Quotulatiousness

January 26, 2020

You, your new DeLorean, and the LVMVMA

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Business, Government, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Many people — not all of them rabid fans of the Back to the Future movies — would like to own a DeLorean and it is going to be possible … eventually:

Photo of a DeLorean by grayesun is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Basically, the legislation [the Low Volume Motor Vehicle Manufacturers Act of 2015], which was signed into law by President Barack Obama in 2015, would allow companies to produce limited-run replica vehicles without being bound by certain safety and emissions standards. But after that administration ended, the law stalled because the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration didn’t follow through with implementation.

“One problem, Espey explains, was that NHTSA hasn’t had a permanent administrator since the previous presidential election, and the acting administrator would not sign off on the regulations,” writes Hagerty. Thankfully, the Specialty Equipment Market Association (SEMA) took matters into their own hands and filed a lawsuit, and now it looks like the law could take effect soon.

That means DMC is once again gearing up to sell new turnkey DeLoreans, and this time around they’ll have modern conveniences like power steering and cruise control (imagine that!) and potentially features like heated seats and smartphone integration (the future!).

While they’re not available to order just yet, interested buyers can fill out a non-binding pre-order form. Just don’t expect to hit 88 miles per hour in 2020; as Espey said, “There will be no cars produced under this legislation for at least a year, and that’s presuming the feds do their job this time and don’t drag it out for four more years.”

H/T to Colby Cosh for the link.

January 23, 2020

The EU apparently fears a “Singapore on the Thames”

Filed under: Britain, Bureaucracy, Business, Economics, Europe — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In the Continental Telegraph, Tim Worstall explains why the EU negotiators are reportedly offering a much worse trade deal to the United Kingdom than they’ve already agreed with Canada, Japan, and other trading partners:

Take, for example, this idea of Singapore on Thames. It’s trivially easy to rally the peeps against one or other relaxation of regulation. Chlorine washed chicken for example. But what about lifting the entire burden? Singapore is, after all, about 50% richer than Britain on a per capita basis. The correct question therefore is would you like a 50% pay raise at the price of shooting all the bureaucrats? Given the manner in which the bureaucrats don’t want the question even asked we have a reasonable enough guide that the answer would be yes.

Which is why the terms on offer to a Britain which could do the SonT thing are so terrible. Because of SonT succeeded it would be a death blow to the entire idea of how Europe is regulated. Lille, Leipzig and Livorno will all put up with interfering bureaucracy because that’s just the way the world is. But if Les Rosbifs become richer by half again simply by that bonfire of the regulations then the auto da fes will light up all over Europe.

So, yes, of course the EU is offering shit trade terms. They can’t allow an independent and free Britain to succeed. That we will anyway is what will bring that freedom and liberty to the continent – once again. For as so often it will be us that saves Europe from itself.

January 19, 2020

Cursus honorum – Aediles

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Government, History — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Historia Civilis
Published 6 Feb 2015

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Music is “Clap Your Hands” by Jahzzar (http://betterwithmusic.com)

January 14, 2020

Cursus honorum – Quaestors

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Government, History — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Historia Civilis
Published 20 Dec 2014

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HistoriaCivilis
Website: https://www.historiacivilis.com
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Music by audionautix.com

January 8, 2020

QotD: Diversity in academia

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Education, Quotations — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Academia is simultaneously both the part of America that is most obsessed with diversity, and the least diverse part of the country. On the one hand, colleges bend over backwards to hire minority professors and recruit minority students, aided by an ever-burgeoning bureaucracy of “diversity officers”. Yet, when it comes to politics, they are not just indifferent to diversity, but downright allergic to it.

“America’s one-party state”, The Economist, 2004-12-02.

December 26, 2019

“Make Gas Cans Great Again”

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Environment, Government, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

At Ace of Spades H.Q., Buck Throckmorton offers a simple, yet fiendishly clever policy for Donald Trump to secure millions of votes in the next election:

If Donald Trump wants to ensure he recaptures the 2020 electoral votes in the Great Lakes states he won in 2016 — and possibly add Minnesota, New Hampshire, and Maine — there is one simple thing he could do that would make him a hero to every snow-blowing American — issue an executive order to restore functioning gas cans.

To be clear, this would also make him a hero to tens of millions of other Americans throughout the country who use lawn mowers, power tools, etc around their homes or in their jobs. In 2009 the EPA banned the sale of gas cans that functionally pour gas. To be specific, the scientifically illiterate bureaucrats at the EPA outlawed gas cans with vents, mandating that all new gas cans must have crazy contraptions that require three hands to operate. Unlike the old gas cans, the new ones spill gas all over the user and onto the ground. The result of the EPA’s incompetence is a new gas can that is much worse for the environment than the one it replaced. The incompetent regulators at the EPA are so scientifically illiterate that they honestly believed that the vents on gas cans were there to allow gas fumes to escape, rather than the actual purpose of allowing air to flow in to the can so that gas can be poured out. Having received their “science” education in Oppression Studies classes at Grievance State University, these morons making rules for how we gas up our power tools have likely never handled a tool more powerful than their own personal groomers.

The government-mandated non-functioning gas can may be the most unpopular government-imposed regulatory rule since the 55 mile per hour speed limit. If you don’t know someone who mocks and despises these stupid red canisters, then you are living a very sheltered urban or upscale lifestyle. Most all working-class and middle-class Americans deal with these awful containers, and they mock the government for imposing them on us.

December 25, 2019

QotD repost: Sir Humphrey’s bureaucratic holiday wishes

Filed under: Britain, Bureaucracy, Government, Humour, Quotations — Tags: — Nicholas @ 01:00

Sir Humphrey: I wonder if I might crave your momentary indulgence in order to discharge a by no means disagreeable obligation which has, over the years, become more or less established practice in government service as we approach the terminal period of the year — calendar, of course, not financial — in fact, not to put too fine a point on it, Week Fifty-One — and submit to you, with all appropriate deference, for your consideration at a convenient juncture, a sincere and sanguine expectation — indeed confidence — indeed one might go so far as to say hope — that the aforementioned period may be, at the end of the day, when all relevant factors have been taken into consideration, susceptible to being deemed to be such as to merit a final verdict of having been by no means unsatisfactory in its overall outcome and, in the final analysis, to give grounds for being judged, on mature reflection, to have been conducive to generating a degree of gratification which will be seen in retrospect to have been significantly higher than the general average.

Jim Hacker: Are you trying to say “Happy Christmas,” Humphrey?

Sir Humphrey: Yes, Minister.

December 24, 2019

Repost – Hey Kids! Did you get your paperwork in on time?

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Humour — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 03:00

If you hurry, you can just get your Santa’s Visit Application in before the deadline tonight!

December 20, 2019

Repost – Happy holiday travels!

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Humour, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

H/T to Economicrot. Many many more at the link.

December 14, 2019

History of Space Travel – Guided by Starlight – Extra History – #6

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Government, History, Space, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Extra Credits
Published 12 Dec 2019

What happened after we touched down on the moon? And where are we going in the future? While we may have lost the glitz and glamor of the Space Race, we have continued to make incredible progress in reaching the stars. We’ve come together to build space stations while in space, create the international space station, and started developing new technologies that could take us to Mars and beyond.

Start your Warframe journey now and prepare to face your personal nemesis, the Kuva Lich — an enemy that only grows stronger with every defeat. Take down this deadly foe, then get ready to take flight in Empyrean! Coming soon! http://bit.ly/EHWarframe

December 13, 2019

Further adventures of the “Basic College Girl”

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Education, Humour, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Severian has another tale of his university teaching career to share:

University College, University of Toronto, 31 July, 2008. (Not the educational institution in the story…)
Photo by “SurlyDuff” via Wikimedia Commons.

The Basic College Girl is so dumb, lazy, and entitled, she makes Hillary Clinton look like a criminal mastermind. I caught one recycling a term paper from another class because she’d forgotten to take the other professor’s name off the header. Hell, I caught one copy-pasting straight off Wikipedia because she’d left the hyperlinks embedded in the text.

And these were not Hail Marys. Just copy-pasting something, anything, Cuttlefish-style makes sense if you haven’t done a lick of work and it’s due in five minutes. It’s a one-in-a-million shot, sure, but since it took you all of 45 seconds and you’re going to fail anyway, you might as well try to shoot the moon. No, these were papers turned in with plenty of time to spare (I always had my term papers due at least a week before final exams).

Think about that for a second: Instead of coming to my office hours with a sob story, or trying to talk the registrar into an incomplete, or faking her own death, or doing literally anything else, more than a few BCGs turned in visible-from-space plagiarism and skipped on down to Starbucks for a triple foam half-caff venti soy chai pumpkin spice latte. YOLO!

That’s not the worst part, though. The worst part is the BCG’s reaction when you catch them. When you point out that no, I’m not Professor Jones and this isn’t Spring 2014, the BCG’s universal, invariable reaction is … anger. At YOU.

At the time I was simply too pissed to think about it rationally (I trust you’ll believe me when I say that in the semesters just before I retired, my biggest challenge was keeping a look of utter contempt off my face). Looking back on it after some years, though, it makes sense. BCGs are all grandiose narcissists with Borderline Personality Disorder. Of course they’re just so wonderful that anything they deign to turn in should be given an A+, sight unseen. What other purpose could I, the professor, possibly serve, other than to mark it down for record-keeping? Now she’s forced to take the time to email me, or come down to my office hours, or what have you, just to set my dumb ass straight. It’s a real inconvenience!

December 10, 2019

“NATO [reminds] me of the pre-reformation medieval church. Their stated objectives sound Godly and noble but their true purpose is to keep a bloated priesthood in luxury”

Filed under: Britain, Bureaucracy, France, Germany, History, Military, Russia, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

NATO still exists, decades after the threat it was designed to counter dissolved. Tom Paine wonders why this is so:

The dismal science teaches us to distinguish between peoples’ stated preferences (often virtue-signalling lies) and their revealed preferences (how they spend their money). All NATO members say they believe in the alliance. Only four — the USA, the UK, Poland and Greece — meet their obligation to contribute more than 2% of their GDP. If you’re wondering, Greece has only accidentally met that target because of the catastrophic fall in its GDP.

Opinion polls and my own experience of the bitter, sneering anti-Americanism of my otherwise delightful continental chums suggest that as usual the revealed preference is the truth. The Germans and French would not go to war in defence of America or Britain if we were attacked. Britain was attacked, when the Falklands were invaded, and our “allies” and “friends” sold arms to our enemies and gave them all kinds of moral support. Remember the Welsh Guards (my grandfather’s old regiment) massacred by Exocets fired from Mirages? The USA has often gone to war since the alliance was formed and mostly only British warriors fought, died or were injured alongside theirs.

Germany, France and their freeloading friends have quite simply been taking the piss from the outset. They take the Americans (and us Inselaffen and rosbifs) for mugs. They plot to form an EU Army and regret that Brexit means they won’t be able to continue to rely on English-speakers as their cannon-fodder.

The continued existence of NATO has fuelled the epic paranoia of Russia’s military/intelligence apparatus. Desperate not to be decommissioned the generals and chekists have claimed that “the West” they grew up opposing is intrinsically hostile — rather than, in truth, insultingly indifferent — to Mother Russia. Their only “proof” of this nonsense was NATO.

[…]

NATO is yet another of many examples of the truism that, once a bureaucracy acquires a competence, it will never disband. It continues because it can. The political and economic ills that drove the creation of what is now called the EU have long since faded into history. But the plump parasites of its apparatus have repeatedly repurposed it. Britain is a paradise of social, ethnic and sexual equality compared to the days when the precursors of the Equalities Commission were formed but its staff will find imaginary evils by the thousand before they’ll return to productive labour. Marx would gasp at the generosity of Britain’s welfare state and marvel at the lifestyle of even the poorest Brit and yet trivial micro aggressions are enough to sustain the revolutionary fervour of Marxist academics desperate to live as idly and unproductively as the man himself.

December 2, 2019

A bad IDEA for classroom peace

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Education, Health, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In Quillette, Max Eden discusses the rise of “room clears” as teachers resort to evacuating classrooms to prevent harm to students from one disruptive one:

Last month, NBC Nightly News aired a segment on the latest classroom-management technique to sweep America’s schools: “room clears”: When a child throws a tantrum that could physically endanger his peers, teachers evacuate all of the other students from the classroom until the troublemaker has vented his rage upon empty desks, tables and chairs. The technique was virtually unheard of five years ago. But 56 percent of surveyed teachers and parents in Oregon now report having experienced a room clear in their or their child’s classroom over the last year.

Surrendering the classroom to a single student: The average reader might well ask why anyone thinks this would be a good idea. Yet the policies that make this approach inevitable have been applauded by a wide range of authorities, from the Southern Poverty Law Center to the Trump-administration’s Department of Education.

The emergence of room clears is a product of several fashionable education-policy trends designed to protect the rights of troubled students, often with little regard for the rights of their classmates. These include the provisions contained in the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), which mandates that special-education students be subject to the “least restrictive environment” possible. When it comes to students who are hard of hearing, dyslexic or developmentally delayed, this policy likely has done a great deal of good. But many schools also label disruptive or violent students as having an “Emotional and Behavioral Disability” (EBD). Rather than provide these students specialized attention in separate settings, schools often funnel them into traditional classrooms.

In a national poll, two thirds of surveyed teachers at high-poverty schools reported that there is a student in their classroom who they believed shouldn’t be there; and 77 percent of surveyed teachers report that a small number of disruptive students cause other students to suffer. Unfortunately, IDEA’s provisions don’t adequately account for the rights and interests of general-education students, and teachers typically have little say over who is in their classroom.

Once they are assigned to a traditional class, EBD students can become virtually untouchable as far as discipline goes. Schools are discouraged by federal policy and activist groups alike from disproportionately disciplining students with disabilities — the effect of which is that principals are required to overlook many otherwise unacceptable transgressions. (Two thirds of teachers say that special-education students are treated more leniently than general-education students for the same offenses.) The worst-behaved students effectively are taught that the rules don’t apply to them in the same way they apply to others. Even when misbehavior edges toward violence, EBD students are becoming physically untouchable.

November 27, 2019

The Deep State versus the President

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Government, Politics, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 03:00

David P. Goldman reviews a new book by Andrew McCarthy on the ongoing conflict between the elected President of the United States and the permanent bureaucracy:

Donald Trump addresses a rally in Nashville, TN in March 2017.
Photo released by the Office of the President of the United States via Wikimedia Commons.

America’s Central Intelligence Agency in concert with foreign intelligence services manufactured the myth of Donald Trump’s alleged collusion with Russia, argues Andrew McCarthy, a distinguished federal prosecutor turned public intellectual.

A contributor to Fox News and a prolific writer for The National Review and other conservative media, McCarthy well knows how to build a case and argue it before a jury. His latest book Ball of Collusion should be read carefully by everyone with an interest in American politics. It is exhaustively documented and brilliantly argued, and brings a wealth of evidence to bear on behalf of his thesis that an insular, self-perpetuating Establishment conspired to sandbag an outsider who threatened its perspectives and perquisites.

From my vantage point as an American, the constitutional issue is paramount: The American people elected Donald Trump, and it is horrifying to consider the possibility that a cabal of unelected civil servants supported by the mainstream media might nullify a presidential election. That is why I support the president unequivocally and without hesitation against his detractors.

But this sordid business has deep implications for America’s allies as well as her rivals. Trump is not a popular president overseas, except in Poland, Hungary, and Israel. In the eyes of polite opinion, McCarthy writes, “Donald Trump was anathema: a know-nothing narcissist – as uncouth as Queens – riding a populist-nationalist wave of fellow yahoos that threatened their tidy, multilateral post-World War II order.” China (and not only China) views Trump as a bully who presses American advantage at the risk of disruption to the global economy.

Donald Trump has one quality for which the rest of the world should be grateful: He really does not care how China, Russia, or any other country manages its affairs. By “America First,” he simply means that he cares about what happens in America, and is incurious about what happens outside America unless it affects his country directly. That stands in sharp contrast to view of all the wings of America’s political Establishment – progressive, “realist” and neoconservative – who believe that America should bring about the millenarian End of History by bringing democracy to Iraq and Afghanistan, by expanding NATO into a giant social-engineering project, by pressing China to transform itself into a Western-style democracy, and so forth.

McCarthy reports in persuasive detail how the spooks set up the president. There is more to be said, though, about why they did it. I will summarize McCarthy’s findings, and afterward discuss the motivation.

November 25, 2019

YouTube vs Grey: A Ballad of Accidental Suspension

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Business, Humour, Media — Tags: — Nicholas @ 04:00

CGP Grey
Published 24 Nov 2019

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