Quotulatiousness

February 13, 2012

Greek government expands categories of disabled to include “compulsive gamblers, fetishists and sadomasochists”

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Europe, Government, Greece, Health — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:04

At a time most people expect the Greek government to be cutting back, the Labor ministry just expanded the recognized disabilities to include a few categories that will raise eyebrows:

Disability groups in Greece expressed anger on Monday at a government decision to expand a list of state-recognized disability categories to include pedophiles, exhibitionists and kleptomaniacs.

The National Confederation of Disabled People, calling the action “incomprehensible,” said that pedophiles could be eligible for a higher disability pay than some people who had received organ transplants.

The Labor Ministry said the categories added to the expanded list — that also includes pyromaniacs, compulsive gamblers, fetishists and sadomasochists — were included for purposes of medical assessment and used as a gauge for allocating financial assistance.

Der Spiegel: Is it too late to save Greece?

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Europe, Government, Greece — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 08:48

The Greek civil service is overstaffed, and has lots of quirky habits, proving the old adage that there’s nothing as permanent as a “temporary” government program:

One of Greece’s purported saviors is a short, rotund, 72-year-old man named Leandros Rakintzis. He was once a respected constitutional judge on the country’s highest court, the Areopagus. Since 2004, he has been the head of a government agency that is the first of its kind for Greece. Rakintzis is Greece’s general inspector of public administration.

His body twitches and shakes with delight as he talks about his successes and discoveries. For example, he discovered that on weekends, hospitals admit elderly people who require nursing care or are confused because their children bring them there so that they can take a few days of vacation. This, of course, drives up healthcare costs.

[. . .]

Rakintzis has stories to tell that take place throughout Greece, and some are downright unbelievable. For example, the government agency that was created to manage a bid to make Greece’s second-largest city, Thessaloniki, a European cultural capital in 1997 is still humming away. Its employees are supposedly working on winding down the major event and settling up the accounts — 13 years later.

How many people work there? “I don’t know. Not even the government knows that,” says Rakintzis. He adds, in an almost threatening tone: “Not yet.” Rakintzis and his staff are now in the process of investigating about 4,000 government offices and agencies in similar situations.

[. . .]

Greece has more than five times as many civil servants per capita than the United Kingdom. The country’s inflated government apparatus consumes tens of billions of euros a year. It’s money the Greek state doesn’t have — and actually never did. Greece’s gross domestic product is only slighter higher than that of the German state of Hesse and is just one-tenth the size of Germany’s total economic output.

February 12, 2012

Bryan Caplan on “the stranger”

Filed under: Government, Law, Liberty — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 11:36

An interesting post at Econlog:

What do you call a man you never met? A stranger.

What are you morally forbidden to do to a stranger? You may not murder him. You may not attack him. You may not enslave him. Neither may you rob him.

What are you morally required to do for a stranger? Not much. Even if he seems hungry and asks you for food, you’re probably within your rights to refuse. If you’ve ever been in a large city, you’ve refused to help the homeless on more than one occasion. And even if you think you broke your moral obligation to give, your moral obligation wasn’t strong enough to let the beggar justifiably mug you.

Notice: These common-sense ethics regarding strangers, ethics that almost everyone admits, are unequivocally libertarian. Yes, you have an obligation to leave strangers alone, but charity is optional.

Daniel Hannan at CPAC 2012

Filed under: Britain, Government, Politics, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 11:11

If you want to hear from someone who unmistakably understands the profound impact of America’s founding and believes there is still time for its citizens to take hold of its bureaucratic laden government and return it back to the will of it’s founding, then you must hear this speech from Daniel Hannan. You’ll appreciate America all the more afterwards, I assure you.

H/T to John Ward for the link.

Gary Johnson in the Washington Times

Filed under: Economics, Government, Liberty, Politics, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 10:30

Libertarian presidential hopeful Gary Johnson is interviewed by Brett M. Decker:

Decker: America would be a lot better off if Washington adopted more libertarian positions, especially those that advocate cutting red tape, slashing taxes and getting Big Brother off our backs. In a very tangible way, however, many Americans have gotten hooked on federal largesse and aren’t willing to give up their government goodies. How can you make the message of smaller government resonate in this growing climate of dependency, and who is your main audience?

Johnson: I believe most observers would agree that, of all governors in modern history, I governed from a more libertarian foundation than any other. When I ran for governor and when I took office, many claimed the sky would fall. It didn’t, and I was re-elected and even today enjoy the highest approval ratings in my home state of all the governors in the presidential race. And New Mexico is a Democratic state. That tells me that people actually get it. They understand that government “largesse” is not largesse at all; rather, big government and the “benefits” it provides come at a price that is simply too great. They also understand that by limiting the federal government to that which it really needs to do, we will free the states to deliver essential services in innovative and efficient ways. And we will free the private economy to create real jobs and restore opportunity as an American trademark. Government would not disappear in a Johnson administration. It would live within its means and do what the Constitution says it should do. No more, and no less.

As I convey this message, I find that Americans of all ages, incomes and demographics respond. Young people, in particular, are embracing a libertarian approach to government. They want to be left alone to live their lives, chase their dreams and do so without government imposing values and burdens that limit their freedoms. I am convinced that there is a majority of voters in America today who are classical liberals — committed to the ideal of limited government, constitutionalism, rule of law,due process and individual liberty.

Never before has that majority been more poised to organize and exert itself in a political environment that has for too long been controlled by the two “major” parties.

Decker: Conventional wisdom is that a third-party challenger cannot be elected president of the United States. Certainly, a Libertarian candidacy siphons votes away from the GOP. Is that the point — to send a message of protest that Republicans need to be more principled, especially on fiscal issues?

Johnson: Conventional wisdom has never been a guiding principle in my life or career. Conventional wisdom held that a businessman who had never been in elected office could not run and win as a Libertarian-Republican in New Mexico. And conventional wisdom would argue against a former governor with a not-yet-healed broken leg making it to the summit of Mt. Everest. My candidacy is not about a message of protest. It is about defying conventional wisdom and giving voice to what I believe is a majority of Americans who today do not feel comfortable in either the Democratic or Republican Party.

Likewise, I do not accept the premise that my candidacy siphons more votes from Republicans than from Democrats.As I hold online town halls, travel the country and read the emails and messages coming into our campaign every day, it is obvious that we are connecting with at least as many Obama voters as McCain voters from 2008. A lot of people who thought they were voting for change in 2008 are today very disappointed that what they achieved was only a slightly different version of the same business-as-usual they wanted to reject. The desire for a truly new approach cuts across all parties and independents alike.

February 11, 2012

Tim Harford discusses Nudge-ology

Filed under: Britain, Government — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 11:16

Yes, I committed a neologism in the headline. It’s Saturday morning, and I’m too lazy to think up a better headline. Perhaps I need a nudge:

I hear the Nudge unit is in the news again …

I am waiting for the government to establish a Dig in the Ribs unit. Maybe even a Slap and Tickle unit, who knows?

Don’t be silly. Remind me what Nudge is again?

It started as a concept, “libertarian paternalism”, advanced by two American academics, Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein. The idea was that the government could help people to help themselves without violating their liberty — for instance, by assuming they would like to make pension contributions unless otherwise stated. Then it became a book and the concept got a bit broader and a bit vaguer and more generally about the use of psychology and behavioural economics in policymaking. Then “Nudge” became a fashionable label to be slapped on any policy in search of a headline. Finally, David Cameron set up the Behavioural Insight Team — aka the Nudge unit — to do more research on the subject. The Cabinet Office published some of their findings this week.

[. . .]

For example?

Let’s say somebody has been fined in court but has not paid. You could send in the bailiffs. Or you could send a text message explaining that if the fine isn’t paid quickly, the bailiffs will be on their way. The Behavioural Insight team and the courts service ran a randomised trial, sending no text message to some people and a variety of text messages to others to see which approach works best. It turns out that text messages are highly effective and even more effective is a text message that mentions the miscreant’s name. The difference between no message and a personalised message is that instead of one in 20 people immediately paying up, one in three people do. That adds up to 150,000 occasions on which the bailiffs need not be called in.

This doesn’t sound like rocket science …

No, and it’s not brain surgery either. But it does appear to work. Sometimes these effects are mind-numbingly obvious. For instance, a letter sent by HM Revenue and Customs to chase up tax from doctors was vastly more effective after being written in a straightforward way with the key messages and request for action at the top of the letter. It was just as effective as an alternative that shoehorned in many fancy behavioural insights.

“Courts are often the state’s battering rams, used for breaking down individual rights and freedoms”

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Law, Liberty — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 11:00

George Jonas explains why Canadians were more free before their rights and freedoms were codified in the Charter:

The Canada in which I landed in 1956 may not have had a Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but it had rights and freedoms galore, making it the envy of the world. The Canada in which I make my home today has a Charter, but Canadians who say they had more rights and freedoms 50 years ago aren’t paranoid: They did.

There seems to be an inverse relationship between written instruments of freedom, such as a Charter, and freedom itself. It’s as if freedom were too fragile to be put into words: If you write down your rights and freedoms, you lose them. Minimally, governments will try to take away every freedom you haven’t remembered to include.

“Where does it say you have a right to breathe, sir? Surely it’s not a fundamental right. If it were, it would be in the Charter.”

The 19th century British constitutional scholar, A.V. Dicey, foresaw this. He cautioned against written constitutions for this very reason, among others.

Part of the reason for the inverse relationship between written rights and actual freedom is the court system:

When I came to Canada, a court of law was often a place where individuals went for protection against the state. These days, they’d be taking a chance. Courts are often the state’s battering rams, used for breaking down individual rights and freedoms. Climate trumps the law, obviously, considering the law isn’t the law until a judge says it is. There is global warming, as the world is warming to tyranny. A judicial climate change has turned Canada’s courts from frequent champions of individual liberty to near-permanent defenders of social policy.

A judicial expression used to call policy “an unruly horse.” If you’ve time for only one book to see how events unfold when policy starts driving the law, pick up Christie Blatchford’s account of the native land-claim standoff at Caledonia, Ont., called Helpless. It shows what happens when the justice system becomes a branch of social engineering.

February 10, 2012

Before Watergate the FBI had to put together files using wiretaps, informants, and detective work

Filed under: Government, History, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:03

Nowadays, of course, they wouldn’t need to do any of that: most of what they collected then could be gathered by looking you up on Facebook:

Bud Abbott and Lou Costello are perhaps best known for their comedy sketch Who’s on First?

But in the 1950s, the duo caught the FBI’s attention for other reasons.

“A police informant furnished information to the effect that Bud Abbott, the well-known motion picture and television star, is a collector of pornography, and alleged he has 1,500 reels of obscene motion pictures,” an agent wrote in an FBI file.

Of Costello, agents reported: “Information was secured reflecting that two prostitutes put on a lewd performance for Lou Costello,” for which they were paid $50 each.

[. . .]

During the era of legendary FBI director J Edgar Hoover, “you could find a reason to open a file on anyone”, says Steve Rosswurm, a historian at Lake Forest College in Illinois and author of a book about the FBI’s dealings with the Catholic Church.

“The reasons for the surveillance are as varied as the people being watched,” said British writer Nicholas Redfern, author of Celebrity Secrets: Official Government Files on the Rich and Famous

“It was very much dependent upon the character or the situation the subject of the file was in.”

Today, the bureau’s Cold War-era fears of communist infiltration, obscenity and homosexuality sound almost quaint..

February 9, 2012

The heady mix of politics and religion: this is why there’s supposed to be a separation of church and state

Filed under: Government, Liberty, Media, USA — Tags: — Nicholas @ 10:55

At Reason, A. Barton Hinkle on the different ways the media reacts to religious issues under different presidents:

George W. Bush had one small office devoted to faith-based initiatives, and was savaged for it. Barack Obama, on the other hand, says faith drives much of his domestic agenda—and no one even blinks.

We are in “the fourth year of the ministry of George W. Bush,” cracked novelist Philip Roth in 2004. By then, several million gallons of ink already had been spilled warning that Bush’s “faith-based presidency” was “nudging the church-state line” (The New York Times) and was “turning the U.S. into a religious state” (Village Voice) and was “arrogant” and “troubling” (St. Petersburg Times) and was “pandering to Christian zealots” (Salon) and “imposing its values on the rest of us” (too many to name).

Obama has been just as overtly religious as Bush — “We worship an awesome God in the blue states,” he said in his 2004 keynoter at the Democratic National Convention — and even more aggressive about injecting faith into politics. In 2006, he praised a religious “Covenant for a New America.” In a 2008 speech in Ohio, he said religious faith could be “the foundation of a new project of American renewal” and insisted that “secularists are wrong when they ask believers to leave their religion at the door before entering into the public square.” He has kept Bush’s office of faith-based initiatives. In fact, “Obama’s faith-based office has given religious figures a bigger role in influencing White House decisions,” reported USNews in 2009.

At the National Prayer Breakfast last Thursday, the president began by noting that he prays every morning, and then devoted the rest of his speech to explaining the manifold ways in which his faith guides his policies. “I am my brother’s keeper and I am my sister’s keeper,” he said. That somnolent silence you hear is the guardians of church-state separation taking a nap.

Frankly, it still boggles my mind that there’s such a thing as a “National Prayer Breakfast” outside of the annual general meetings of churches.

Michael Pinkus: Apathetic Ontario and the LCBO monopoly

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Cancon, Economics, Government, Liberty, Media — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:12

In the latest issue of his OntarioWineReview.com newsletter, Michael Pinkus again expresses frustration with the government-run monopoly on retail sales of wine and spirits in Ontario:

I have made this point before when talking about the LCBO Food & Drink magazine, which competes directly with other publications in the province for advertising dollars; a magazine that is paid for by the people for the people, which sounds great and a pillar to build a country on, but not when you are competing against the very people who paid the money in the first place (magazine editors, publishers, writers, etc. are taxpayers too). One of the sad realities is that with each bottle a publisher buys they are paying to put themselves out of business.

It’s bad enough that the LCBO are the only game in town to buy booze … it’s bad enough that they waste millions of dollars a year on fancy stores (when they don’t have to) … it’s bad enough that a government run monopoly competes against their own populace and private enterprises for advertising revenue … but now they have to blow dollars on advertising themselves, buying expensive jingles and song rights … is that where you want your tax dollars to go? Could we not find better uses for this money, seriously? And what happened to social responsibility? They are advertising so we’ll buy more — does that seem counter-productive to the social responsibility pact. Heck, I don’t see this many ads for Premier Liquors out of Buffalo, and they have competition.

In the coming weeks we’ll look a little deeper into the LCBO, see what the Auditor General had to say, and read what the pundits are talking about. Find out why our booze prices are being raised mainly because we can’t be trusted as a society to police ourselves when it comes to drinking the devil’s liquid. I just can’t believe that all this is going down and nobody seems to be saying anything on the subject. Over the past few weeks I have been listening to CFRB: John Tory and Jim Richards both made mention, Richards went as far as to speak with Chris Layton (media relations mouthpiece for LCBO) — while both announcers shared their outrage with listeners over various aspects of the LCBO’s conduct (John: advertising; Jim: price raising), the apathetic Ontarians who bothered to call in had very little to say on the matter, many believing the LCBO is doing a bang up job.

A quick search of the blog shows that just about every mention of the LCBO is a negative one. No surprise there: the LCBO is a relic of the post-Prohibition era and is still run in a way that would be familiar to the state-owned “stores” of the old Soviet Union. They are undeniably better both in selection and in service than they used to be, but just about every positive change was wrought by the mere threat that the government of the day was looking at privatization as an option. As soon as the threat went away, the positive changes could be slowed or even stopped: after all, where else are you going to go to buy your wines and spirits?

Boardroom quotas are a bad idea

Filed under: Britain, Economics, Government, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:05

James Delingpole on the British government’s half-baked notion to introduce quotas for female board members in business:

I love women. Women are great. I’ve married one, I’ve personally bred one and I’ve got lots who are my friends. And after years of close observation, here’s what I’ve concluded: chicks are definitely the superior species. They’re more intuitive, more versatile, more articulate, more competent. Plus, of course, they have breasts.

Given that all this is so, I really don’t understand why David Cameron feels he needs to impose quota systems on boardrooms. Not for the reasons he gives anyway. I could understand it if he said: “Look, I have no shame, no principles, no moral or ideological core in my blubbery, spineless, Heathite body. My Coalition government is run by Lib Dems, a marketing man and focus groups. And what they all tell me is: “Suck up to the female demographic.” So that’s why I’m saying this crap.”

But that’s not what Cameron has said in Stockholm. He’s actually trying to claim that he’s doing it for the good of British business.

    Government figures suggested that Britain’s slow progress was costing the economy more than £40 billion in lost potential each year, roughly equal to the defence budget.

Yeah right. I’m sure there are also “government figures” which suggest that green technologies will create millions of new jobs; “government figures” which suggest wind farms are a vital part of Britain’s energy package; “government figures” which suggest that a 50 per cent upper band tax rate is really healthy business.

Doesn’t make it so, though does it?

Update: Megan Moore says that the tokenism on display in Cameron’s comments “represents the ultimate triumph of style over substance”:

The first and most obvious objection to boardroom quotas is that they don’t actually work. A 2010 study by Amy Dittmar and Kenneth Ahern of the Ross Business School, University of Michigan, found that in Norway, a 10 percent increase in female board members in a company — enforced through a quota introduced in 2003 — caused the value of the company to drop. After all, if quality is no longer the sole criterion for choosing board members, it is highly likely the quality of the board will suffer.

You’d just as easily make a case for boards being required to match the ethnic, racial, religious, and sexual profile of the country: “Oh, sorry, due to the quotas we can’t invite you to join the board unless you’re Irish or Sikh and are either handicapped or left-handed. Bonus points if you’re transgendered.” Rather than emphasizing the needs of the organization — hiring someone who brings skills, talents, or connections that the organization can benefit from — this kind of social engineering only values people for their plumbing or their skin colour, or their sexual lifestyle.

February 7, 2012

Finns vote to stick with the EU

Filed under: Europe, Government — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 10:48

A summary of the recent presidential election results in Finland, from The Economist:

Those who argued that Finland is fast becoming a Eurosceptic country that is against the country’s membership of the European single currency, the euro, have been proved wrong by its presidential election. The run-off on February 5th was contested between the two most pro-European candidates. Timo Soini, leader of the anti-euro True Finns, which took a spectacular 18% of the vote in the general election last April, was humiliatingly pushed out in the first round. The winner, Sauli Niinisto, a former centre-right finance minister, took 63% of the vote to 37% for the loser, Pekka Haavisto of the Greens (who was also the first openly gay candidate for the post).

Mr Niinisto declares himself to be firmly in the pro-EU, pro-euro camp—indeed, as finance minister he helped get the country into the euro in the first place. That matters because the Finnish presidency is more than a ceremonial post, especially in foreign policy, even if recent constitutional changes have made it weaker than it once was. Most power, especially in domestic issues, rests with the government, a cumbersome six-party coalition led by Jyrki Katainen, the conservative prime minister. The arrival in the presidential palace of Mr Niinisto, a fellow conservative, will strengthen Mr Katainen’s hand. Yet strains within the coalition, which was designed largely to keep the True Finns out of power, are likely to persist.

February 6, 2012

America’s boom in “Moocher Culture”

Filed under: Books, Economics, Government, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 00:08

Glenn Harlan Reynolds in the Washington Examiner explains why the growth in something-for-nothing attitudes can and will come to grief:

“Fifty thousand for what you didn’t plant, for what didn’t grow. That’s modern farming — reap what you don’t sow.”

That’s a line from a song about farm subsidies, “Farming The Government,” by the Nebraska Guitar Militia.

But these days it applies to more and more of the U.S. economy, as Charles Sykes points out in his new book, A Nation Of Moochers: America’s Addiction To Getting Something For Nothing.

The problem, Sykes points out, is that you can’t run an economy like that. If you tried to hold a series of potluck dinners where a majority brought nothing to the table, but felt entitled to eat their fill, it would probably work out badly. Yet that’s essentially what we’re doing.

[. . .]

But the damage goes deeper. Sykes writes, “In contemporary America, we now have two parallel cultures: An anachronistic culture of independence and responsibility, and the emerging moocher culture.

“We continually draw on the reserves of that older culture, with the unspoken assumption that it will always be there to mooch from and that responsibility and hard work are simply givens. But to sustain deadbeats, others have to pay their bills on time.”

And, after a while, people who pay their bills on time start to feel like suckers. I think we’ve reached that point now:

  • People who pay their mortgages — often at considerable personal sacrifice — see others who didn’t bother get special assistance.
  • People who took jobs they didn’t particularly want just to pay the bills see others who didn’t getting extended unemployment benefits.
  • People who took risks to build their businesses and succeeded see others, who failed, getting bailouts. It rankles at all levels.

And an important point of Sykes’ book is that moocher-culture isn’t limited to farmers or welfare queens. The moocher-vs-sucker divide isn’t between the rich and poor, but between those who support themselves and those nursing at the government teat.

February 4, 2012

“Fake the oath” to become the new “Jump the shark”

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Media — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:26

Chris Selley wonders why anyone outside the Ottawa media bubble would care about the Sun Media (or as Paul Wells usually spells it in his tweets, “Sun Meida”) faking the citizenship ceremony for a TV broadcast:

“Let’s do it. We can fake the Oath.” That is the universally accepted money quote, courtesy of a Sun News producer, to come out of this week’s fracas involving the fledgling cable news network, the Ministry of Citizenship and Immigration and a citizenship ceremony that wasn’t quite what it seemed. On Oct. 19, during Citizenship Week, Sun viewers were told they were watching 10 people become Canadian citizens. Instead they were watching 10 citizens, six of whom were federal bureaucrats, reaffirm their Canadian citizenship.

“Congratulations to all of the new Canadians here,” co-host Alex Pierson gushed. “Ten of you here at Sun News Network, finally Canadian citizens!”

“Fake the Oath” certainly has the ring of legend. I think it could be to the Canadian media what “jump the shark” is to situation comedy. An example: “Oh for God’s sake, [insert media outlet], a talking dog on YouTube is news now? You guys have finally faked the Oath!”

But having gone through the documents behind this story, which were obtained by Canadian Press through Access to Information, I’m struggling to understand the amount of coverage this story got. Well, OK, I sort of understand it: Pointing and laughing at Sun Media is a national pastime among journalists and liberals these days. What I can’t figure out is how this matters.

When Canada’s Department of Transport became transphobic

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Cancon, Government, Liberty — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:48

Tabatha Southey has an interesting article in the Globe & Mail. I was unaware that the Canadian Forces now support transitioning transgendered soldiers (and have done for more than a decade), but that another branch of the government headed in quite the opposite direction last year:

While I think we should take the transgender community’s word for it — that transitioning works to transform often excruciatingly unhappy gender-dysphoric people into contented people — there are lots of studies that back them up as well.

It’s hardly something that anyone would do for kicks. Transitioning isn’t for sissies, which is why it’s heart-warming that our military made a practical and humane decision to accommodate transgender soldiers. And it’s also why it’s unfortunate that since July, 2011, a Department of Transport rule has been on the books that could prevent those same transitioning soldiers from flying home for Christmas.

The existence of this rule was brought to light this week by blogger Jennifer McCreath. It states that if “a passenger does not appear to be of the gender indicated on the identification he or she presents,” that person is not allowed to fly.

I’m prepared to believe those who say transgender and inter-sex people aren’t the demographic the rule aims to catch, but that leaves me wondering who it is the authorities are trying to nab.

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