicans are the "Party that Doesn't Like Black People".
Steve 12:39 PM

 
10 Questions for Adel al-Jubeir Stephen Schwartz has a list of questions for Adel al-Jubeir, a foreign-policy adviser to Saudi’s Crown Prince Abdullah. These 10 questions relate directly to 9/11. Here is a sample:

5. If as Adel al-Jubeir claims, the Saudi regime is the target of al Qaeda, where have any Saudi institutions or personalities been attacked by al Qaeda? Al-Jubeir yesterday repeated common Saudi claims about the Riyadh bombing of 1995. In that incident, five Americans and an Indian were killed. The bomb was aimed at foreigners, not Saudis. One such incident inside the kingdom hardly compares with the attacks suffered by the U.S. and other countries. And U.S. investigators were impeded from examining the case.

Link via Final Protective Fire.
Steve 12:17 PM

 
MedPundit on Errors and Patient Death A nice article that points out that the use of the phrase "...errors killing x number of patients..." is misleading and that there are trade-offs in the updating of hospital systems. For example, the idea of switching to computer systems instead of paper charts would indeed improve one apsect of care (i.e. the computer records are legible, not easily misplaced*, etc.), but such systems are expensive and when there is a cost constraint then something else will have to be cut. Cut house-cleaners? More germs. Cut nursing staff, more work and more propensity for errors. And so on.

------
*Actually I am far from convinced on this one. I can see other mistakes being made with such a system. You call up Patient Jones' record. Make and entry. Then go over and work with Patient Johnson and do something, go back to the computer and mistakenly enter whatever was done with Johnson on Jones's record. Also, such systems are not perfect. What happens if the system goes down? My guess is most hospitals would have a paper chart backup system. So some aspects of this are definitely not unambiguous to me.
Steve 12:07 PM

 
Externalities My post on public goods laid out on of the areas for what I think it legitimate government action. Externalities is another area, that I think, can allow for legitimate government action. The basic idea behind an externality is that either the cots or the benefits of an activity is not born or recieved by the person undertaking the activity. That is suppose you are sharing an apartment and your roommate decides to smoke a cigerette. Now he is not the only one bearing the costs, you are also bearing the cost (lets say the smoke gives you a headache). So you are bearing some of the costs and the result is that you roommate will smoke too much. That is the simple version of an externality. The basic problem results in either over-production (when there are external costs) and an under-production (when there are external benefits). The reason for the name externality is that part of the benefits or costs are external to the market, that is not reflected in the price. Since the price is wrong, you get the wrong level of output.

So what can be done? Well one option is to try and internalize the externality. This can be done by having the government place a per unit tax or subsidy on the the item that is generating the externality. The problem here is that the amount of information is rather large, so the government's solution is likely to be inefficient.

Another option that is popular with pollution is to come up with a market mechanism for trading pollution credits. Basically you limit the amount of pollution that can be generated then provide firms with a number of credits which they can sell or buy. Those firms with clean technology can sell and those who have dirtier technology can buy. If the price of the credits rise, then there is an incentive to install cleaner technology. In the end, the externality is internalized and the problem solved...in theory. Again a problem is that this requires a considerable amount of information.

What kind of information? Not only do you need to know about such things as emissions from firms (in the case of pollution), but also the preferences of the individuals in society and a way to determine was is the "optimal" level of pollution. This makes the problem very difficult. Still this difficulty does not mean such methods to internalize externalities should be written off.

This does lead to a bit of a problem though. When to try to correct for an externality. My basic (pragmatic) rule is when the estimated (marginal) benefits of taking corrective action exceeds the estimated (marginal) costs then the corrective action should be undertaken. Still this does leave one with alot of room to argue and does not provide a concrete decision rule. Since the above relies on estimates it is easy to see that there would be lots of arguing as to what is the correct estimate.

Another manner of resolving the problems of externalities that I haven't mentioned is the idea captured by the Coase Theorem:

If property rights are completely specified, and transactions costs are zero, then the outcome will be efficient and idependent of the initial allocation of property rights.

Basically what this says is that if property rights are completely specified and transactions costs are zero the efficient outcome will result. That is the two parties can get together and arrive at a better outcome than the status quo. The problem is that property rights are often not specified and transactions costs are not zero, so the efficient outcome maynot be achieved by bargaining/private interaction. Still it is another aspect of this issue to consider. Simply because there is an externality, that in and of itself is not sufficient reason for government involvement. Another, interesting result of this theorem is that the allocation of property rights is irrelevant. So the issue of the courts trying to decide what is "fair" or "right" is largely irrelevant at least from the standpoint of efficiency.
Steve 11:52 AM

 
Sit-n-Spin Stupidity Needing some laughs I headed over to Counterpin Central to see what crap Hesiod was putting up, and there you go. Direct evidence that Limbaugh incited fans to make threats of violence against Tom Daschle. The evidence? Letters addressed to "Tom 'The Devil' Daschle", "Tom 'Osama' Daschle", and "Tom 'Saddam' Daschle" (technically the last one is due to a conservative lobbying group, but lets not let that get in the way of being honest). There you have it! Direct evidence that Rush's fans have sent letters with mean and nasty addressee lines on them. Perhaps Rush should be censored. I'd same something about Daschle, but I'm afraid he'd feel threatened (the big wimp).

Update: Be sure to check out the comments. Hell, even Jesse is saying Daschle needs to stop whining.
Steve 10:42 AM

 
Noam Chomsky's Bravo Sierra Economics Admittedly this is an older article by Chomsky, but I still think going over it and pointing out some of the dishonesty is worthwhile. I decided to look up some of Chomsky's article after reading this article at Front Page Magazine.com (link via Henry Hanks at Croooow! Blog). I noted many of Chomsky's quotes were rather short and was wondering about the context. Anyhow, I stumbled across this article by Chomsky and since it is about economics I decided to take a look...and man what a mess.

Lets start with the U.N.'s Universal Decleration of Human Rights, Chomsky seems to read Article 23 (the right to work under just and favorable conditions) as everybody has a right to a job. I suppose one could read it that way, but I suggest that it would be a barbaric reading of that Article. Namely Chomsky says the following:

Let's turn to Article 23. It states: "Everyone has a right to work under just and favourable conditions." The ILO has just published a report estimating the level of global unemployment - understood to mean the position of not having enough work for subsistence - in January 1994 at about 30%. That, it says accurately, is a crisis worse than that in the 1930s.

Well my first thought is what the Hell was the unemployment, globally speaking, during the 1930's. My guess is nobody really knows so Chomsky is safe here in his proclomation, but of course, my guess is unemployment was actually worse. Second, the right is a right to "work under just and favorable conditions" not that everybody has a right to a job. Chomsky, supposedly a linguist, is definitely reading alot more into the article than seems to be there. If the article meant that people had a right to a job then I think the article would read something like, "Everyone has a right to work, and under just and favorable conditions." What this amounts to is Nannyism, that is where the little people need to be taken care of like children are taken care of by a Nanny. The world is a big mean place, people can't deal with it, so we'll put somebody in charge (presumably the U.N.) to make sure nothing bad really happens. Of course, typically the nanny (in real life) is also something of a tyrant. Step out of line and the nanny punishes you. Now, this is true of most governments, but a nanny system does not operate by democracy, majority voting, etc. The nanny makes the rules, the nanny enforces the rules, and if you don't like it well that is just too bad because you don't what is good for you.

Chomsky continues a bit later with this

In the US, of course, there is currently a recovery. But it's remarkably sluggish, with less than a third of the job growth of the previous six recoveries. Furthermore, of the jobs that are being created, an enormous proportion - more than a quarter in 1992 - are temporary jobs and most are not in the productive part of the economy. Economists welcome this vast increase in temporary jobs as an "improvement in the flexibility of labour markets". No matter that it means that when you go to sleep at night you don't know if you're going to have work the next morning - it's good for profits, not people, which means that it's good for the economy in the technical sense.

First, the recovery that started in the latter part of 1991 turned out to be a rather robust recovery that created quite a few jobs. Further, having temporary jobs is not horrendous. The last part is pure rhetorical bravo sierra, IMO. Temporary workers offer a couple of attractive features for employers. First, it allows them to fill seasonal jobs with little additional addition to their own Human Resources department. Second, and perhaps more significant, is it gives a firm a chance to evaluate an employee without the fear of lawsuits if they decide the employee is not what they are looking for.

Chomsky really shifts into high gear dishonesty with this bit, IMO

Another aspect of the recovery is that people arc working longer for less money. The workload is continuing to increase, while wages are continuing to decline - which is unprccedented for a recovery. US wages - as measured by labour costs per unit Output - are now the lowest in the industrial world except for Britain.

Chomsky is defining the wage rate as

Total Wage Costs/Output.

Now, that ratio can go up and down for a number of reasons. Lets just focus on the going down part. The ratio can go down if one of the following occurs.

1. Total wage costs decrease and output stays fixed.
2. Output increases and total wage costs stay fixed.
3. Output increases faster than wages increase.
4. Output increases and total wage costs decrease.

Now, which of the above happned? I am not sure, but my guess is it is number 3. If you go the the Bureau of Labor Statistics website and go look at trends in employment costs you will see that wages have increased by about 42% since 1992. So...if wages are increasing...and looking at our list and assuming Chomsky is right, then it must be 3 (either that or it isn't 3 and Chomsky is lying). So actually wages are increasing, just that output (i.e. productivity) is increasing at a faster rate.

Chomsky concludes that paragraph with this insipid coment:

It is usually claimed that these welcome developments just result from market forces, like laws of nature, and the usual factors are identified, such as international trade and automation. To put it kindly, that's a bit misleading: neither trade nor automation has much to do with market forces.

Yes, actually market forces are controlled by the mega-multi-national-military-industrial-pharma-corporations for their own gain. Periodically they throw things into recession lest the stupid masses figure things out. To make it even further difficult to spot, these corporations sometimes raise the wage rate to keep the working masses (i.e. stupid people) ignorant of what is really going on. Thank goodness for the brilliant insights of the offal filled mind of Noam Chomsky to point this horrible system out to us.

Chomsky then turns his keen perceptive powers to transporation.

Take trade. One well-known fact about trade is that it's highly subsidized with huge market-distorting factors, which I don't think anybody's ever tried to measure. The most obvious is that every form of transport is highly subsidized, whether it's maritime, aeronautical, or roads or rail.

Yes, road travel is subsidized by placing taxes on gasoline. Everybody knows that taxes raise the price and when the price rises you certainly buy more...uhhhh wait. No that can't be right. Another fine example of Chomsky talking out of his ass. Sure, roads are paid for via taxes, but taxes reduce the purchasing power of consumers. Further, roads have many of the qualities of public goods. So, is Chomsky saying roads should be provided by private parties? If so why is he advocated a sub-standard outcome? The same goes for air traffic controllers. Frankly, he seems a bit schizophrenic to me. Maybe he needs some time with Dr. Carol Wolman, she could probably diagnose Chomsky based on his essays on the internet alone!

Chomksy now makes me really doubt his grip on reality:

GATT and NAFTA just increase these tendencies, hence harming markets in incalculable ways. And if we proceed, we find that the alleged efficiencies of trade are to a large extent an ideological construction. They don't have any substantive meaning. With automation, for instance, there's no doubt that it puts people out of work. But the fact of the matter is that automation is so inefficient that it had to be developed in the state sector for decades - meaning the US military system. And the kind of automation that was developed in the state sector - at huge public cost and enormous market distortion - was a very special kind. It was designed in order to de-skill workers and to enhance managerial power. This has nothing to do with economic efficiency; it's to do with power relations.

My goodness, why are so many on the far left enamored with this kook? Automation was well underway before the U.S. had any significant military system in place. Further, his comments on GATT and NAFTA are just unsubstantiated rhetoric (i.e. bullshit).

I have to stop, the man's writings give me a headache. I need to go find some aspirin.
Steve 10:19 AM

Tuesday, December 03, 2002

 
Kevin Drum On Invading Iraq Drum looks at a book by Ken Pollack, The Threatening Storm, that builds the case for invading Iraq and the conclusion is that invasion is probably the only recourse. He goes through the four main points of the book.

1. Can Saddam build nuclear weapons?
2. Would Saddam use a nuclear weapon if he had one?
3. Can Saddam directly attack the U.S.?
4. How reliable is Pollack's judgement/research?

In short the answers are

1. Yes.
2. The probability is definitely pretty high.
3. No, highly unlikely.
4. Seems to be pretty good.

The final conclusion, it looks like invasion is the only real solution that has a high degree of certainty of working. Kevin also notes that if Saddam gets his hands on nuclear weapons and the U.S. and the rest of the world does nothing there is a high probability that Saddam will wipe out the Kurds living inside Iraq. Genocide is not a good thing, and you should oppose it if you are liberal or conservative or whatever. Go read the post it is really good.

Link via The Daily Rant.
Steve 4:34 PM

 
Some New Talking Points From the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy This is an interesting article on taxes and who payes them. First, the article notes that Bush's tax cuts back in 2001 accounted for only a small fraction of the decrease in government revenue, about 20%. The rest of it is due to the economic slow down. I have pointed this out before elsewhere, but thought I point it out here too. When the economy slows down (i.e. unemployment goes up, output goes down, etc.) then it is not at all unusual to see tax revenue declining. So this makes the rhetoric from the liberals/left that Bush's tax cut was a budget buster responsible for the deficit in part dishonest.

Another interesting point of the article is that since so much of the tax revenue depends on so few people that tax revenue is now more volatile. That is there can be substantial swings in tax revenue as the economic performance of that group changes.

In explaining how their earlier estimates had missed the mark, CBO pointed to the rapid decline in capital gains and in the "slower growth of very high incomes in comparison to that of overall income." These two components are believed by CBO to have contributed almost half of the rapid revenue growth that had equally confounded estimators over the last several years. While stock market volatility is now familiar, it evidently has a corollary in the federal budget.

Remember this chart, well if the top 5% are paying over 50% of the taxes then if the top 5% have a decrease in their income then it stands to reason there will be a major decrease in tax revenue. A 5% decrease in their income would decrease tax revenue by about 2.5%. Now if tax revenues are about $1 trillion dollar this would decrease taxes by about $25 billion dollars.

Wow, now this part is worthy of an article by Krugman and Drum!

Where will the money come from? The evidence shows the pattern of foisting increasingly larger percentages of the tax burden onto a smaller group of people can't continue. At some point, the few, on which the tax system has become ever more dependent, are overly susceptible to an economic downturn or to make the calculation that additional work is not compensated by their after-tax return. The result is that if federal government spending is not controlled, then the tax burden will have to begin extending backward down the income ladder if it is to garner the necessary revenue.

Why this guy is advocating raising taxes on the poor! Well, okay not really. What he is saying is that continued expansion of government spending will basically require that there be an increase on the tax burden for the poor because increasing the income tax on the "rich" wont work. Basically this is the Laffer Curve effect. Now stop laffering, the Laffer Curve is a valid concept. The idea behind the Laffer Curve is simple. Tax revenue is first increasing in the tax rate reaches a (or more than one) peak, then starts to decline. The problem is we only know what tax revenue will be for certainty at two points, the tax rates of 0% and 100%. Clearly if tax rates are 0% then tax revenue is zero. If (income) tax rates are 100% then (income) tax revenue is zero (why work or earn income it is all going to go to the government...better to just sit around doning nothing). As for the rest of the curve, who knows what the shape is, and further the shape could change over time. Now before the liberal readers out there start going on off on how Supply Side economics doesn't work, this is not Supply Side economics, but the Laffer Curve, one part of Supply Side theory and a part that all economists agree on.

In short, what J. T. Young is saying is that there is an upper limit on government spending and we may very well have reached it.

Thanks to Henry Hanks at Croooow! Blog for the link.
Steve 3:53 PM

 
WSJ Editorial Flap The Wall Street Journal had an editorial about the declining number of tax payers and what that could do to the "tax cut movement". That is, with the number of people who pay taxes decreasing the amount of support for cutting taxes will also decline. The article closed by recommending that the White House not craft tax reform/cuts that further decrease the number of tax payers. Now a number of people have gotten their panties in a wad over this. The list of wadded panty wearers includes Kevin Drum at Calpundit and Paul Krugman at the NY Times. There is only one problem. The article by the Wall Street Journal does not advocate raising taxes on the poor. It merely warns against shrinking the tax base further lest support for tax cuts erodes to a point where that support is not sufficient to pass further tax cuts. From this, Kevin Drum and Paul Krugman have leapt to the conlcusion that this means raise the taxes on the poor.

What seems to have set Drum and Krugman off is some ill-chosen rhetoric by the Journal where they call people who don't pay any taxes at all or even get money back and who are also low income as "lucky duckies". However, in reading the actual article the $12,000 a year person (household?) is just an example, nowhere in the article is there anything about raising the taxes on a person at this income level.

Krugman and Drum then go on to bang on the table (metaphorically speaking) by pointing out that a person making $12,000 a year actually pays more than the 4% in income taxes when you look at all taxes (i.e. payroll and sales taxes). Unfortunately the Journal does mention this, but doesn't calculate a total tax burden. But then again I am left wondering why should the Journal calculate the total tax burden when they are talking about income tax cuts, not tax cuts in general. Drum links to this report that looks at who pays taxes in California. The problem is that the White House and Congress can do nothing about these taxes. You want them cut, then go complain to Grey Davis and the California State Legislature. The White House and Congress can only work with Federal taxes not State taxes.

So it seems the Journal's point still stands. The only thing low income tax payers are going to care about are cutting payroll taxes, or State taxes (sales taxes and property taxes). Does all this mean that taxes on the poor should be raised? I don't get that from the reading. All I get is that the tax payer base should not be shrunk anymore by "targeted" tax breaks (increased deductions, exemptions, etc.).

Hoy discusses this as well. The comments at Hoy's site are truely spectacular in their abiltiy to distort what even Hoy said. Especially Andrew Edwards comments. Why must people do this. Hoy didn't say the extremely poor should have a tax increase, in fact he said exactly the opposite.
Steve 8:14 AM

Monday, December 02, 2002

 
Jesse the Labor Economist Okay not really. Jesse is making a big mistake in logic. The pay for government workers that he is going on about is not appearing out of the thin air. That money comes from tax revenue, those tax revenues by and large come from individuals. Further, if those taxes were not collected it is not like the money would be buried in a tin can or burned. Basically all you are doing is taking money from one pocket and putting it another and then saying you have more money. (Technically it is worse in that taxes impose a deadweight loss which is an inefficiency on the economy, further there are the expenditures to comply with the tax code which is unproductive [i.e. it doesn't make anything] so the most correct analogy is, "taking money from one pocket, losing some of that money, then putting it in the other pocket and proclaiming yourself richer.) So this notion that Jesse is going on about, paying government workers more is good for the economy, is extremely weak at best, IMO.

Aside: I bet in his comments section he will come back with a nice insult directed at me.
Steve 2:00 PM

 
An Interesting Post by Aziz Poonawalla Aziz makes the point that just because U.S. and U.K. papers don't cover the debate within the Muslim communities about Wahhabism and other unsavory things going on in the Muslim world in the name of religion doesn't mean such a debate does not exist. Aziz links to this interview with Stephen Schwartz at NRO. Here are some interesting tidbits:

Leading Muslims outside the U.S. denounce Wahhabism, and many denounced the atrocity of 9/11. Unfortunately, however, most of U.S. media is completely incompetent in finding, listening to, or understanding these voices. U.S. media does not interview anti-Wahhabi sheikhs or imams or muftis in the Islamic world. U.S. media paid no attention when the head of Bosnian Islamic scholars, Mustafa efendija Ceric, preached eloquently against terrorism. U.S. media did not notice when an Albanian daily — in a country with a Muslim majority — hailed the U.S. action in Afghanistan last year with the headline "Nobody Veils the Statue of Liberty's Face." Nobody in the U.S. media has followed up on reports by myself and others showing that Kosovar Albanian Muslims would like to fight for the West in Iraq. Worse, U.S. media has reported very little of the mobilization of 70 million Indonesian Muslims against extremism in the aftermath of the Bali horror.

Earlier on in the interview there is this comment from Schwartz as well that looks at why 15 of the highjackers were from Saudi Arabia:

Lopez: Why were 15 of the 19 9/11 terrorists from Saudi Arabia?

Schwartz: For three reasons.

First, although no more than 40 percent of Saudi subjects, at the most, consider themselves Wahhabis, the Wahhabi clergy has controlled education in the kingdom, so that all subjects have been raised in an atmosphere of violent hatred for other Islamic traditions and for the other faiths.

Second, the Saudi regime is undergoing a deep social crisis and movements of protest have been diverted by the ultra-Wahhabi faction of the royal family, toward support of Bin Laden and his gangsters.

Third, the main object of protest in the kingdom is the flagrant hypocrisy between Wahhabi Puritanism and Saudi royal decadence. Although the majority of young people want to be free of Wahhabism altogether, there remains a section of the populace that reacts — as it always has — to Saudi hypocrisy by a flight into ultraradicalism.

The involvement of 15 Saudis out of 19 hijackers reflects an inevitable outcome of Wahhabi ideology, not a special tactic by Osama bin Laden.--Emphasis added

Perhaps all this focus on Iraq is wrong. I think it is well past time to stop calling the Saudi's our allies, or at the very least reconsider our long term relationship with them. Further, it seems the focus on Islam is wrong, perhaps the focus should be on Wahhabism.

Update: Here is some more on Stephen Swchartz' book that is basically a history of Wahhabism.

"Wahhabism exalts and promotes death in every element of its existence, the suicide of its adherents, mass murder as a weapon against civilization, and above all the suffocation of the mercy embodied in Islam," Schwartz writes. "The war against Wahhabism is therefore a war to the death, as the Second World War was a war to the death against fascism. But triumph over death is the victory of life."

Steve 1:27 PM

 
Enron, One Year Later This article looks at what caused the corporate scandals that struck last year. The conlcusion is that bad laws made it easier for management to misuse shareholders funds with the final nail being changes in the tax code. These changes resulted in a shift in executive compensation from salaries to stock options. With large stock options the executives now had an incentive to maximize the value of the stock. While improving the profitability of the company would improve the value of the stocks, engaging in financial/accounting slight of hand would be faster and more lucrative. Basically a principal agent problem.
Steve 1:09 PM

 
David Frum: Gore on the "New" Family This is a rather surprising turn for Gore. Seems that Gore is running very hard to the left. We all knew he was very extreme in his views on the environment, but now he is showing some new colors. Not only has he become more radical economically (single-payer health care), and dovish (attacking Bush's Iraq policies), but now he is arguing that America get used to the "New" Family where divorce is okay, and unconventional households are considered the norm.

(Warning: This is based on a review of Gore's new book Joined at the Heart. I have not read the book, although I might just to see if it is truely as horrific as Frum and the reviewer imply.)

Link via the Volokh Conspiracy.
Steve 11:44 AM

 
Robert Reich on the Payroll Tax Holiday Robert Reich details a payroll tax holiday that would put about $5,000 into the typical two income household and force the Republicans to play on the Democrats terms. Not a bad strategy, in that it would at least show that the Democrats are proactive. Further, it could give the Democrats a chance to steal the "tax cuts" issue from the Republicans. The only problem is that it will make the Democrats look horribly inconsistent. The payroll tax pays for Social Security and Medicare, and a Holiday on paying part of that tax would mean that those programs might go bankrupt sooner and under more robust growth scenarios. The Democrats spent the last election screeching about how evil it was that Bush wanted to privatize Social Security (i..e give people more control over how that money is invested). Oh well, who cares about consistency or telling the truth.

Link via Tapped.
Steve 11:27 AM

 
John Weidner on Krugman and the Spoils System A few Op-Eds ago Krugman was wringing his hands about the spoils system (where the winner of an election appoints political cronies to government jobs) and that Bush had found a way around the modern day protections against the spoils system, privatization. Weidner points to a fatal flaw in Krugman's hand wringing:

Here is Krugman's reasoning. Andrew Jackson, way back in the 1830s, supposedly began what had become known at the time as the "spoils system" under which federal jobs were reserved for political supporters. It was replaced by the federal civil service which was intended to correct such abuses. Krugman, however, laments that the Bush administration has found a way around those constraints on political hirings and firings by way of privitization. Moreover, the principle architect of aggressive privatization has been none other than Jeb Bush, who has blazed the trail to bring back the spoils system in Florida.

Krugman's Florida claims are based solely on a Miami Herald story and probably (just our guess) will not stand close scrutiny. But his larger point is just as flawed. The spoils system didn't really end with the federal civil service. By the 1930s it was alive and well again and safely housed within the Democratic party. Today the Democrats' largest and most powerful constituencies are public employee unions. When the Democrats win; they win. Government expands, jobs are created and bureaucracy becomes more intrenched. This is what "spoils" means.

Thanks to Jane Galt for the link.
Steve 10:47 AM

 
Public Goods A few times earlier in other posts I have mentioned public goods, and in regards to Universal Health Care gave the term some more definition. However, I think this is a topic that deserves some more in depth discussion. What is a public good? In short a public good is a good where the consumption is non-rivalrous. What does that mean? It means that when one person consumes the good it does not diminish another person's ability to consume those same resources. A counter example will help illustrate the point I think. A candy bar is rivalrous in its consumption. Once I have eaten it you cannot. A public good would be were both you and I can consume the same good. That is if the provider supplies X amount of the good, I can consume X and so can you. The most common example is National Defense. So long as we live in the U.S. all of us benefit to the same degree from the defense spending the government undertakes.

So what is the problem? Well the problem is that if voluntary provision of such goods is relied upon there is an undersupply. To see this suppose that we can attach a price to each individual for their use of the public good. Further, lets assume the a firm competitively supplies the public good (for the minute lets not worry about the possibility of non-competitive behavior of this firm, I want to show why the voluntary provision of public goods wont work). So, the resulting solution (after alot of mathematics) the supply of the public good depends on each person's price for the public good. Further the person realizes that the less they contribute the better off they are. The problem is called the free rider problem. Assuming that everybody else is providing (or paying for) pⁱ, of the public good and the total contribution is åpⁱ then it should be obvious that I will be strictly better off by not contributing (or contributing as little as possible). The reasoning is that I can take my contribution to the public good, call it p^j and spend it on private goods. Further, given the non-rivalrous nature of public goods I can still consume å(pⁱ) - p^j (that is the amount of the public good less my contribution). Further, this logic applies to everyone. So in equilibrium it is not unusual to find zero provision on a public good.

Now not all public goods work like the pure public good described above. For example, roads are a public good, but they are subject to congestion. Congestion is where as more and more people use the good, the benefit accruing to each person declines. In these cases, user fees can help to relieve congestion. Note however, that these user fees are to relieve congestion, not to cover the costs of the public good.

So why all this discussion of public goods? I think it is one of the areas for legitimate government action. The provision of public goods should be undertaken by government because the private solution is very inefficient and people can be made better off with the government providing these goods. The problem though is that even government doesn't have all the necessary information to provide the efficient level of the public good. In the discussion above with the individual prices this information is known only to the individual. The incentive to misrepresent one' actual desire for the public good is still there. Hence the government is going to be shooting somewhat in the dark. All that the government will have to go by is the past reactions to various levels of the public good provided. Further, with voting things can get really complicated. The only real advance in this area that I know of is the median voter theorem. The median voter in elections where there is one public good and the voters preferences are unimodal (that is they are increasing upto a point, then decreasing past that point) and the mean and median of the distribution of voters coincides then the outcome is efficient (i.e. nobody can be made better off without making somebody worse off). But note all those conditions on this outcome. Unimodal preferences, one public good, and then the mean and the median have to coincide. That is asking alot.

So it is pretty much a given that the government is going to be inefficient. My thinking on this is that while the government is inefficient the private approach is considerably more inefficient. So lets go with the government as provider of public goods.

And just to reiterate, a public good is a good that is non-rivalrous in its consumption. This lets out things like health care, housing, and food. Trying to provide for these items as if they were public goods is just dumb. You just might as well be up front and honest tell everyone what you really think. You want to take money (be honest here too, you aren't asking for charitable donations you want to take money from a group of people) from those who have it and spend it on those who don't because you think that is the right thing to do and that you don't think these people your are spending the money on are not to be trusted to spend it as you see fit.
Steve 9:48 AM

Sunday, December 01, 2002

 
Scoop Scoobie Scoobie is doing some research on the right-wing bias of the news media (funny how the only examples are the Washington Times, Fox News, and Rush Limbaugh--and what is up with this. The Rush Limbaugh Show is not a news program...or has that changed) and here are his credentials:

Another example is the deliberate and systematic twisting of a Washington Post story by Times reporter and Fox News poltical analyst Bill Sammon in his book At Any Cost: How Al Gore Tried To Steal the Election—portions of which were reprinted in the Times. Although I am not a trained journalist, my parents have a combined 90 years of journalistic experience for a small-town newspaper. If Sammon’s misconduct had been committed at the paper my parents work for, the perpetrator would be fired on the spot. Why hasn't the Washington Times (or Fox News) fired Sammon? Because the filter through which the Washington Times looks at the news is a microcosm of Sun Myung Moon’s worldview: it is a filter of intellectual dishonesty, predation, and malevolence.

By this reasoning I am a nurse and a real estate appraiser. After all this is what my parents did and they have talked to me about their jobs. So lets recap:

A limited number of "offenders".

One of whom does not claim to be a news source. (That I know of, I don't listen to Limbaugh.)

Hereditary credentials.

Can we say, unrepresentative sample, can we say dishonest, can we say stupid non-sequitur that does not support the argument? Sure we can, but lets no let logic get in the way of a good rant.
Steve 12:00 AM