Quotulatiousness

September 23, 2011

The cliché-meister strikes again

Filed under: Books, Economics, Environment, Media, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 13:04

Andrew Ferguson reviews the book That Used To Be Us by Thomas L. Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum. He didn’t find it a pleasant read:

Mr. Friedman can turn a phrase into cliché faster than any Madison Avenue jingle writer. He announces that “America declared war on math and physics.” Three paragraphs later, we learn that we’re “waging war on math and physics.” Three sentences later: “We went to war against math and physics.” And onto the next page: “We need a systemic response to both our math and physics challenges, not a war on both.” Three sentences later: We must “reverse the damage we have done by making war on both math and physics,” because, we learn two sentences later, soon the war on terror “won’t seem nearly as important as the wars we waged against physics and math.” He must think we’re idiots.

The slovenliness of our language, George Orwell wrote, makes it easier to have foolish thoughts, and while Mr. Friedman’s language has been tidied up a bit, the thinking remains what it has always been. The authors call themselves “frustrated optimists.” Their frustration is owing to the depredations of the last decade, which they call (Mr. Mandelbaum nods) the Terrible Twos. But self-contradiction is also part of the Friedman brand. In many other passages, the authors specifically trace the American slide to the end of the Cold War — though still elsewhere they remark that the 1990s were “positive for America.” It doesn’t help their argument, such as it is, that the evidence of decline they cite — crumbling infrastructure, a failing public-education system — predates both 2001 and 1989 by a long stretch. Our potholes and schools have been favorites of declinists for generations.

If the authors’ frustration is unoriginal and ill-defined, their optimism is terrifying. America will rebound — we will become the us that we used to be again, you might say and Mr. Friedman does — when we regain our ability to do “big things” through “collective action.” Collective action is a phrase that means “the federal government.” Among the big things that we will do are rework American industry, through regulation and taxation, to drastically cut carbon emissions. Another one of our big things is a big increase in the gasoline tax. We will also impose on us a new big carbon tax. We will use revenues to create a “clean energy” industry with millions of “green jobs” like the ones that were eliminated earlier this month at Solyndra. Readers will wonder, like the early environmentalist Tonto, “What do you mean ‘we,’ kemo sabe?”

H/T to Jon, my former virtual landlord, for the link.

Mexico to try market solution to drug wars

Filed under: Americas, Economics, Government, Law — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:54

Jesse Kline reports on the sudden conversion to drug legalization on the part of the Mexican government:

The United States imports a majority of it’s cocaine from Mexico, which has been embroiled in a brutal war among rival gangs for control of the lucrative trade.

Over 42,000 people have been killed in Mexico as a result of gang violence since President Felipe Calderon took office in 2006. Not a moment too soon, it appears the President is starting to recognize that the current approach to dealing with illicit drugs is not working.

“We must do everything to reduce demand for drugs. But if the consumption of drugs cannot be limited, then decision-makers must seek more solutions — including market alternatives — in order to reduce the astronomical earnings of criminal organizations,” Calderon said in a speech in New York.

Using the term “market alternatives” is a key choice of words. The reason organized crime has so successfully dominated the trade is the blanket prohibition on drugs, forcing the market underground. The same thing happened in the United States when alcohol was made illegal during Prohibition.

The solution to removing the criminal element from the drug trade is the same one that solved the problem with booze: legalize it. Allow drugs to be produced by private industry in a regulated environment. After all, gang violence has become more deadly than the substances they’re peddling. And we don’t see beer companies shooting each other for control of distribution networks.

Solyndra: “They doubled down, just like some chump who lost his stake at the Vegas blackjack tables”

Filed under: Economics, Government, Politics, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 10:55

Megan McArdle tries to figure out how Solyndra managed to spend nearly a billion dollars in two years:

By my count, Since September 2009, they borrowed $535 million from us to get their second fab up and running, raised $219 million in a private equity offering, got $175 million from issuing convertible promissory notes after their IPO was pulled, received $75 million in the last-ditch round where the DOE allowed their seniority to be subordinated, and maybe got a loan from a different bank. By the time they filed bankruptcy in August, my understanding is that they were basically out of cash.

The Washington Post‘s rather scathing new account, full of employees saying that post-loan, Solyndra started spending money like it was about to be discontinued, says the new facility for which we loaned them all that money cost $344 million to build. So it seems that in the space of two years, Solyndra managed to spend $344 million building a factory and $660 million . . . doing what?

Gary Johnson on the “job creation” idea

Filed under: Economics, Humour, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 00:42

The Guild S5E9

Filed under: Gaming, Humour — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 00:06

<a href='http://video.msn.com?vid=6cbea512-0d90-43df-adab-b7b083f4702c&#038;mkt=en-us&#038;src=FLPl:embed::uuids' target='_new' title='Season 5 - Episode 9 - Invite Accepted' >Video: Season 5 &#8211; Episode 9 &#8211; Invite Accepted</a>

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