January 2012

The Audacity of Doom

by Ivan Osorio on January 8, 2010

in Culture, Environment, Global Warming, Zeitgeist

At Bigjournalism.com, Woody Hochswender puts global warming alarmism in the context of a long tradition of doomsaying — which wasn’t invented by Al Gore and need not necessarily be about climate —  by looking at the dismal career of author Jonathan Schell.

1. Schell argued that given the incredibly dire state of things, a world-destroying nuclear exchange was inevitable. A nuclear exchange was virtually certain to happen, sooner or later, he said, and when it did radioactive clouds would blot out the sun and create a “nuclear winter” resulting in the extinction of human life. Once it started, there was no going back. The concept of inevitability was mortised into the framework of the argument.

2. It was also depicted as a race against time! We had only a teeny-weeny window in which to reverse the horrendous policies and mindset of our ignorant, bellicose leaders (read: Republicans). It was, like, so super urgent, action had to be taken, like, yesterday.

3. But, almost paradoxically, it was already too late! In the bottomless pit of his despair and revulsion at the civilized world for imperiling the planet, Schell contended that we were already too far gone, and it really was too late to stop the nuclear holocaust, although everyone had a moral duty to try.

Sound familiar? What we have here, as Yogi Berra would say, is déjà vu all over again. The eerie parallels between the nuclear-freeze movement and the global-warming movement are clear: the direness of the forecast (which resembles prophecy and has a teleological dimension); the dramatic, race-against-time urgency of the healing project; the element of existential threat as a goad to activism; the notion of human extinction and the “fate” of the earth hanging in the balance, as if suspended by a slender thread; and finally, the admonition that it is probably already too late. The nuclear clock is about to strike midnight; the ice caps are already melting. Fear and trembling all around.

Like other neo-Malthusians, Schell has been spectacularly wrong time and again, but that’s not likely to make him or his correligionists give up on despair. For doomsayers, every year is 2012.

For a more uplifting — and accurate — view of human history, see here.

Spiked Online on Art, Commerce, and Rebellion

by Ivan Osorio on January 8, 2010 · 1 comment

in Culture, Economy

At Spiked, Patrick West explains one of the most overlooked accomplishments of punk: the unabashed, open acknowledgment of commerce as necessary for the pursuit of art.

[A]rtists have always had their patrons, and have produced art in accordance to their patron’s or their government’s taste. William Shakespeare famously produced pro-Tudor propaganda (Richard III being the most notorious example) for the simple reason that he needed to earn his own ‘filthy lucre’. And while the Catholic Church would never have comissioned such dark, misanthropic plays as Hamlet orMacbeth, it is thanks to the Vatican’s patronage that we have many of the works of Michelangelo.

‘Government ’ and ‘corporations’ have always controlled art, and it is naive to think this is just a new phenomenon. One of the best things punk did was to draw our attention to this historical norm so starkly. Yes, Lydon’s bald cynicism may be frustrating. But it is worth keeping in mind that this Christmas just past, the UK number one slot was fought over between fans of a manufactured TV popstar, and those who favoured that teenage ‘No I WON’T clean up my room!’ anthem by Rage Against the Machine. With little regard for irony, fans of RATM even downloaded en masse a song about anti-conformity.

Unfortunately, as West notes, the commercialization of rebellion — or rather rebellious posing — is still too often lost on its consumers.

But there’s another important point to keep in mind — elitist complaints about the rise of mass culture can often translate into complaints about the masses having access to culture.

For more on why patronage is quite OK, see here.

Massie on the Politics of Snow

by Ivan Osorio on January 8, 2010

in Culture, Economy, Politics as Usual

At The Spectator, Alex Massie refers to snow to illustrate how over-reliance on government can hinder incentives for social cooperation.

Once upon a time and not so very long ago the general public would have cleared the pavements themselves. Indeed, it used to be thought only good manners and a mark of proper, considerate neighbourliness to clear your own patch of pavement. Alas, no longer. It seems as though we now expect councils to do that for us too.

The result? Pavements are not being cleared. This is less a mark of government failure than a collective, unfortunate, decision to rely on government well past the point at which councils can actually deliver a service. Consequently, this dependency demonstrates both a triumph of statism and its failure.

They do things differently in America. When I lived in Washington it was expected that you’d clear your own** bit of sidewalk. Result? The pavements were in better condition than seems to be the case in much, perhaps most, of Britain.

…

**And not just because the DC council is famously inept.

I’m also happy to note that here in D.C., snow removal has improved considerably over the last decade.

And then there was Mayor Marion S. Barry Jr. of Washington, who somehow survived his mishaps with bad weather. In 1987, Mr. Barry was in southern California attending the Super Bowl — getting a manicure and playing tennis at the Beverly Hills Hilton — when a winter storm buried the District of Columbia. The nation’s capital became the butt of ridicule. In 1996, Mr. Barry — who was elected to a fourth, nonconsecutive term in 1994 after serving a federal sentence on cocaine possession charges — was excoriated by residents after it took nearly a week to clear the streets of snow.

Nobel Prize Winning Economist Says Obama Policies Delaying Economic Recovery

by Hans Bader on January 8, 2010 · 3 comments

in Deregulate to Stimulate, Economy, Employment, Energy, Environment, Global Warming, Health and Illness, Healthcare, Insurance, International, Labor, Politics as Usual, Precaution & Risk, Regulation, Sanctimony, Stimulus to Nowhere, Trade

In the Wall Street Journal, Nobel Prize-winning economist Gary Becker and others explain how President Obama’s policies are delaying and retarding the inevitable economic recovery, keeping unemployment high even though the recession Obama inherited was similar to others in the past that gave way to rapid recoveries:

In terms of U.S. output contractions, the so-called Great Recession was not much more severe than the recessions in 1973-75 and 1981-82. Yet recovery from the latest recession has started out much more slowly. For example, real GDP expanded by 7.7% in 1983 after unemployment peaked at 10.8% in December 1982, whereas GDP grew at an unimpressive annual rate of 2.2% in the third quarter of 2009. Although the fourth quarter is likely to show better numbers–probably much better–there are no signs of an explosive take off from the recession. …

In terms of discouraging a rapid recovery, other government proposals created greater uncertainty and risk for businesses and investors. These include plans to increase greatly marginal tax rates for higher incomes. In addition, discussions at the Copenhagen conference and by the president to impose high taxes on carbon dioxide emissions must surely discourage investments in refineries, power plants, factories and other businesses that are big emitters of greenhouse gases.

Congressional ‘reforms’ of the American health delivery system have gone through dozens of versions. The separate bills passed by the House and Senate worry small businesses, in particular. They fear their labor costs will increase because of mandates to spend much more on health insurance for their employees. The resulting reluctance of small businesses to invest, expand and hire harms households as well, because it slows the creation of new jobs and the growth of labor incomes. …

Even though some of the proposed antibusiness policies might never be implemented, they generate considerable uncertainty for businesses and households. Faced with a highly uncertain policy environment, the prudent course is to set aside or delay costly commitments that are hard to reverse. The result is reluctance by banks to increase lending–despite their huge excess reserves–reluctance by businesses to undertake new capital expenditures or expand work forces, and decisions by households to postpone major purchases.

Several pieces of evidence point to extreme caution by businesses and households. A regular survey by the National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB) shows that recent capital expenditures and near-term plans for new capital investments remain stuck at 35-year lows. The same survey reveals that only 7% of small businesses see the next few months as a good time to expand. Only 8% of small businesses report job openings, as compared to 14%-24% in 2008, depending on month, and 19%-26% in 2007.

Obama’s $800 billion stimulus package, which failed to cut unemployment, is now pressuring states to raise taxes, thanks to costly requirements it imposed on states at the behest of powerful public-employee unions.

Obama claimed the stimulus package was needed to prevent the economy from suffering from “irreversible decline,” but the Congressional Budget Office admitted that the stimulus package actually would shrink the economy “in the long run.”  Unemployment has skyrocketed past European levels, as big-spending countries have fared worse than thrifty ones.  The Obama Administration claims credit for creating imaginary jobs in non-existent Congressional districts.

As the Examiner notes, “If his stimulus program was approved, Obama promised, unemployment would not go above 8 percent this year. The reality is that it passed 10.3 percent in October. So now the stimulus books are being cooked to mollify an anxious public worried that real-world jobs continue to disappear and angry that Obama has thrown almost $1 trillion down the stimulus rathole.”

The stimulus package actually destroyed thousands of real world jobs by triggering trade wars with Canada and Mexico that killed jobs in America’s export sector (the stimulus package barred a measley 97 Mexican truckers from U.S. roads, a minor NAFTA violation that led to massive Mexican retaliation against U.S. exports of 40 farm products and kitchen goods worth $2.4 billion).  It also is wiping out jobs by inflicting costly mandates on state governments (such as repealing welfare reform, and imposing costly “prevailing wage” regulations and expensive racial set-asides).

The stimulus package has since spawned countless examples of government waste and corruption.  Recently, Obama fired an inspector general, Gerald Walpin, who uncovered millions of dollars of waste and fraud in the AmeriCorps program, including by a prominent Obama supporter, endangering the Obama supporter’s ability to administer federal stimulus spending in Sacramento.  Obama’s alleged justification for firing the inspector general turned out to be false.

On this day in 1835…

by Evan Banks on January 8, 2010 · 1 comment

in Culture, Odds & Ends, Zeitgeist

…the national debt was zero. Zero!

It was the only day in our nation’s history we’ve been out of the red. With debts incurred during the American Revolution and it’s aftermath, we started $75.4 million in the hole when the debt was first recorded in 1791.

Even adjusted for inflation, $75.4 million is a proverbial drop in the bucket compared to today’s debt, which is projected to be $14.46 trillion, according to whitehouse.gov (.pdf, page 128).  That’s 98.1 percent of the nation’s GDP, and would buy a lot of Hessian mercenaries back in 1791.

Regulation of the Day 98: Gastrointestinal Drugs

by Ryan Young on January 8, 2010

in Deregulate to Stimulate, Health and Illness, Healthcare, Personal Liberty, Precaution & Risk, Regulation, Regulation of the Day

Did you know that the federal government has a Gastrointestinal Drugs Advisory Committee? It’s true. If you don’t believe me, you can attend their upcoming meeting on February 23. The topic of the day will be a new drug application to treat hepatic encephalopathy.

Hopefully some hepatic encephalopathy sufferers will be there. They can ask the Committee why the FDA takes as long as a decade (and as much as $800 million!) to approve medications that could be helping people and saving lives right now.

“We the People” on Obamacare

by Fran Smith on January 8, 2010

in Culture, Healthcare

Somehow I missed this during the holiday season – singer, songwriter, comedian Ray Stevens’ “We the People.” It’s a country western singing-video about Obamacare that so far has had 1,592,907 views on YouTube.  The song’s Tea Party theme warns politicians in its refrain:

“You vote Obamacare, we’ll vote you otta there.”

Stevens was interviewed about the video in Human Events, where he said:

“It’s not about health care it’s not about cap and trade…it’s about control. These people are socialists and Marxist and they want control and they want to be the elite ruling class and that’s not what America is and America needs to wake up, and I think we are, finally, and kick the bums out.”

HT: James Gattuso

Will Congress protect the economy and the Constitution from Mass. v. EPA?

by Marlo Lewis on January 8, 2010

in Global Warming, Legal

In this two-part post on MasterResource.Org, the free-market energy blog, I argue that the EPA’s proposed Tailoring Rule is a temporary, legally questionable, and incomplete antidote to Massachusetts v. EPA’s legacy of “absurd results.”
 
Here is the gist of the column:
 
Congress did not intend to apply the Clean Air Act’s preconstruction permitting (PSD) and Title V operating permits programs to small entities, did not intend for those programs to implode under their own weight, did not intend for PSD to stop development, and did not intend for Title V to undermine Clean Air Act compliance.
 
However, those are the inexorable consequences of the greenhouse gas endangerment finding and motor vehicle emission standards that the Court authorized and indeed pushed EPA to make. To avoid this mess, which would likely produce a fierce political backlash against EPA and the Obama administration, the Agency now proposes via the Tailoring Rule to amend the PSD and Title V programs.
 
This breach of the separation of powers only compounds the constitutional crisis inherent in the Court’s attempt to legislate global warming policy from the bench.

Even if the Tailoring Rule survives judicial scrutiny despite its flouting of clear statutory language, it will provide no defense against Mass. v. EPA’s most absurd result: regulation of carbon dioxide under the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) program.

Congress must step up to the plate and either overturn Mass. v. EPA, overturn the endangerment finding, or, at a minimum, prohibit EPA from regulating carbon dioxide from stationary sources.

Waxman-Markey’s impact on housing prices — more than your average postage stamp

by Marlo Lewis on January 7, 2010

in Global Warming

Proponents of the Waxman-Markey (W-M) cap-and-trade bill assure us it will cost the average household less than a postage stamp a day. The Heritage Foundation’s energy team — David Kreutzer, Ben Lieberman, Karen Campbell, William Beach, and Nicolas Loris — have rebutted this claim six four ways from Sunday (see here, here, here, and here).

Some postage stamps, of course, cost more than most people’s homes. For example, this rather plain looking item, a two-pence stamp issued by the Mauritius post office in 1847, sells for $600,000 or more.

 post_office_mauritius

Now, nobody is saying that Waxman-Markey will cost the average household what it costs to buy a mansion, but the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) estimates that W-M could increase the purchase price of a new home by $1,371 to $6,387, and that this would have the effect of making 337,000 to 1.57 million households unable to qualify for a home mortage. Repeat after me: “Law of Unintended Consequences!”

NAHB summarizes its analysis on pp. 13-14 of its December 30, 2009 comment on various EPA rulemakings regarding greenhouse gases (GHGs) under the Clean Air Act. Here are the main steps:

  1. To produce the materials used to construct a typical single-family home (2,420 square feet plus two-car garage), manufacturers emit 55.42 metric tons (MT) of carbon dioxide-equivalent (CO2-e) GHGs.
  2. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), using a 4% discount rate, projects that under W-M, carbon allowances in 2030 would cost between $19 and $87 per MT.
  3. Manufacturers’ costs for producing homebuilding materials would increase by $1,037 to $4,831 per single family home (when I do the arithmetic, I get an increase of $1,052 to $4,821).
  4. Factor in additional financing and broker commissions, and the price of a typical single-family home would increase by $1,371 to $6,387.
  5. To qualify for a mortgage, borrowers may not exceed a specific “front end ratio” — the percentage of income that would be consumed paying principal and interest on the mortage, plus property taxes and insurance. A common standard is that these payments should not exceed 28% of household income.
  6. In the low-cost case (carbon permit price = $19/MT CO2-e), roughly 337,000 households that would qualify for a mortgage before the W-M-induced price increase, no longer qualify. In the high-cost case (carbon permit price = $87/MT CO2-e), approximately 1.57 million U.S. households are priced out.

Some enterprising reporter should jump on this. What do Reps. Waxman and Markey have to say about NAHB’s analysis? When they drafted the bill, what assumptions did they make about its potential impacts on housing prices and homeownership? Indeed, can they adduce any evidence that they gave even a moment’s consideration to these important matters?

Thinking outside the box on security

by Fred Smith on January 7, 2010

in Mobility, Precaution & Risk, Regulation

The Washington Post editorial, “In the wake of Flight 253, the TSA must get more anti-terrorist tools” makes a short-sighted argument for increasing resources for the TSA.  Terrorists, as we’ve seen in Iraq and elsewhere, have diversified, wreaking havoc wherever individuals congregate.  Malls, mass transit systems, sports stadia, churches all represent targets.  To focus scarce taxpayer funds on the risks of air travel alone neglects the broader terrorist threat.

Why not encourage a more active anti-terrorist role for air travelers and airlines – and enact “Good Samaritan” laws to reduce their liability?  Unfortunately, current privacy laws and anti-discrimination lawsuits have restricted their ability to augment efforts of the TSA.  Consider how airlines might have responded to 9/11. A US Michael O’Leary might well have launched a “John Wayne” or a “Nervous Nelly” option.  The first would arm passengers (and crews) for self-defense (that approach might well have minimized the killing sprees at Virginia Tech and Fort Hood).  The latter might require passengers to strip and don strait jackets for the duration of the flight.  Competition would encourage a more careful balancing of security and privacy concerns with passengers playing a creative role.  Thank God the passenger on Northwest was not forced to remain in his seat!

Why should efforts to advance public safety exclude the public?  America’s history shows numerous ways in which the citizenry has played a critical security role.  Government should play a role in defending the citizenry but your focus on the role of bureaucracy alone risks losing the creativity of travelers and airlines.  Why not encourage their involvement too?

And, given the problems already observed with both the TSA and the HAS in their preemptive efforts to alone provide security, shouldn’t the possibility of enlisting business and the citizenry in this effort be considered?

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