Quotulatiousness

September 29, 2011

Greek tax evasion: not a new problem at all

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Economics, Europe, Government, Greece — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:28

In a New York Times article from last year, Suzanne Daley reported the rather amazing statistic from Athens:

In the wealthy, northern suburbs of this city, where summer temperatures often hit the high 90s, just 324 residents checked the box on their tax returns admitting that they owned pools.

So tax investigators studied satellite photos of the area — a sprawling collection of expensive villas tucked behind tall gates — and came back with a decidedly different number: 16,974 pools.

That kind of wholesale lying about assets, and other eye-popping cases that are surfacing in the news media here, points to the staggering breadth of tax dodging that has long been a way of life here.

H/T to Araminta Wordsworth for the link.

Quebec may create its own gun registry

Filed under: Cancon, Government — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 08:10

Matt Gurney examines the Quebec government’s declared intention to create a provincial gun registry:

In July, Quebec’s Public Safety Minister Robert Dutil told reporters that his government was considering a “Plan B” in the (highly probable) event that the federal Tories scrapped the long-gun registry — the creation of a provincial registry. Quebec is particularly sensitive to crimes committed by firearm, and has been more wedded than most provinces to the faulty notion that registration provides public-safety benefits. The Supreme Court has already ruled that firearms registration is a federal responsibility due to the public safety nature of gun control, but Quebec could theoretically try to establish a registry for firearms that treats them as simple property, no different than dogs, cats or boats. It would be a political stunt only … but then again, that’s all the registry has been since the beginning: A costly act of political theatre in which politicians impose burdensome red tape on lawful firearms owners and proclaim society somehow safer as a result.

September 28, 2011

Economics on one foot

Filed under: Economics, Government, Liberty — Tags: — Nicholas @ 00:03

September 23, 2011

Mexico to try market solution to drug wars

Filed under: Americas, Economics, Government, Law — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:54

Jesse Kline reports on the sudden conversion to drug legalization on the part of the Mexican government:

The United States imports a majority of it’s cocaine from Mexico, which has been embroiled in a brutal war among rival gangs for control of the lucrative trade.

Over 42,000 people have been killed in Mexico as a result of gang violence since President Felipe Calderon took office in 2006. Not a moment too soon, it appears the President is starting to recognize that the current approach to dealing with illicit drugs is not working.

“We must do everything to reduce demand for drugs. But if the consumption of drugs cannot be limited, then decision-makers must seek more solutions — including market alternatives — in order to reduce the astronomical earnings of criminal organizations,” Calderon said in a speech in New York.

Using the term “market alternatives” is a key choice of words. The reason organized crime has so successfully dominated the trade is the blanket prohibition on drugs, forcing the market underground. The same thing happened in the United States when alcohol was made illegal during Prohibition.

The solution to removing the criminal element from the drug trade is the same one that solved the problem with booze: legalize it. Allow drugs to be produced by private industry in a regulated environment. After all, gang violence has become more deadly than the substances they’re peddling. And we don’t see beer companies shooting each other for control of distribution networks.

Solyndra: “They doubled down, just like some chump who lost his stake at the Vegas blackjack tables”

Filed under: Economics, Government, Politics, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 10:55

Megan McArdle tries to figure out how Solyndra managed to spend nearly a billion dollars in two years:

By my count, Since September 2009, they borrowed $535 million from us to get their second fab up and running, raised $219 million in a private equity offering, got $175 million from issuing convertible promissory notes after their IPO was pulled, received $75 million in the last-ditch round where the DOE allowed their seniority to be subordinated, and maybe got a loan from a different bank. By the time they filed bankruptcy in August, my understanding is that they were basically out of cash.

The Washington Post‘s rather scathing new account, full of employees saying that post-loan, Solyndra started spending money like it was about to be discontinued, says the new facility for which we loaned them all that money cost $344 million to build. So it seems that in the space of two years, Solyndra managed to spend $344 million building a factory and $660 million . . . doing what?

September 21, 2011

“Our existing income tax structure is nothing short of crazy”

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Government — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 12:50

That’s Kevin Milligan in the Globe and Mail talking about the Canadian tax structure:

Here are five nuggets of information Canadians should keep in mind as the high income taxation discussion unfolds. [. . .]

Second, our existing income tax structure is nothing short of crazy. The graph shows the marginal tax rate (the tax owed on the last dollar earned) across different income levels for a two-child family in Manitoba in 2010, the clawback of both federal and provincial refundable tax credits. (Similar graphs for more provinces are here.) What redistributive goal is such a bizarre tax structure designed to achieve? A strong argument can be made that we should improve and reform our existing income tax structure before slapping more confusion on top of it.

Third, the threshold at which one reaches the highest tax bracket is exceedingly low in Canada compared to other countries. In the United Kingdom, one reaches the highest tax bracket of 50 per cent at the Canadian dollar equivalent of $234,000. In the United States, currently the highest federal rate of 35 per cent is reached at incomes of $379,150 (U.S.). In Canada, the highest federal rate is 29 per cent, reached only at $128,800. Just to reach the level of income tax progressivity observed in the United States under President George W. Bush, Canada would need to increase this high income threshold dramatically.

Report shows military bureaucracy defied government orders

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Military — Tags: — Nicholas @ 07:34

It’s not really a surprise that the bureaucrats don’t want to increase the size of the militia, but it is surprising that they’ve been willing to ignore direct government orders on the subject:

Canada’s bloated military bureaucracy has consistently defied explicit orders from government ministers and failed to increase the size of the army militia as directed.

The accusation is made in a scorching but carefully documented report done by pre-eminent military scholar Jack English for the Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute and obtained in advance of its release Wednesday by only a few media outlets, including Postmedia.

It is a “wretched saga” that Mr. English describes as marked by “sandbagging, obstruction, futile wheel-spinning, and endlessly wasted staff effort.”

Using statements made by a series of defence ministers and recommendations either from special commissions or in government “White Papers” — all of them pledging or urging that the part-time militia or reserves, whose members most proudly call themselves citizen-soldiers, would grow — Mr. English shows how bureaucrats and leaders within the regular army, who saw any move to increase the militia as a threat, stubbornly stymied the wishes of their political masters.

In the numbers game, NDHQ has drawn level with the entire militia force, and like all bureaucracies, wants to continue to grow.

September 20, 2011

China’s local and regional governments may be sitting on massive hidden debts

Filed under: China, Economics, Government, Law — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:13

As with the US or Canadian government’s debt, not all debt is held at the federal level. It may take some digging to discover what the actual debt levels might be, but it’s possible. In China, however, as local governments are forbidden to issue bonds or to borrow from banks, they’ve had to become extremely creative in finding ways to borrow money for their pet projects. Not just creative — at least in some cases — legally dubious:

About 85% of Liaoning province’s 184 financing companies defaulted on debt service payments in 2010 according to a report from the province’s Audit Office. The report also noted that 120 of these borrowers, de facto government agencies, operated at a loss last year.

Since 1994, provinces and lower-tier governments have not been permitted to issue bonds or borrow from banks. Despite the strict prohibition, their debt has skyrocketed as local officials incurred obligations through LGFVs, local government finance vehicles. The central government’s National Audit Office said these companies, at the end of last year, had taken on 10.7 trillion yuan of debt. No one, however, knows the true amount of LGFV indebtedness, and some have calculated the real amount to be more than double the official figure.

Why the disagreement as to the amount of debt? Local governments have gone out of their way to hide borrowings, perhaps in part because of their doubtful legality. As famed economic journalist Hu Shuli points out, new local officials sometimes do not know the extent of obligations left by their predecessors. There have been a number of stratagems employed, from the issuance of illegal government guarantees to the transfer of funds in roundabout routes.

H/T to Jon, my former virtual landlord, for the link.

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.

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