Quotulatiousness

September 20, 2011

About that “ethnic cleansing” in Basildon

Filed under: Britain, Government, Law, Media — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:10

All the great and the good are girding for battle over the Dale Farm evictions:

A terrible episode of ‘ethnic cleansing’ is looming. It promises to be so bad that a spokesman for the United Nations’ Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination has been helicoptered in to ‘oversee negotiations’. Amnesty International has set up a special ‘priority action’ page on its website, pleading with people to write letters of outrage to politicians. Head-tilting celebrities have turned up to raise awareness about what one journalist refers to as the ‘racist hysteria’ of the coming cleansing, including that grande dame of right-on causes, Vanessa Redgrave. Things are so dire that the BBC has sent in Fergal Keane, its softly spoken, Irish ponderer of all things evil, who doesn’t only wear his heart but also his lungs, liver and spleen on his sleeve, who cut his teeth reporting on the war in Bosnia and the calamity in Rwanda. ‘It’s a very apprehensive situation’, he intoned on last night’s news.

Oh god, what has happened? A new war in Africa? A rekindling of the old wars in Bosnia? No. Basildon Council in Essex in south-east England is planning to evict some Travellers from their plot of land in Dale Farm. That’s all. Yet watching the media coverage, perusing the millions of tweets of tear-stained concern, you could be forgiven for thinking that the so-called Battle of Dale Farm was a rerun of Bosnia 1992. That is because moral opportunists, cause-hunters, those desperate for some political momentum in their lives, have cynically transformed a small-scale spat between a council and some Gypsies into an epochal stand-off between the forces of racist hysteria and the massed ranks of decent UN cheerleaders. It speaks to the desperation of today’s wannabe moral crusaders that they are willing to infuse even the Dale Farm fallout with the kind of simple-minded moralistic lingo they usually reserve for foreign wars.

Of course, the threatened Dale Farm eviction, which was supposed to take place yesterday until the High Court in London imposed a temporary injunction against it, will be bad and distressing for the Traveller families involved. Eighty-six families could be forcibly removed, simply for building homes on land which they own yet which Basildon Council says is protected Green Belt territory. But is that any justification for using phrases such as ‘racist hysteria’ to describe Basildon Council’s actions and even conjuring up the Holocaust to describe the plight of the Travellers, with Vanessa Redgrave talking about ‘what happened during Hitler’s rule’ and demanding that ‘minorities shouldn’t be destroyed’? If there’s any hysteria here, it is among those who fantasise that we’re witnessing a rerun of Nazi evil and that it is down to conscience-exercising celebs and Amnesty letter-writers — the heroes of the hour — to stop it in its tracks.

September 18, 2011

Solyndra: not just crony capitalism as usual

Filed under: Environment, Government, Law, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:28

Andrew C. McCarthy shows the difference between the collapse of Solyndra and ordinary crony capitalist use of government funds:

Homing in on one of the several shocking aspects of the Solyndra scandal, lawmakers noted that, a few months before the “clean energy” enterprise went belly-up last week, the Obama Energy Department signed off on a sweetheart deal. In the event of bankruptcy — the destination to which it was screamingly obvious Solyndra was headed despite the president’s injection of $535 million in federal loans — the cozily connected private investors would be given priority over American taxpayers. In other words, when the busted company’s assets were sold off, Obama pals would recoup some of their losses, while you would be left holding the half-billion-dollar bag.

As Andrew Stiles reported here at NRO, Republicans on the Oversight and Investigations subcommittee say this arrangement ran afoul of the Energy Policy Act of 2005. This law — compassionate conservatism in green bunting — is a monstrosity, under which Leviathan, which can’t run a post office, uses your money to pick winners and losers in the economy’s energy sector. The idea is cockamamie, but Congress did at least write in a mandate that taxpayers who fund these “investments” must be prioritized over other stakeholders. The idea is to prevent cronies from pushing ahead of the public if things go awry — as they are wont to do when pols fancy themselves venture capitalists.

[. . .]

The criminal law, by contrast, is not content to assume the good faith of government officials. It targets anyone — from low-level swindlers to top elective officeholders — who attempts to influence the issuance of government loans by making false statements; who engages in schemes to defraud the United States; or who conspires “to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof, in any manner or for any purpose.” The penalties are steep: Fraud in connection with government loans, for example, can be punished by up to 30 years in the slammer.

September 15, 2011

Belgium “without a government may be remembered as an economic and political golden age”

Filed under: Europe, Government, Politics — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 12:00

Doug Saunders looks at the situation in Belgium, which has gone without a government for over 450 days so far:

To look around the elegant city of Antwerp, you wouldn’t know that Belgium has now gone longer without a government than any country in modern history.

The trains still run on time, the teachers show up in their classrooms, museums are packed, taxes are collected, welfare is paid, and the country’s F-16 fighter jets are dropping bombs in Libya — even though Belgium has now gone a year and a quarter without a federal government, after the June 13, 2010 elections produced no majority and the feuding parties became locked in perpetual disagreement over coalition plans.

[. . .]

For some, this might sound like a libertarian’s idea of utopia: A country with nobody to raise taxes, or to slash spending, or to introduce major new government programs.

And indeed, Belgium has just managed, despite having only a largely powerless caretaker government, to post second-quarter economic growth rates — of 0.7 per cent — that exceeded neighbouring Germany, France and Britain. The country’s world-leading beer industry, analysts say, has remained aloft as the world drinks away its financial sorrows. And the government deficit has even been cut somewhat.

Well, it’s rather short of an anarchist’s utopia, but it’s a bit closer to a minarchist’s version. The “government” in question is, of course, the political one: the bureaucracy is still ticking over as before (one wonders if they’ve noticed the lack of politicians and their sometimes malign influence over the everyday activities of the bureaucracy).

It should be no surprise that the lack of new political initiatives has had a moderating influence on the business environment: it has reduced some of the “normal” instability of government activity. The European market and the world markets are still providing sufficient distortion and uncertainty, of course, but at least for some businesses they are not having to make business decisions with a wary eye on the current prime minister’s whim.

September 14, 2011

“Government frequently doesn’t think about what it’s doing, doesn’t understand what it’s doing, and can’t predict the probable outcome of what it’s doing”

Filed under: Government, Law — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:34

Ken at Popehat examines one particular example of government’s good intentions leading to unexpected results:

The problem: 16- and 17-year-olds are shitty drivers.

The legislative solution: dramatically tighten the license requirements and driving restrictions on 16- and 17-year-olds.

The result: At least according to one study (though there is conflicting data) higher fatality rates are shifted from 16- and 17-year-olds to 18- and 19-year-olds.

[. . .]

Arguments for driving regulation are stronger than many other realms of government regulation. My point is that the government frequently doesn’t think about what it’s doing, doesn’t understand what it’s doing, and can’t predict the probable outcome of what it’s doing. High-minded regulations do not necessarily have good effects just because they are meant well. Government should exercise humility; citizens should exercise skepticism.

Solyndra’s $500m deal pushed through against OMB concerns

Filed under: Economics, Government, Politics, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:11

The need for President Obama to get a good press outcome may have trumped the official concerns of the Office of Management and Budget in loaning half a billion dollars to now-bankrupt Solyndra:

The Obama White House tried to rush federal reviewers for a decision on a nearly half-billion-dollar loan to the solar-panel manufacturer Solyndra so Vice President Biden could announce the approval at a September 2009 groundbreaking for the company’s factory, newly obtained e-mails show.

The Silicon Valley company, a centerpiece in President Obama’s initiative to develop clean energy technologies, had been tentatively approved for the loan by the Energy Department but was awaiting a final financial review by the Office of Management and Budget.

The August 2009 e-mails, released exclusively to The Washington Post, show White House officials repeatedly asking OMB reviewers when they would be able to decide on the federal loan and noting a looming press event at which they planned to announce the deal. In response, OMB officials expressed concern that they were being rushed to approve the company’s project without adequate time to assess the risk to taxpayers, according to information provided by Republican congressional investigators.

September 13, 2011

TV ads in Canada required to tone down the volume

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Media — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 17:19

I don’t watch a lot of TV (except during football season), but I used to find TV ads in the evening seemed a lot louder than the programs they ran with. This will change:

The number of submissions was unusually numerous for a CRTC notice of comment, and 10 times higher than the complaints it received the previous three years combined.

“Broadcasters have allowed ear-splitting ads to disturb viewers and have left us little choice but to set out clear rules that will put an end to excessively loud ads,” the CRTC chairman, Konrad von Finckenstein, said in a release on Tuesday.

“The technology exists, let’s use it.”

The commission says 2009’s international standard for measuring and controlling television signals will apply to minimize fluctuations in loudness between programming and commercials.

Under the standard, broadcasters will have to ensure that both programs and ads are transmitted at the same volume.

September 12, 2011

The increasing militarization of the police

Filed under: Government, Law, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:50

Radley Balko shows how the tools given to the authorities to fight the war on terror have instead been used to further expand the war on drugs:

New York magazine reported some telling figures last month on how delayed-notice search warrants — also known as “sneak-and-peek” warrants — have been used in recent years. Though passed with the PATRIOT Act and justified as a much-needed weapon in the war on terrorism, the sneak-and-peek was used in a terror investigation just 15 times between 2006 and 2009. In drug investigations, however, it was used more than 1,600 times during the same period.

It’s a familiar storyline. In the 10 years since the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, the government has claimed a number of new policing powers in the name of protecting the country from terrorism, often at the expense of civil liberties. But once claimed, those powers are overwhelmingly used in the war on drugs. Nowhere is this more clear than in the continuing militarization of America’s police departments.

The trend toward a more militarized domestic police force began well before 9/11. It in fact began in the early 1980s, as the Regan administration added a new dimension of literalness to Richard Nixon’s declaration of a “war on drugs.” Reagan declared illicit drugs a threat to national security, and once likened America’s drug fight to the World War I battle of Verdun. But Reagan was more than just rhetoric. In 1981 he and a compliant Congress passed the Military Cooperation with Law Enforcement Act, which allowed and encouraged the military to give local, state, and federal police access to military bases, research, and equipment. It authorized the military to train civilian police officers to use the newly available equipment, instructed the military to share drug-war–related information with civilian police and authorized the military to take an active role in preventing drugs from entering the country.

[. . .]

The problem with this mingling of domestic policing with military operations is that the two institutions have starkly different missions. The military’s job is to annihilate a foreign enemy. Cops are charged with keeping the peace, and with protecting the constitutional rights of American citizens and residents. It’s dangerous to conflate the two. As former Reagan administration official Lawrence Korb once put it, “Soldiers are trained to vaporize, not Mirandize.” That distinction is why the U.S. passed the Posse Comitatus Act more than 130 years ago, a law that explicitly forbids the use of military troops in domestic policing.

Update: Also from Radley, a look inside the SWAT team leader’s world.

[. . .] note the complete disregard for the rights of the people being raided in the excerpt above. The author is actually suggesting SWAT commanders lobby to have their teams deployed in situations for which they normally wouldn’t be to ensure they’re in good practice. Put another way, he suggests they practice their door smashing, room-clearing, flash-grenade deploying, and other paramilitary tactics on less-than-violent people, so they’re in better form when a real threat arises. Never mind that there are going to be living, breathing, probably bleeding people on the receiving end of these “practice” raids. There’s officer safety and “SWAT team profile” to think about. It’s just an appalling mindset.

What is “the biggest European policy mistake since Britain and France let Hitler have the Sudetenland”?

Filed under: Economics, Europe, Government, Greece — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 12:09

For the record, I don’t actually think Europe would be better off with a single federal government, but Walter Russell Mead thinks the big mistake was attempting an economic union without a political union to match:

What is worrying investors worldwide is the evident intellectual and political bankruptcy of Europe. The Europeans are not stupider than other people, but they face deep structural economic and political problems that their institutions are hopelessly inadequate to solve. Creating a monetary union without a true federal government is looking more and more like the biggest European policy mistake since Britain and France let Hitler have the Sudetenland.

The current crisis is the result of a decade of policy failure. Greece should never have been allowed into the euro; prudent leaders would have checked its statistics, discovered the blatant frauds with which the Greeks sought to conceal the true state of their affairs, and told the country politely but firmly to come back when it was ready. Following that initial blunder, Europe failed to take note in any serious way of the serious distortions that were caused by suddenly reducing interest rates in Greece and other peripherals to near-German levels. Beyond that, alarm bells should have been ringing as it became clear that Greece and a number of other countries were treating their suddenly lower interest costs as found money. They were spending the windfall rather than taking advantage of the once in a lifetime opportunity to reform their economies in preparation for life under a monetary union with countries like Germany. If Europe’s institutions were up to the job, the warning signs would have been noticed and corrective steps taken years ago.

September 11, 2011

The Canada Pension Plan and moral hazard

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Government — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:37

An interesting post at Worthwhile Canadian Initiative looks at the overlooked failure in pension markets. I found this bit of information to be quite interesting, as it addresses a conversation I had with Dark Water Muse a few months ago:

Governments provide pensions in one of two ways. Pay As You Go (PAYG) plans use current contributions to fund current benefits. The Canada and Quebec Pension Plan were, when they were first introduced, PAYG plans. The moral hazard risk a worker faces with these plans is political: a politician will design the plan so as to maximize his or her chances of re-election.

The design of Canada and Quebec Pension Plan has created large benefits for the first generation of recipients (current voters) and a much lower rate of return for future recipients (future voters). Now those gainers were the generation that entered the labour market in the Great Depression and fought in World War II, so one could argue that the windfall gain they experienced was merited on equity grounds. The point here is merely that the design of PAYG pension plans reflects the interests of the designers (for re-election) as well as the interests of the contributors and recipients.

The Canada and Quebec Pension Plans are now transitioning into fully-funded plans. The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board was, as of June 30th 2011, managing $153 billion in assets. Some is managed directly by the board, the rest is managed by “partners” ranging from Istanbul-based Actera Group to New York-based Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe. I suspect that the CPP, roaming the world with billions to invest, is able to negotiate low management fees, and there must be savings associated with economies of scale in investing. But the possibility of moral hazard — someone getting rich by diverting away a tiny percentage of the return on $153 billion, or a politician exerting pressure on the CPP investment board to make electorally-sound investments — remains.

In sum, while private pension markets suffer from moral hazard, it’s not clear that governments can solve the problem.

In my discussion with DWM, I claimed that the CPP was a PAYG system (in extreme examples, like the US social security system, this can be compared to a Ponzi Scheme), while DWM — claimed that the system was fully funded from investments. As the quoted section above shows, we each had part of the answer.

It’s hard to believe that the CPPIB (the organization that handles the investments of the CPP) can remain immune to government meddling — buy this company’s stock, invest in that company’s risky-but-located-in-a-marginal-riding new venture, etc. As long at the CPPIB can remain independent of political pressure, the system might work.

September 7, 2011

Brendan O’Neill – The Riots: A Mob Made By The Welfare State?

Filed under: Britain, Government, Liberty, Media — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:14

How much more will “green” renewable power cost?

Filed under: Britain, Economics, Environment, Government, Technology — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 09:37

In short, lots more than ordinary power generation:

The Telegraph has obtained a policy document, dated July, that seems to suggest that the government is considering a walk away from the most expensive renewables — and now we can see the full copy online. Two No 10 advisers challenge the Department of Energy and Climate Change’s utopian cost predictions, and say energy bills will be much bigger than we’ve been told.

What isn’t in contention is that energy itself will be much more expensive. DECC’s argument is that we’ll all start insulating our homes more — so our utility bills won’t reflect the higher per-unit energy costs. No 10’s energy expert thinks this is nonsense.

The Cameron advisors also suggest that government policy should be “open” to ditching some of the most expensive renewables — such as offshore wind power.

What’s the real cost of wind and solar?

     The former power director of the National Grid, Colin Gibson, now estimates that the lifetime per unit cost of onshore wind is £178 per megawatt hour (MWh), and offshore wind at £254/MWh. Nuclear is £60/MWh. The figures DECC provides don’t account for the huge additional transmission costs of wind.

     Note how much more expensive reality is than the clean, green vision. Government figures reckoned onshore wind cost £55/MWh and offshore wind £84/Mwh [. . .] compared to gas at £44/Mwh. Politicians seeking to dump the renewables policy could argue that green-minded civil servants sold them a pup. They’d be right.

September 6, 2011

Stephen Gordon: no case for stimulus in Canada (yet)

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Government — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:15

As he points out in the article, Canadians who are calling for the federal government to indulge in US-style stimulus spending are not paying attention to the Canadian economy:

Employment in the U.S. is far below its pre-recession levels, and employment in the construction sector has been hit particularly hard. So there is a strong case to be made for a U.S. program of infrastructure spending — and many U.S. observers are making that case.

Neither of these conditions holds in Canada. Although unemployment rates have yet to return to pre-recession levels [. . .], the number of jobs lost during the recession has been recovered, and July employment levels were 1 per cent above their pre-recession peak.

September 4, 2011

California is apparently not in deep enough trouble

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Economics, Government, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 10:44

Otherwise, there’s no explanation for yet another extension of the state’s regulatory reach into the lives of everyday citizens. The most recent example is a bill that (at least on first look) appears to mandate workers’ compensation coverage, detailed pay slips (with all deductions clearly indicated), and paid vacation time for babysitters. Coyote Blog would like to see even more of this kind of thing:

I know this is exactly the kind of thing you would expect me to oppose, but I have decided this is exactly the kind of thing California needs. I am tired of average citizens passing crazy requirements on business without any concept of the costs and injustices they are proposing, and then scratch their head later wonder why job creation is stagnant.
I want to propose that California do MORE in this same vein. Here are some suggestions:

  • Every household will have to register for a license to conduct any type of commerce, a license to occupy their house, and a license to hire any employees. Homeowner will as a minimum have to register to withhold income taxes, pay social security taxes, pay unemployment insurance, pay disability insurance, and pay workers comp insurance.
  • Households should have to file a 1099 for every payment they make to contractors
  • All requirements of Obamacare must be followed for any household labor, including payment of penalties for even part-time labor for which the homeowner does not provide medical insurance
  • No alcohol may be purchased by any individual without first applying for and receiving a state liquor license
  • No cigarettes may be purchased by any individual without first applying for and receiving a state cigarette license
  • No over the counter drugs may be purchased by any individual without first applying for and receiving a state over the counter drug license

And the list goes on. But they’re not just being randomly generated: they’re all things that ordinary businesses in California already have to do.

September 2, 2011

US flood insurance is “a veritable bucket of fail”

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

Felix Salmon on the state of US flood insurance:

Ben Berkowitz has a big report on the the National Flood Insurance Program — something which is a veritable bucket of fail. In a nutshell, it undercuts private insurers and therefore is the only game in town; it insures only a small minority of homeowners; and it loses gobs of money. In September 2005, the NFIP was $1.5 billion in hock to the federal government; that number has now ballooned to $21 billion, and is certain to rise further.

There’s a simple answer to all these problems: let the NFIP raise its rates. And I don’t understand why it’s not being allowed to do so. If the rates rose, then that might allow private insurers into the flood-insurance game, giving consumers a choice and helping to get the word out about how insuring your home against flood damage is a really good idea. The NFIP could become profitable, and thereby start paying back all the money it owes. And while homeowners are quite price sensitive when it comes to flood insurance, the fact is that so few homeowners take out flood insurance right now that the number would be unlikely to fall dramatically if rates went up to a reasonable level.

September 1, 2011

“It is rather amazing how fast Solyndra wasted over half a billion US taxpayer dollars”

Filed under: Environment, Government, Technology, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:34

Mike “Mish” Shedlock looks at the breakneck pace of loss at Solyndra, a solar power company that just went bankrupt:

The federal government should get out of the business of picking technology and “green” winners. Government backing of alternate energy companies has been nothing short of disastrous.

A solar energy firm touted by the administration in 2010 as a as a “gleaming example of green technology” today announced bankruptcy. 1,100+ employees will be fired.

[. . .]

The “seen” math is simple enough. $535 million divided by 1,100 is roughly $486,363 per job saved, now job lost.

That is just the “seen” consequence. The “unseen” consequences are not directly calculable but by giving Solyndra money, other companies that the free market would have preferred have been harmed, perhaps permanently harmed.

Although Obama clearly rushed this pathetic company for a nice photo-op, this is not a simple case of the president failing to do his homework as the GAO implies. The government has no business promoting this kind of crap in the first place.

In this case, it is rather amazing how fast Solyndra wasted over half a billion US taxpayer dollars, so fast I suspect fraud.

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