Quotulatiousness

March 20, 2012

Suppressing one shoot of the Arab Spring, with British and American help

Filed under: Government, Liberty, Media, Middle East — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:02

Tim Black talks about the oddly different reaction to the Bahrain “Arab Spring” protests:

For decades, the people of this Middle Eastern state have lived under what is effectively a hereditary dictatorship. In spring last year, however, it looked like things might finally change. A long-repressed people began to feel emboldened. Protests gathered momentum. At last, it seemed, a more democratic, more open future beckoned. And then, the crackdown. The troops moved in, the shooting (and killing) started, and the summary arrest, detention and torture commenced in earnest.

Now, you could be forgiven for guessing Syria. But you’d be wrong. The place I’m describing here is the small Gulf state of Bahrain, just off the coast of Saudi Arabia. Still, given the brutal repression, given the popular unrest, you would expect the West to have responded to events in Bahrain much as it responded to events elsewhere in the region. After all, Bahraini troops effectively began firing on their own people; and a disenfranchised majority struggling for some degree of political sovereignty, long withheld by Bahrain’s decidedly unconstitutional monarchy, is still being repressed.

[. . .]

As I have written before, Bahrain is the point at which the hypocrisy of the West’s attitude to the Arab uprisings is writ large. While America, the UK and France were happy to pose, posture and bomb when it came to a pantomime villain like Libya’s Colonel Gaddafi, the far more problematic state of Bahrain offers no such easy moral capital.

[. . .]

So what of the situation now? With ‘human rights-trained’ police out on the beat, it must be hunky dory, right? Well, given that around 200,000 people (about a third of Bahrain’s population) gathered to protest in a suburb of Manama a few weeks ago, and given the near nightly explosions of tear-gassed violence in the villages and districts around the capital, it all seems far from hunky dory. As one activist put it last week, ‘This is a war’. And it is a war which officials from Saudi Arabia, America and Britain are fighting in — on the anti-democratic, liberty-crushing side.

March 13, 2012

Yet another straw in the wind on Canada’s F-35 plans

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Military, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 14:56

An article by Murray Brewster, published in the Winnipeg Free Press looks at more signs that Canada may not be as tightly bound to their F-35 purchase plans:

The point man on the F-35 stealth fighter purchase says the Conservative government has not ruled out abandoning the troubled project.

“We have not, as yet, discounted the possibility, of course, of backing out of any of the program,” Julian Fantino associate defence minister, told the Commons defence committee on Tuesday.

He made the comment after a series of pointed questions from both opposition parties.

Fantino said the government is still committed to buying the radar-evading jet, but no contract has been signed.

The Conservatives still believe the high-tech jet is the best choice to replace the aging CF-18s, but the minister suggested they are taking a cautious approach.

None of the other nine allied nations involved in the program has yet withdrawn and the minister said: “We are not.”

[. . .]

In months of questioning in the House of Commons, Fantino has insisted there is no need for a backup plan in case of further delays in the project as the manufacturer works out software and design glitches.

But on Tuesday, he told the committee he was waiting for defence officials to prepare alternate scenarios to the F-35 deal, the so-called Plan B that opposition parties have demanded.

March 12, 2012

GM: the re-Volting face of corporatism

Filed under: Economics, Government, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:14

Redmond Weissenberger on the decline of GM from world-class manufacturer to crony capitalist shell:

General Motors was once the Jewel in the crown of American Capitalism. By many, it was considered the greatest manufacturing company in America, if not the world. The company was destroyed by the insidious nature of the Neo-National Socialism that has infected the USA for well on 80 years now, when the merger of state and corporate power that swept across Europe was aped first by Hoover and then by FDR in the disastrous New Deal. The unions that were encouraged to eat away at GM from the inside were bailed out and the US Federal government took a 25% ownership in company. In the 2009 deal to “restructure” GM, the bondholders were wiped out, and the Unions were given a free pass to continue their destructive behaviors.

Built by what is now a de facto state-owned corporation, the Volt was the child of the green-washed brains of the Obama administration. The Volt was built for no-one, but a vision of the perfect, “New eco-Socialist Man”. Who is buying the Volt? According to Bill Visnic, senior editor of Edmunds.com, “The Volt appeals to an affluent, progressive demographic” General Motors itself stated that the average income of a Volt buyer is $175,000 a year. This trend does of course line up with the type of individual who has been at the forefront of the environmental movement since day one. A rarefied elite, righteously indignant, statist in nature, ready to have the government force eco-correct behavior on all who inhabit the land. The classic example is Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, who once opined that “In the event that I am reincarnated, I would like to return as a deadly virus, to contribute something to solving overpopulation”.

The Volt is a very good example of what happens when the means of production falls into the hands of the State. The system of profit and loss that can only operate when prices are set by the private owners of the materials and the means of production. The Chevy Volt can only exist within the sphere of the state wherein there is no rational economic calculation possible.

[. . .]

It is estimated by Tom Gantert that the Volt has received up to $3 Billion in Local, State and Federal Subsidies. And if you believe that GM has indeed sold 6,000 Volts, then the total subsidy per car can be estimated anywhere from $50,000 to $250,000. All of this for a mid-sized 4 door sedan that retails for $39,828 (eligible for a $7,500 federal rebate of course).

March 10, 2012

Canadian Conservatives: “You are not that party”

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Government, Liberty — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:27

Andrew Coyne’s presentation to the Manning Centre conference in Ottawa:

What I believe in are a set of principles having to do with the freedom of the individual, the usefulness but not infallibility of markets, and the legitimate but limited role of the state. There are, in brief, a few things we need government to do, based on well-established criteria on which there is a high degree of expert consensus. The task is simply to get government to stick to those things, rather than waste scarce resources on things that could be done as well or better by other means: that is, government should only do what only government can do.

As I say, these ideas are not novel, or controversial. Indeed, you would find support for them, to a greater or lesser degree, across the political spectrum.

Nevertheless, there was a party, once, that believed in these things, to a somewhat greater extent than the other parties. That party called itself conservative, whether with a small or a large C, so I suppose you could call the things it believed conservatism. But you are no longer that party.

For example, that party favoured balanced budgets. But you are not that party. In fact, you boast of how your decision to add $150-billion to the national debt saved the economy.

That party favoured cutting or at least controlling spending, after the massive spree of the Liberals’ last years. But you are not that party. In fact, you boast of how you have increased spending by 7% per year — $37-billion in one year!

That party favoured a simpler, flatter tax system, that left people free to decide how to spend, save or invest their money for themselves. But you are not that party. In fact, you boast of the many gimmicks and gew-gaws with which you have festooned the tax code.

That party favoured abolishing corporate welfare. But you are not that party. In fact you boast of the handouts you make, often accompanied by ministers or indeed MPs bearing outsized novelty cheques. In some cases, you even put the Conservative logo on them.

The story of the last decade is how the rock-ribbed small-c conservatives of the old Reform Party were tamed, neutered, and blinkered into becoming a blue-painted Liberal Party. It worked, in the sense of getting their hands on the levers of power, but their souls were tainted, corrupted, and eventually disposed of in the process.

March 7, 2012

“The EU’s definition of a free society is where people do the authorities’ bidding voluntarily”

Filed under: Economics, Europe, Government, Liberty — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:24

George Jonas who “imbibed too many Molotov-cocktails in his youth” on the European project:

The news comes on a day when market analysts observe “a sea of red.” European bourses are down 1.5%, China’s growth target is lowered from 8% to 7.5%, and the Greek government’s contingent liabilities are likely to exceed a trillion euros. While Europe’s debts are going through the roof, Viviane Reding has her eye glued to the glass ceiling. The European Commissioner for Justice doesn’t like what she sees.

“The European Commission is considering introducing mandatory quotas for female members on corporate boards,” reports Germany’s Suddeutsche Zeitung. The meticulous newspaper leaves no doubt about the reason. “Pleas for companies to voluntarily introduce such quotas themselves produced no effect.”

The EU’s definition of a free society is where people do the authorities’ bidding voluntarily. The EU is socialist, of course, not communist. Socialists consider an intermediate stage of voluntary compliance essential before turning to coercion.

Communists find this a hoot. They say it’s hypocritical and a waste of time. It’s hard to disagree with them. Communists are always nasty, but not always wrong.

Update: Of course, with their top-down, we-know-best approach, it’s no surprise that they were totally astonished when people interpreted their latest pro-expansion video a bit less positively than they expected:

H/T to the Adam Smith Institute blog for the video:

Critics of the EU are often accused of being “Little Englanders”. In the light of rhetoric like this from the EU it’s clear that the mindset behind the EU itself is little more than Little Englanderism writ large across the continent — still preoccupied with keeping out scary foreigners and closing Europe off from alien cultures. If the EU is offering an insular Europe that demonizes and builds walls against foreigners, I would turn it down. There’s a whole world out there to trade and engage with.

March 4, 2012

Passenger rail as the ultimate political luxury good?

Filed under: Economics, Government, Politics, Railways — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 00:14

A post at Coyote Blog from last month looks at the eye-popping financial arrangements keeping the New Mexico “Railrunner” passenger service in operation:

Of course, as is typical, the Republic article had absolutely no information on costs or revenues, as for some reason the media has adopted an attitude that such things don’t matter for rail projects — all that matters is finding a few people to interview who “like it.” So I attempted to run some numbers based on some guesses from other similar rail lines, and made an educated guess that it had revenues of about $1.8 million and operating costs of at least $20 million, excluding capital charges. I got a lot of grief for making up numbers — surely it could not be that bad. Hang on for a few paragraphs, because we are going to see that its actually worse.

The equipment used in the New Mexico Railrunner operation looks remarkably similar to what GO Transit runs in the GTA:

Click to see original image at Coyote Blog

Anyway, I got interested in checking back on the line to see how it was doing. I actually respected them somewhat for not running mid-day trains that would lose money, but my guess is that only running a few trains a day made the initial capital costs of the line unsustainable. After all, high fixed cost projects like rail require that one run the hell out of them to cover the original capital costs.

As it turns out, I no longer have to guess at revenues and expenses, they now seem to have crept into the public domain. Here is a recent article from the Albuquerque Journal. Initially, my eye was attracted to an excerpt that said the line was $4 million in the black.

[. . .]

Now it looks like taxes are covering over half the rail’s costs. But this implies that perhaps $10 million might be coming from users, right? Nope, keep reading all the way down to paragraph 11

    The Rail Runner collects about $3.2 million a year in fares and has an annual operating budget of about $23.6 million. That does not include about $41.7 million a year in debt service on the bonds — a figure that include eventual balloon payments.

So it turns out that I was actually pretty close, particularly since my guess was four years ago and they have had some ridership increases and fare increases since.

At the end of the day, riders are paying $3.2 million of the total $65.3 million annual cost. Again, I repeat my reaction from four years ago to hearing that riders really loved the train. Of course they do — taxpayers (read: non-riders) are subsidizing 95.1% of the service they get. I wonder if they paid the full cost of the train ride — ie if their ticket prices were increased 20x — how they would feel about the service?

If all of that wasn’t enough, the financing arrangement has a nasty sting in the tail: in the mid 2020’s, the state will owe two separate payments of over $200 million. Enjoy the subsidized rides now, folks … the payment comes due just in time for your kids to face as they graduate.

March 3, 2012

Three persistent myths about the Great Depression, the New Deal, and World War 2

Filed under: Economics, Government, History, USA, WW2 — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 00:08

Historian Stephen Davies names three persistent myths about the Great Depression. Myth #1: Herbert Hoover was a laissez-faire president, and it was his lack of action that lead to an economic collapse. Davies argues that in fact, Hoover was a very interventionist president, and it was his intervening in the economy that made matters worse. Myth #2: The New Deal ended the Great Depression. Davies argues that the New Deal actually made matters worse. In other countries, the Great Depression ended much sooner and more quickly than it did in the United States. Myth #3: World War II ended the Great Depression. Davies explains that military production is not real wealth; wars destroy wealth, they do not create wealth. In fact, examination of the historical data reveals that the U.S. economy did not really start to recover until after WWII was over.

March 2, 2012

The ugly twins: censorship and surveillance

Filed under: Government, Liberty, Media, Technology — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:27

Cory Doctorow in the Guardian:

There was a time when you could censor without spying. When Britain banned the publication of James Joyce’s Ulysses in the 1920s and 1930s, the ban took the form on a prohibition on the sale of copies of the books. Theoretically, this entailed opening some imported parcels, and it certainly imposed a constraint on publishers and booksellers. It was undoubtedly awful. But we’ve got it worse today.

Jump forward 80 years. Imagine that you want to ban www.jamesjoycesulysses.com due to a copyright claim from the Joyce estate. Thanks to the Digital Economy Act and the provision it makes for a national British copyright firewall, we’re headed for a system where entertainment companies can specify URLs that have “infringing” websites, and a national censorwall will block everyone in the country from visiting those sites.

In order to stop you from visiting www.jamesjoycesulysses.com, the national censorwall must intercept all your outgoing internet requests and examine them to determine whether they are for the banned website. That’s the difference between the old days of censorship and our new digital censorship world. Today, censorship is inseparable from surveillance.

March 1, 2012

A “Confederation theme park”? The jokes write themselves

Filed under: Cancon, Government, History, Humour — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:59

In the National Post, Lorne Gunter has a bit of fun with the notion of what kind of attractions to put in a theme park celebrating Confederation:

“It’s easy to mock Preston Manning’s idea for a Confederation Theme Park … for starters, it’s somewhat odd to see the pro-small-government, West-wants-in Reform Party founder to be proposing a large government expenditure on a historically slanted amusement park to be located, of all places, in Ottawa.”

So said the Ottawa Citizen’s Mark Sutcliffe — two years ago!

It’s still easy to mock.

Although ultimately endorsing Mr. Manning’s idea (in his own altered form), Sutcliffe called the project “Epcot Centre on the Ottawa River,” a dig at the multinational exposition at Disney World in Orlando, Fla. (The one lasting impression I have of Epcot is that every pavilion was tedious and getting from one to the other required a lot of uncomfortable, fruitless walking. Hey, maybe that would be a good blueprint for a celebration of Confederation after all.)

Sutcliffe had his own satirical ideas of what rides a Confederation Park might offer. There could be “Universal (Health Care) Studios” and the “Sovereignty Movement Roller Coaster” that soared to the same dizzying highs and plunged to the same gut-turning lows as Quebec nationalism has experienced over the past 40 years. Patrons could also “board the Avro Arrow as it sits on the runway and never takes off!”

[. . .]

Imagine the joy on tots faces when Mom and Dad tell them that instead of going to central Florida for Pirates of the Caribbean, It’s a Small World (gad, I still have that cloying song stuck in my head), Space Mountain, Splash Mountain and Typhoon Lagoon, they’ll be heading to Ottawa in February to watch an animatronic debate between robot John A. Macdonald and robot Joseph Howe over the British North America Act’s division of federal and provincial powers at the authentic recreation of Charlottetown’s Founders’ Hall at the PEI display.

Then there’ll be a ride on the Drop of Western Alienation Doom; the Endless Trip to the Sovereignty-Association Dentist (sponsored by “money and the ethnic vote”); the Constitutional Reform Merry-go-round (also dubbed the Canada Round); topped off by the Centre-of-the-Universe Centrifuge where riders strap themselves into cars resembling Canada’s regions and the entire contraption revolves around Toronto.

The plight of Britain under austerity

Filed under: Britain, Economics, Government, Media — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:03

Vuk Vukovic wonders why the notion that the British government has imposed austerity still has any traction in the media:

The UK had the one of the strongest fiscal stimuli (relative to the size of its economy) in the world as a response to the crisis, during the premiership of Gordon Brown. The result was making the situation much worse with a rising public debt and the third highest budget deficit in the world behind only Greece and Egypt in 2011, and behind Greece and Iceland in 2010. This comparison is striking since these countries were doing much worse than the UK at the time and were countries with highly unstable economies – Iceland before the restructuring, Greece whenever, and Egypt after a year-long revolution which saw the downfall of a dictator and an inability to consolidate ever since.

So the argument of Keynesians is that this wasn’t enough, and that Britain is crippled with austerity. The media is supporting the former view as well. Britain is running the hardest austerity policy in Europe and this is resulting in terrible growth performance and the inability to start up the recovery. However, Britain is far from austerity. Yes, some painful cuts have been made, tuitions were rising, unions were hit, wages in the public sector are stagnant, a lot of public sector workers have been laid off, but what does the government do with this saved up money? It “invests” in credit easing, housing subsidies, the youth contract and infrastructural projects. On the other hand, it’s guiding private sector investment and centrally planning credit, it announces an increase of the minimum wage, abolishing of the default retirement age, more regulation after claiming to remove regulation, the 50p tax rate and so on. None of these policies are policies aimed at growth. They are all part of a Keynesian response to the crisis.

After all, if one would just observe the spending data for the UK, it is still increasing, both relatively (as percent of GDP) and absolutely.

“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” To call a situation where government’s share of GDP is rising as “austerity” requires a brand new definition for the word.

February 29, 2012

Ireland introduces the doomsday scenario: allowing voters to have a say on the Euro

Filed under: Europe, Government, Law — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:33

The EU is not a democratic institution, and is actively hostile to any attempt to consult the people as it tries to become a super-state. Ireland just tossed a medium-sized spanner into the works:

Premier Enda Kenny said Dublin was acting on legal advice from Ireland’s attorney-general that “on balance” the fiscal compact requires a vote under the country’s constitution. “It gives the Irish people the opportunity to reaffirm Ireland’s commitment to membership of the euro,” he told ashen-faced members of the Dail.

All three major parties back the treaty but analysts say there is a high risk of rejection by angry voters in the current fractious mood. The compact gives the EU intrusive powers to police the budgets of debtor states, and has been denounced as feudal bondage by Sinn Fein and Ireland’s vociferous eurosceptics. The Irish voted “No” to both the Nice and Lisbon treaties before being made to vote again. Dublin has ruled out a second vote this time.

The Taoiseach’s announcement sent the euro into sharp dive against the dollar, though it rebounded later. Europe’s leaders thought they had tweaked the wording of the text just enough to avoid an Irish vote.

Note that last sentence closely. Avoiding consulting the very people who’ll be most affected is standard practice in the EU. Good for Ireland that they aren’t willing to be steamrolled yet again.

February 28, 2012

Yet another death due to excessive concern for ‘elf an’ safety issues

Filed under: Britain, Bureaucracy, Government, Health — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 14:25

Bagehot blogs about the unhealthy results of paying too close attention to the health and safety regulations:

[T]he Mail on Sunday ran an interesting feature this weekend about a different example of what certainly sounded like a health and safety overreaction. It told the tale of a man who drowned in a shallow boating pond in his local park, after suffering an epileptic seizure while feeding swans. A passer-by (a woman who was in charge of a small child so did not dare enter the pond) called the emergency services. But the first firemen to show up announced that they only had Level One training, for ankle-deep water, and needed to wait for a specialist team with Level Two training for chest-deep water. By the time that team arrived, the man had been floating in the pond for 37 minutes. While waiting for that specialist help, the same firemen also strongly urged a policeman not to attempt a rescue in the pond, even refusing to lend the policeman a life-vest. Then the policeman’s control room told him not to enter the water, as the victim had been in the pond so long that it was a body retrieval mission, not a rescue.

The MoS, which sent its reporter out into the same pond equipped with no more than rubber waders, called it a story that “shames Britain”. Certainly its photograph of the eventual retrieval of the poor victim’s body, featuring 25 separate emergency workers, an inflatable tent, several fire engines and a helicopter, is suggestive of an over-reaction after an under-reaction.

It is tempting to conclude that Britain has fallen into a serious problem with regulation, red tape and crippling risk-aversion. Certainly, the newspapers have recently been filled with all manner of depressing stories about pancake races being cancelled, policemen being urged not to pursue criminals onto roof tops, party bunting being outlawed or council workers refusing to mount shoulder-height step ladders to fix broken signs without logistical back-up once reserved for the cleaning of the Sistine Chapel ceiling.

[. . .]

All of which is sensible. You don’t have to be a wild-eyed libertarian to suspect that something has gone wrong with the management of risk in Britain. It is also depressing to see so many advertisements for ambulance-chasing lawyers, urging anyone who has had the smallest accident to sue. Anecdotally, members of parliament grumble about the role played by some insurance companies who hold special advice-sessions on liability for local councils, seeking to terrify them into taking out expensive cover and in the process filling the heads of municipal bosses with all manner of scare stories.

But listening to my rather cautious Jersey host, and reading the MoS report of the pond rescue, I found myself wondering if the British character may not also play a role. Read the report by Lord Young, or even the detail of the admirably comprehensive Mail report, and the rules themselves are sometimes less the problem than their interpretation. It turns out that emergency workers can break all sorts of health and safety rules when lives are at stake, without fear of prosecution, for example. And those guidelines on Level One and Level Two water training were intended for rescuers in fast-moving flood waters, the inquest into the pond case was told.

Did Greece get bailed out or did it default? A little from column A and a bit from column B

Filed under: Economics, Europe, Government, Greece, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:56

Detlev Schlichter explains what happened in the “big fat Greek bailout”:

Greece was bailed out for the second time in four months. Or did it default? Well, a bit of both, I guess.

All bondholders are equal. But some are more equal than others. If you are the ECB, your Greek bonds were exchanged, par for par, for new Greek bonds, and you can go on pretending that they are worth their principal amount. You won’t have to report a loss for now. But if you are a ‘private’ entity — and that is a rather loosely used term these days as it includes the banking industry which is either now partially owned by the state or to a considerable degree dependent on ongoing support from the lender-of-last resort — more than half your Greek investment was wiped out. So Greece defaulted. But as you ‘agreed’ to the ‘haircut’ it was in fact a ‘voluntary restructuring’, although you really had no choice.

[. . .]

I guess we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that Greece’s economic model is fundamentally unsustainable, whichever way you cut it. Greece has been living beyond its means for a long time, and has managed to do so by flying under air-cover of the EMU project and with the tailwind of cheap credit and easy money. Spending by the Greek state accounts for more than half of registered economic activity, and a third of the workforce is employed by the public sector. ‘Activities’ are being subsumed under the heading of ‘Greek GDP’ that nobody would voluntarily pay for, that are to a large degree wasteful, and that are simply unaffordable under anything but the most bizarrely generous credit conditions, i.e. precisely those that Greece enjoyed from 2001 to 2008. Easy money has been used to paper over grave economic imbalances. Some of what is generously labelled ‘GDP’ should be discontinued — and fast.

To even suggest that such an economic model would be manageable if Greece, a country with about three quarters of the population of metropolitan Los Angeles but with less than half of L.A.’s GDP, only had its own paper currency and could inflate and devalue to its heart’s content, is economically illiterate. No country ever prospered by running budget deficits funded by the printing press or by creating domestic inflation. Devaluing your currency may give your exporters a shot in the arm — for about five minutes. But it scares your domestic savers away for years to come and severely diminishes your ability to keep or attract capital, the backbone of any sustainable economic model. To even try and attempt to ‘inflate away’ a debt load worth 160 percent of a generously calculated GDP would cause economic damage of gigantic proportion. One must have swallowed the Keynesian mythology of deficit-spending whole to believe that the country could borrow and print itself out of this mess. A proper default on its existing debt and rebuilding from a lower base — but with a hard currency — are the better options.

February 27, 2012

Matt Ridley reviews Watermelons by James Delingpole

Filed under: Books, Economics, Environment, Government, Liberty, Media — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:11

In short, he likes it and thinks it deserves your attention:

With each passing year it becomes clearer that the cure for global warming is worse than the disease. While wind power and biofuels devastate ecosystems and economies, temperatures and sea levels rise ever more slowly, just as the greenhouse theory — minus feedbacks — predicts. As James Delingpole acutely observes, the true believers are left with a version of Pascal’s wager embodying a ‘dismally feeble grasp of cost-benefit analysis’: that, however unlikely it is, the potential cost of global warming is so high that anything is justified.

[. . .]

In keeping with that tradition, sometimes he goes too far. Before 2009, I had more sympathy for his targets. But the leaked emails of ‘Climategate’ — a word that Delingpole popularised — and the official whitewashes of that episode leave no doubt about the tactics that have been used by the climate orthodoxy to bully doubters and suppress dissent, while raking in money from carbon indulgences. This church deserves a rude Luther.

[. . .]

To Delingpole’s surprise as well as the reader’s, this book is not really about climate change after all. As he digs deeper into the writings of the Club of Rome and their ambitious disciples (such as John Holdren, science adviser to Barack Obama, and Maurice Strong, first director of the UN Environmental Programme, godfather of both the Rio Conference of 1992 and the Kyoto treaty of 1997, and deviser of the Earth Charter to replace the Ten Commandments — who moved to China at the moment that he was implicated in the Iraqi ‘oil for food’ scandal), Delingpole finds he cannot avoid an uncomfortable conclusion:

    Look, when I began researching this book, I thought it was going to be about Climategate and global warming — not some massive international plot to destroy Western Civilisation and replace it with some grisly New World Order based on rationed resources, enforced equality and the return of the barter system. Unfortunately, though, the weight of evidence was against me. So brazenly open are the leading ideologues of the green movement about their plans for New World Order, I’m not even sure the word ‘conspiracy’ properly applies.

The grand green faith has two commandments: that humanity is the problem not the solution; and that international central planning is the solution, not the problem.

February 26, 2012

The Freeman: An open letter to statists everywhere

Filed under: Economics, Government, Liberty, Politics, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:09

In a posting from twelve years ago, Lawrence W. Reed has some questions he’d like statists to answer:

You clever guys are always coming up with new schemes for government to do this or that, to address this issue or solve that problem, or fill some need somewhere. You get us limited-government people bogged down in the minutiae of how your proposed programs are likely to work (or not work), and while we’re doing the technical homework you seldom do, you demonize us as heartless number crunchers who don’t care about people.

Sometimes we all get so caught up in the particulars that we ignore the big picture. I propose that we step back for a moment. Put aside your endless list of things for government to do and focus on the whole package. I need some thoughtful answers to some questions that maybe, just maybe, you’ve never thought much about because you’ve been too wrapped up in the program du jour.

At the start of the 1900s, government at all levels in America claimed about 5 percent of personal income. A hundred years later, it takes more than 40 percent — up by a factor of eight. So my first questions to you are these: Why is this not enough? How much do you want? Fifty percent? Seventy percent? Do you want all of it? To what extent do you believe a person is entitled to what he (or she) has earned?

[. . .]

This raises a whole series of related questions about how you see the nature of government and what you’ve learned, if anything, from our collective experiences with it. I see the ideal government as America’s founders did — in Washington’s words, a “dangerous servant” employing legalized force for the purpose of preserving individual liberties. As such, it is charged with deterring violence and fraud and keeping itself small, limited, and efficient. How can you profess allegiance to peace and nonviolence and at the same time call for so much forcible redistribution?

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