Quotulatiousness

June 13, 2011

World Bank: smaller governments produce higher economic growth

Filed under: Economics, Government, Liberty — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:33

Tim Worstall summarizes a recent World Bank report that seems to have reached quite sensible conclusions:

Given the level of economic debate currently in the UK the results might surprise. For they support an economic and civil liberalism entirely unlike anything that any political party currently puts forward. This first result is that:

For instance, a one unit change in the initial level of economic freedom between two countries (on a scale of one to 10) is associated with an almost one percentage point differential in their average long-run economic growth rates.

This is unlikely to please those we think of as being on the political left: what, you mean people should just be allowed to get on with things without the direction of a beneficent state? But there’s not that much support for the sort of One Nation Tory paternalism of the other lot either:

In the case of civil and political liberties, the long-term effect is also positive and significant with a differential of 0.3 percentage point.

Yes, people really should be left alone, to shag and to smoke and to live their lives as they please. And finally, it’s going to absolutely appal all of those who insist that it’s the positive freedoms that really produce economic growth:

In contrast, no evidence was found that the initial level of entitlement rights or their change over time had any significant effects on long-term per capita income, except for a negative effect in some specifications of the model.

Income redistribution, high (or low) unemployment pay, child care subsidies, they just don’t make any positive difference to growth but might have negative ones.

In other words, the less your government tries to do outside the basic duties of protecting the citizens from external threats and domestic crime, and providing an honest and transparent set of laws and a stable legal framework, the better off your country will be both economically and socially. Kinda like that minarchistic “night watchman state”.

British carbon tax may spark de-industrialization

Filed under: Britain, Economics, Europe — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:51

The current British government’s global warming/climate change programs, combined with the European Union’s policies, may have triggered a race to the exits by British industry:

Now, the CBI and Britain’s leading chemical firms have warned that the proposed “carbon floor” tax (also unique in the world) will make our industry so uncompetitive that, unless the policy is changed, it will lead inevitably to mass plant closures and job losses. Similarly, the European Metals Association warned last week that the EU’s various “anti-carbon” policies are becoming so costly that they are already forcing steel, aluminium and other producers in their energy-intensive industry to relocate outside Europe, losing hundreds of thousands more jobs.

At one end of the scale, then, whole industries are protesting that the soaring costs of “climate change” measures will amount, in effect, to a colossal economic suicide note. At the other, we begin to see how the obsession with “climate change” will push our own household energy bills through the roof, driving millions more people into “fuel poverty”. Apart from anything else, by 2020 our Government expects us to pay £100 billion for a further 10,000 useless, subsidised windmills, plus £40 billion to connect them to the National Grid. These costs alone would almost double our present electricity bills.

Furthermore, we are all unwittingly having to pay billions for the EU’s Emissions Trading Scheme, the Carbon Reduction scheme, higher airline taxes, higher vehicle duties, highly paid “low-carbon officers” in our council offices, and heaven knows what else besides. With the new carbon floor tax soon due to raise our energy bills by further billions, we can see why the Government’s own forecast — that the Climate Change Act will cost us up to £18 billion annually until 2050 — might well be an underestimate.

Most terrifying of all, however, is the extent to which our politicians remain firmly locked in their little green bubble, oblivious to the practical implications of the measures they have set in train. As for what purpose it all serves, we may note last week’s report that China, already the world’s biggest CO2 emitter, is now also the world’s largest energy user. Each year it increases the world’s CO2 emissions by more than the total that Britain emits annually.

June 12, 2011

QotD: A scene from an Australian National Park

Filed under: Australia, Bureaucracy, Environment, Quotations — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:53

A few years ago, two National Park rangers were doing a similar service while assorted tourists looked on and took their happy-snaps. The birds, whatever they were, had moved along the road a few yards when a dingo walked out of the long grass, killed one and started to stalk the remainder.

The two Rangers became embroiled in an ideological argument as to which protected specie was to be left alone. The tourists, appalled at the slaughter, then chased the dingo away. The Rangers were instantly reconciled and started issuing citations to the offending tourists for trespassing in a National Park, threatening protected species, obstructing traffic, affray, foul language etc. The tourists were told their cars could be impounded and all, eventually, got court summonses. Fines were levied and they were warned that the offences potentially carried jail time.

One disgruntled victim opined that he should have run over the Rangers and the birds. This was overheard by ‘authority’ and he was hauled into court again.

Visitor numbers at the National Park declined dramatically.

Roger Henry, posting to Railroad_Modeling_Still_Makes_Me_Grumpy@yahoogroups.com, 2011-06-11

Montreal model railway loses out to real railway

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Railways, Randomness — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:36

Canadian National, which owns the building hosting Montreal Model Railway Club — claimed to be “Canada’s largest fully operational model railway” — is terminating the club’s lease because they can get higher rent for the building:

In a warehouse in Montreal’s historic Griffintown neighbourhood, model train enthusiasts have spent 38 years engaging in a labour of love.

Inch by inch, they’ve constructed what is believed to be Canada’s largest fully operational model railway.

More than 300 people have participated over the years, devoting thousands of hours to building life-like models across an eye-popping, detail-laden, 1,493-metre masterpiece.

And it’s about to be detroyed.

The reason for the imminent dismantling is not without irony: the make-believe trains are about to be forced away by a real train company, dealing with real-life issues like rising property costs.

Canadian National owns the 9,000-square-foot warehouse space and wants to lease it out at a higher rent, starting next year. It warned the model-train association five years ago that its time was up.

The club’s website is http://www.canadacentral.org/Reseau_EN.htm.

Second excerpt from Rule 34 by Charles Stross

Filed under: Books, Media — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 11:48

Charles is posting a few excerpts from his soon-to-be-released new book Rule 34. This is the second in the series.

The first part included a definition of that obscure phrase “a two-wetsuit job”:

A two-wetsuit job means kinky beyond the call of duty. [. . .] Back in the naughty noughties a fifty-one-year-old Baptist minister was found dead in his Alabama home wearing not one but two wet suits and sundry bits of exotic rubber underwear, with a dildo up his arse. (The cover-up of the doubly-covered-up deceased finally fell before a Freedom of Information Act request.)

It’s not as if it’s like isnae well-known in Edinburgh, city of grey stone propriety and ministers stern and saturnine (with the most surprising personal habits). But propriety — and the exigencies of service under the mob of puritanical arseholes currently in the ascendant in Holyrood — dictates discretion. If Jase is calling it openly, it’s got to be pretty blatant. Excessively blatant. Tabloid grade, even.

Bureaucratic details of the wild camel slaughter proposal

Filed under: Australia, Bureaucracy, Environment, Government — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 11:09

Remember the deliberate destruction of the massive bison herds that used to roam the central plains of North America? Australia’s environmentalists are looking to do an Outback version of their own. Viv Forbes looks at the details included in that Australian government “climate change” proposal:

Think this is all a hoax? Then check this out:


http://www.climatechange.gov.au/government/initiatives/carbon-farming-initative/methodology-development/methodologies-under-consideration/management-of-feral-herbivores.aspx

Yep, our bureaucrats have put together a 62 page proposal to issue carbon credits for killing feral camels. They note that there is not much use in killing an old camel so the cullers will be required to declare the age of each camel killed, so that that the Government auditors can determine how much pollution will be saved. To help this complex calculation the government is researching the average life expectancy for feral camels.

The document is full of endless dribble, including how the cullers discount the credits they will get by the amount of pollution that is created by the culling.

Here is a sample:

“There are two options for measuring fuel consumption for EVc,j,y as detailed below. Option 1 is preferred.

Option 1) Recording of all fuel purchased or pumped for use in these vehicles during the management activities.

Option 2) Recording of all ground vehicle and fuel types and odometer readings before and after management activities.

For Option 2 the amount of fuel consumed is calculated by taking the fuel consumption rating of the vehicle as a litres per kilometre figure and multiplying this by the kilometres of travel undertaken as part of the management activity, then divided by 1000 to convert to kiloLitres, as per the equation below:

Where:

GDgv,c,j,y = Ground distance travelled by vehicle gv using fuel type j in undertaking the management activities c in year y
LPKgv,j = Litres of fuel type j combusted per kilometre for vehicle gv

Update: The Retronaut has some photos from the near-annihilation of the buffalo in the late 1800s.

Kacaba Vineyards wins double-gold at the Ontario Wine Awards

Filed under: Cancon, Wine — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 00:15

Michael Pinkus reports from last Friday night’s award ceremony:

The 16th Annual Ontario Wine Awards were held Friday night with a triumphant return to the Queen’s Landing Inn in Niagara on the Lake hosted by Food Network star Laura Calder, host of French Food at Home. [. . .] Big winners this evening were Kacaba, winning two Golds in the Red categories (Cabernet Franc and Meritage) as well as another for Label Design; Chateau des Charmes for winning Best Dry Riesling twice (both its category and Best White of the Year) along with a Silver for the close to my heart Sparkling (Rosé). Flat Rock did the same for Red Wine of the Year for their The Rogue Syrah and another Gold for Their Rogue Pinot Noir, prompting them to immediately change their name to “Flat Rogue Cellars” (kidding — not about the awards, about the name change). Inniskillin and Malivoire pulled off tri-fectas in their categories by sweeping them (taking the Gold, Silver and Bronze): Vidal Icewine and Gamay respectively.

I’m delighted that Kacaba is getting the recognition for their great wines (unless it forces them to raise prices, in which case I’m upset that my favourite winery is getting “discovered”) 😉

June 11, 2011

Redefining “high speed” as 45 mph

Filed under: Economics, Government, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:12

This is very amusing, unless you’re a taxpayer:

The latest in lunacy in high-speed rail lunacy: at Joel Kotkin’s newgeography.com Wendell Cox reports that the U.S. Transportation Department is dangling money before the government of Iowa seeking matching funds from the state for a high-speed rail line from Iowa City to Chicago. The “high-speed” trains would average 45 miles per hour and take five hours to reach Chicago from Iowa City. One might wonder how big the market for this service is, since Iowa City and Johnson County have only 130,882 people; add in adjoining Linn County (Cedar Rapids) and you’re only up to 342,108 — not really enough, one would think, to supply enough riders to cover operating costs much less construction costs.

The federal government must be getting desperate to find some state willing to take this deal . . .

PTerry plans his own end, in his own time

Filed under: Britain, Liberty, Media — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 12:02

Short of a miracle cure for Alzheimer’s, Terry Pratchett outlines how he plans to commit suicide:

Terry Pratchett, a 62-year-old British writer of comic fantasy novels who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 2007, says he intends to commit suicide, sitting in a lawn chair outside his country home, listening to the classical church music of Thomas Tallis on his iPod, with a glass of brandy in one hand and a potion of life-ending pills in the other.

“Perhaps, a second brandy, if there is time,” the euthanasia and assisted-suicide advocate quips.

“And since this is England, I had better add, ‘If wet, in the library.’ ”

On Monday, Mr. Pratchett will play host to a real-life suicide when BBC2 television airs a controversial documentary in which he helps a 71-year-old man with motor neurone disease kill himself in Switzerland.

QotD: OPEC’s 50-year fishing trip

Filed under: Economics, Government, Middle East, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 11:56

The petroleum-exporting countries have kept America as a gigantic fish on a steel line for nearly 50 years, reeling it in slowly, and letting it out (relaxing oil prices), when the United States made purposeful noises about raising domestic production, cutting consumption, and going to alternate sources. As soon as OPEC fine-tuned the fishing reel, the great fish went with the docility of the addicted consumer back to its default position mainlining on foreign oil at steadily increasing prices and in ever larger quantities. Every president starting with Richard Nixon warned of the danger in this addiction, but none has done anything useful about it. There must be an emphasis on cheap and plentiful natural gas, more nuclear (with maximum safety standards), more off-shore drilling (with maximum environmental-protection arrangements), and higher gasoline taxes to raise revenues and restrain use. All of this will bring down the international price and reduce the amount of money available for the Iranians, Saudis, Venezuelans, and others to finance terrorism around the world, and will ultimately reduce U.S. defense costs. None of this has been done, though the need for it has been obvious for decades.

Conrad Black, “Why America is suffering”, National Post, 2011-06-11

They “buried the ban in the 300-plus pages of the 2007 energy bill, and very few talked about it in public”

Filed under: Economics, Government, Law, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 11:28

Virginia Postrel talks about the looming ban-that-isn’t-a-ban on incandescent lightbulbs:

One serious technophile, University of Tennessee law professor Glenn Reynolds, spent much of 2007 flogging compact fluorescents on his popular Instapundit blog, eventually persuading more than 1,900 readers to swap 19,871 incandescent bulbs for CFLs. To this day, the Instapundit group is by far the largest participant at OneBillionBulbs.com, a bulb-switching campaign organized by the consulting firm Symmetric Technologies. But Reynolds himself has changed his mind.

“I’m deeply, deeply disappointed with CFL bulbs,” he wrote last month on his blog. “I replaced pretty much every regular bulb in the house with CFLs, but they’ve been failing at about the same rate as ordinary long-life bulbs, despite the promises of multiyear service. And I can’t tell any difference in my electric bill. Plus, the Insta-Wife hates the light.”

That was our experience with the early CFL bulbs, too: they didn’t come close to achieving the longevity we were supposedly paying all the extra money for. And, as I’ve posted before, they’re not as easy to clean up after breakage as the older bulbs.

So the activists offended by the public’s presumed wastefulness took a more direct approach. They joined forces with the big bulb producers, who had an interest in replacing low-margin commodities with high-margin specialty wares, and, with help from Congress and President George W. Bush, banned the bulbs people prefer.

It was an inside job. Neither ordinary consumers nor even organized interior designers had a say. Lawmakers buried the ban in the 300-plus pages of the 2007 energy bill, and very few talked about it in public. It was crony capitalism with a touch of green.

Crony capitalism is what the general public is coming to think is the only kind of capitalism, because they have seen so much of it during the last few presidencies. Your business can be plagued with petty regulators enforcing nitpicking rules, while Congress showers money and special privileges on big businesses and banks.

But, as she points out, it’s not technically a true ban:

Now, I realize that by complaining about the bulb ban — indeed, by calling it a ban — I am declaring myself an unsophisticated rube, the sort of person who supposedly takes marching orders from Rush Limbaugh. In a New York Times article last month, Penelope Green set people like me straight. The law, she patiently explained, “simply requires that companies make some of their incandescent bulbs work a bit better, meeting a series of rolling deadlines between 2012 and 2014.”

True, the law doesn’t affect all bulbs — just the vast majority. (It exempts certain special types, like the one in your refrigerator.) The domed halogen bulbs meet the new standards yet are technically incandescents; judging from my personal experiments, they produce light similar to that of old- fashioned bulbs. They do, however, cost twice as much as traditional bulbs and, if the packages are to be believed, don’t last as long.

I keep hoping that LED lights will be able to produce the kind of long-life that we used to be able to depend upon from incandescents, as CFLs and halogen bulbs have not come close to living up to the promises. However, LEDs have not yet managed that trick in commercial applications.

So, aside from allowing lobbyists to flex their muscles, what is the ban attempting to achieve? That’s not quite clear-cut:

Though anti-populist in the extreme, the bulb ban in fact evinces none of the polished wonkery you’d expect from sophisticated technocrats. For starters, it’s not clear what the point is. Why should the government try to make consumers use less electricity? There’s no foreign policy reason. Electricity comes mostly from coal, natural gas and nuclear plants, all domestic sources. So presumably the reason has something to do with air pollution or carbon-dioxide emissions.

But banning light bulbs is one of the least efficient ways imaginable to attack those problems. A lamp using power from a clean source is treated the same as a lamp using power from a dirty source. A ban gives electricity producers no incentive to reduce emissions.

China finally admits to (some) problems at the Three Gorges megadam

Filed under: China, Environment, Government — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 10:47

It’s been “officially” a wonderful thing with absolutely no negative attributes for so long that it’s almost refreshing that the Chinese government is finally admitting it’s not all good news around the massive Three Gorges dam and reservoir:

In private, officials have worried about the project for some time and occasionally their doubts have surfaced in the official media. But the government itself has refused to acknowledge them. When the project was approved by the rubber-stamp parliament in 1992, debate was stifled by the oppressive political atmosphere of the time, following the Tiananmen Square massacre three years earlier. Last July, with the dam facing its biggest flood crest since completion in 2006, officials hinted that they might have overstated its ability to control flooding. On May 18th, with the dam again in the spotlight because of the drought, a cabinet meeting chaired by the prime minister, Wen Jiabao, went further in acknowledging drawbacks.

Having called the dam “hugely beneficial overall”, the cabinet’s statement said there were problems relating to the resettlement of 1.4m people, to the environment and to the “prevention of geological disasters” that urgently needed addressing. The dam, it said, had had “a certain impact” on navigation, irrigation and water-supply downstream. Some of these problems had been forecast at the design stage or spotted during construction. But they had been “difficult to resolve effectively because of limitations imposed by conditions at the time.” It did not elaborate.

This week in Guild Wars 2 news

Filed under: Gaming — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 00:01

I’ve been accumulating news snippets about the as-yet-to-be-formally-scheduled release of Guild Wars 2 for an email newsletter I send out to my friends and acquaintances in the Guild Wars community.

Part 1: Discussion of previous news

  • If you listen to podcasts, you might want to subscribe to the Guildcast weekly podcast
  • Reminder: the official Guild Wars 2 wiki is still growing, so it’s worth checking it out now and again for new information.
  • Not really Guild Wars/Guild Wars 2-related, but interesting anyway: “The report, entitled 2011 Essential Facts About the Computer and Video Game Industry (and can be downloaded in pdf form here) has revealed some new numbers about female gamers, including their growing presence in the gaming audience. As of 2010, 42 percent of the gaming audience is female, up from 40 percent the previous year. And interestingly enough, turning the whole “video games are for teenage boys” stereotype on its head, women 18 and older make up more of the gaming audience than boys 17 and younger.”

Part 2: Guild Wars news

  • Reminder: If you’d like to keep track of the upcoming Winds of Change and other Guild Wars Beyond material, keep this page bookmarked.
  • Flameseeker Chronicles: A method to the madness. “The June 2nd update is the talk of the Guild Wars playerbase this week — especially on the PvP side of the community. It was certainly enough to pique my interest, even though my PvP project fell victim to a complete lack of free time this month. What really interested me about this update, however, is that it feels like such a response to feedback and the current vibe of the player community. Not that ArenaNet doesn’t pay attention as a rule, but so many of the huge updates are focused on the Hall of Monuments and Guild Wars: Beyond in preparation for Guild Wars 2 that it’s nice to see one that is all about Guild Wars 1 — not to mention one that is a pure response to the state of the current game.”

Part 3: Guild Wars 2 news

  • Check out a neat fan-made “New Krytan Translator” website.
  • Arenanet is sponsoring a symphony performance of music from Guild Wars. “The Seattle Symphony and Chorus will perform music from a wide range of video game titles old and new, accompanied by hi-def graphics from the games on large screens above the orchestra. We’ve cut together a new video of cinematic footage from Guild Wars 2 specifically for the event. We’re sure that the incredible visuals paired with Jeremy Soule’s stirring Guild Wars music will be the highlight of the performance.”
  • Gamer Zines interview with Eric Flannum, part 1. “We do guide our players through their story with markers (which resemble a green star burst) and these markers will sometimes appear over an NPC’s head. The important difference in this case is that a player will only ever have one step in their story, one thing that they are trying to accomplish, not a journal full of 20 tasks that by their very nature and quantity start to seem unimportant. The things that the player is asked to do while on their personal story are often long and involved and they should always feel like they flow organically from the narrative that the player is experiencing. In short, the player should never be asked to kill X monsters by someone who they’ve never met before. Think of the personal story in Guild Wars 2 as you would the “main” storyline of a great single player RPG.”
  • Tap Repeatedly‘s interview with Jonathan Sharp and Jon Peters. “The warriors strength is mainly focused on its melee attacks but knowing where to be on the battlefield, at a high level, is probably the most difficult thing. To get to a very acceptable, competent level with the warrior, yes, it’s probably the easiest one to get there. But only 1 in a million people have reached the level of a warrior that really sets them apart. If you’ve seen any Guild Wars 1 we had The Last Pride, a Korean guild, and they had a warrior called Last of Master and there is no one I have seen who is even close to him. He takes positioning — things that makes a warrior — to a level no one else does. There is more room to improve on the warrior than any other profession, though a lot of people would argue that with me, but to me that subtlety of positioning is something almost no one ever understands.”

June 10, 2011

With extended lifespans . . . will come later retirement dates

Filed under: Economics, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 16:49

For all of us who’ve spent our working lives assuming that 65 was the age of retirement (or 55 for those of you who paid closer attention to retirement planning 20 years earlier than the rest of us), you won’t like this:

Americans better get used to working longer, even until they are 80 years old, according to a study by the Employee Research Benefit Institute (via Robert Powell at MarketWatch).

Naturally, those with lower incomes will need to work longer.

Here’s how it breaks down (via MarketWatch):

  • If you make around $11,700 dollars a year you have to work to age 84 to have a 50% chance of affording retirement.
  • If you make between $11,700-$31,200 a year you have to work to age 76 to have a 50% chance affording retirement
  • If you make between $31,200-$72,500 a year you have to work to age 72 to have a 50% chance of affording retirement.
  • If you make $72,500 or more a year you have to work to age 65 to have a 50% chance of affording retirement.

This study does point out one bright spot for those working past 65 though. If you are putting your money into some kind of retirement fund, your chances of saving enough increase substantially.

Update on the “educational” SWAT team raid

Filed under: Education, Law, Liberty, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 13:06

There’s been a bit of clarification from the authorities, although what they reveal isn’t pretty:

The Department of Education’s Office of Inspector General served a warrant on Stockton, California resident Kenneth Wright at six in the morning on Tuesday. Though the initial story gave the impression that the raid was focused on unpaid student loans, the department’s press secretary helpfully informed us this was not the case, and that the office conducts investigations of bribery, fraud, and embezzlement.

That’s little comfort. A review of the warrant reveals that the investigators were searching for financial records connected with suspected financial aid fraud, conspiracy, theft of government funds, false statements to the government, and wire fraud. Wright wasn’t the suspect — his estranged wife was and she wasn’t present for the raid — but for this list of white collar crimes the agents breached the front door, dragged Wright and his three children from the home, and kept them in a police cruiser for hours (the children for two, Wright for over six).

Kenneth Wright’s gut reaction, captured on video, largely mirrors mine. Ridiculous. Someone may have lied on student loan paperwork, so federal investigators converged to kick in a door and keep a family in the back of a cruiser for hours when they could have simply knocked and served the warrant.

Of course, the stated reason for the raid isn’t likely the real one:

This raid was a tactical dog and pony show to justify the existence of the OIG’s office, timely executed as Republicans are sharpening their fiscal knives. The same bureaucratic survival instinct motivated the ATF’s raid on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas. The ATF needed a high-profile bust to justify its existence in the face of perennial budgetary scrutiny, scrutiny that is deserved now more than ever as ATF officials knowingly let guns get shipped across the Mexican border to support the cartels. Two turned up at the scene of the shooting death of a Border Patrol agent and others shot a Mexican military helicopter and forced it to land.

Update: Some useful commentary at Popehat:

Anton Chekov (no, not the Star Trek guy) said of writing drama, “one must not put a loaded rifle on the stage if no one is thinking of firing it.”

Law enforcement training and procurement follows a similar ethos: supply creates its own demand. If you buy fancy toys for cops of any stripe, and train them to use them, then they’re going to use them. Once law enforcement is equipped and trained to wield the hammer of paramilitary raids, then every search looks like a nail. [. . .] (I suspect there’s a Napoleonic phenomenon going on as well: in my experience as a former fed and current defense lawyer, the more petty an officer’s power, and the narrower his patch, the more he itches to exercise force and authority.) That’s how they get to the place where they think it’s appropriate to use this much force against an innocent citizen with no criminal record, and his family, because his ex was committing fraud

[. . .]

Searches can be unreasonable not just in their purpose or in their supporting probable cause, but in their execution. A paramilitary raid is a grotesquely disproportionate approach to the investigation of a non-violent crime. It poses a grave risk of accidental death. It terrorizes innocents. And it conditions both police and citizens to view any law enforcement inquiry as justifying overwhelming force. Things like loan fraud and illegal milk sales should not require shock and awe.

The bottom line: we need to be vigilant for government abuse of the application for and execution of search warrants as well as erosion of the use of search warrants.

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