Quotulatiousness

January 20, 2011

In case you weren’t worried enough about the rise of China

Filed under: China, Economics, Government, Media, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 16:23

The Wall Street Journal rounds up the leading indicators of the current “USA sliding down the ladder” worries:

Of all the differences between dictatorship and democracy, probably none is so overlooked as the ability of the former to project strength, and the penchant of the latter to obsess about its own weakness.

In 1957 the Soviets launched Sputnik and the U.S. went into a paroxysm of nerves about our supposed backwardness in matters ballistic. Throughout the 1980s Americans lived with “Japan as Number One” (the title of a book by Harvard professor Ezra Vogel, though the literature was extensive) and wondered whether Mitsubishi’s purchase of Rockefeller Center qualified as a threat to American sovereignty.

Now there’s China, whose President is visiting the U.S. this week amid a new bout of American hypochondria. In an op-ed last week in these pages, Andrew Kohut of the Pew Research Center noted that a plurality of Americans, 47%, are under the erroneous impression that China is the world’s leading economy. News reports regarding Chinese military strides, or the academic prowess of Shanghai high school students, contribute to Western perceptions of Chinese ascendancy. So does the false notion that Beijing’s holdings of U.S. debt amounts to a sword of Damocles over Washington’s head.

Oh, we nearly forgot: Tough-as-nails Chinese mothers are raising child prodigies (a billion of them!) while their Western counterparts indulge their kids with lessons in finger-painting.

There you go, more than enough to keep you up late tonight worrying about the inevitability of China’s rise to top economic dog in the pack. Of course, most of it is misinterpretation of the facts, but you can worry about it if you want.

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

January 17, 2011

Modern updates to Bierce’s Devil’s Dictionary

Filed under: Government, Humour, Liberty, Politics, Quotations — Nicholas @ 09:03

I’ve always been a big fan of Ambrose Bierce’s collection of definitions, The Devil’s Dictionary. Many of his definitions ended up in various places in my original quotations website, as more than a century later, they were still both funny and true.

Paul Bonneau has a list of updates in the Bierce tradition:

A Cynic’s Political Dictionary

Democracy: Mob rule.

Republic: A euphemism for “police state”. See “Police State”. Also, a geographical region in which representative government is practiced. See “Representative Government”.

Representative Government: A refinement in Democracy in which a mob of people select the least moral among them, to police their morals.

Representative: A politician who claims to be able to simultaneously represent two other people who hate each other’s guts. See “Politician”.

Senator: A politician who spends more time drunk. See “Politician”.

Election: A type of circus, provided for entertainment and for giving a veneer of legitimacy to politicians. See “Politician”.

Politician: A euphemism for “liar”.

Public Servant: A euphemism for “master”.

Voter: A euphemism for “slave”.

Media: People whose job it is to propagate politicians’ lies far and wide.

Political party: A collection of people who participate in mindless team sports in an election. See “Election”.

Democrat: A Republican who claims to care. See “Republican”.

Republican: A Democrat who claims to support liberty. See “Democrat”.

Minarchist: An Anarchist in training. See “Anarchist”.

Anarchist: A slave suffering slavery burn-out.

Government: An amalgamation of masters.

State (or Country): An amalgamation of masters and slaves. Also, a plantation.

Police: Overseers on the plantation; also, tax collectors.

Taxes: A euphemism for “plunder”.

Police State: Typically refers to a country other than the one you happen to be a slave in. Also, a place where other people mind your business.

Jail: A jobs program for jailers.

School: A jobs program for teachers.

Teacher: One who turns children into voters for the government. See “Voter”.

January 12, 2011

Another eco-panic? Must be Wednesday, then.

Filed under: Britain, Environment, Government, Media — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 08:27

James Delingpole falls for the latest cry of ecological doom:

The Zoological Society of London has drawn up a hit list of the 10 attractive coral species most likely to die quite soon. Well, of course it has. Nothing suits the ZSL’s spirit of misanthropy and catastrophism better than another mournful litany of all the species loss which is bound to occur as a result of mankind’s ongoing crime of having the temerity to exist.

Look: those of us on the other side of the argument like corals too. The difference is, we see them as something to celebrate and enjoy rather than things to be regarded solely through a prism of guilt, self-hatred and apocalyptic despair. Naturalists never used to talk this way. Until the Nazis — and, before them, the German romantics — started poisoning the wells, nature was something we could all happily appreciate without being made to feel by yet another eco-fascist that we were personally going to be the cause of its imminent demise.

If the ZSL wants to make a list of pretty corals, why can’t it just distribute it with facts about their habitats and their formation, maybe with lots of nice shiny pictures for us all to wonder at? Why must they lace their message with doom and misanthropy?

I suppose their excuse will be that these corals ARE endangered and that something must be done by YESTERDAY at the latest. But is this another of those overblown eco-panics in the manner of the floating island of plastic bags twice the size of Texas which in fact turned out to be 1/100th the size of Texas?

It’s an unfortunate fact that in order to get media attention to their cause du jour, the situation not only has to be defined as simply as possible, it also has to be positioned in such a way that the media want to get the message out. The easiest way to accomplish this is to go apocalyptic: doom, Doom, DOOM!

January 6, 2011

Mark Steyn on the state of Britain

Filed under: Britain, Education, Government, History — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 07:38

From a longer column on the general state of decline in the Anglosphere, Mark Steyn points out the negative aspects of British public education on modern day “Britons”:

In cutting off two generations of students from their cultural inheritance, the British state has engaged in what we will one day come to see as a form of child abuse, one that puts a huge question mark over the future. Why be surprised that legions of British Muslims sign up for the Taliban? These are young men who went to school in Luton and West Bromwich and learned nothing of their country of nominal citizenship other than that it’s responsible for racism, imperialism, colonialism, and all the other bad -isms of the world. If that’s all you knew of Britain, why would you feel any allegiance to Queen and country? And what if you don’t have Islam to turn to? The transformation of the British people is, in its own malign way, a remarkable achievement. Raised in schools that teach them nothing, they nevertheless pick up the gist of the matter, which is that their society is a racket founded on various historical injustices. The virtues Hayek admired? Ha! Strictly for suckers.

When William Beveridge laid out his blueprint for the modern British welfare state in 1942, his goal was the “abolition of want,” to be accomplished by “cooperation between the State and the individual.” In attempting to insulate the citizenry from the vicissitudes of fate, Sir William succeeded beyond his wildest dreams: Want has been all but abolished. Today, fewer and fewer Britons want to work, want to marry, want to raise children, want to lead a life of any purpose or dignity. Churchill called his book The History of the English-Speaking Peoples — not the English-Speaking Nations. The extraordinary role played by those nations in the creation and maintenance of the modern world derived from their human capital.

What happens when, as a matter of state policy, you debauch your human capital? The United Kingdom has the highest drug use in Europe, the highest incidence of sexually transmitted disease, the highest number of single mothers; marriage is all but defunct, except for toffs, upscale gays, and Muslims. For Americans, the quickest way to understand modern Britain is to look at what LBJ’s Great Society did to the black family and imagine it applied to the general population. One-fifth of British children are raised in homes in which no adult works. Just under 900,000 people have been off sick for over a decade, claiming “sick benefits,” week in, week out, for ten years and counting. “Indolence,” as Machiavelli understood, is the greatest enemy of a free society, but rarely has any state embraced this oldest temptation as literally as Britain. There is almost nothing you can’t get the government to pay for.

And this bit where he shows that the British government defies parody:

For its worshippers, Big Government becomes a kind of religion: the state as church. After the London Tube bombings, Gordon Brown began mulling over the creation of what he called a “British equivalent of the U.S. Fourth of July,” a new national holiday to bolster British identity. The Labour Party think-tank, the Fabian Society, proposed that the new “British Day” should be July 5th, the day the National Health Service was created. Because the essence of contemporary British identity is waiting two years for a hip operation. A national holiday every July 5th: They can call it Dependence Day.

January 2, 2011

Dave Barry’s 2010 review

Filed under: Government, History, Humour, Media, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 13:53

Who better than Dave Barry to recount to us the manifold miseries we endured and depths of despair we plumbed:

Let’s put things into perspective: 2010 was not the worst year ever. There have been MUCH worse years. For example, toward the end of the Cretaceous Period, Earth was struck by an asteroid that wiped out about 75 percent of all of the species on the planet. Can we honestly say that we had a worse year than those species did? Yes, we can, because they were not exposed to “Jersey Shore.”

So on second thought we see that this was, in fact, the worst year ever. The perfect symbol for the awfulness of 2010 was the BP oil spill, which oozed up from the depths and spread, totally out of control, like some kind of hideous uncontrollable metaphor. (Or “Jersey Shore.”) The scariest thing about the spill was, nobody in charge seemed to know what to do about it. Time and again, top political leaders personally flew down to the Gulf of Mexico to look at the situation firsthand and hold press availabilities. And yet somehow, despite these efforts, the oil continued to leak. This forced us to face the disturbing truth that even top policy thinkers with postgraduate degrees from Harvard University — Harvard University! — could not stop it.

The leak was eventually plugged by non-policy people using machinery of some kind. But by then our faith in our leaders had been shaken, especially because they also seemed to have no idea of what to do about this pesky recession. Congress tried every remedy it knows, ranging all the way from borrowing money from China and spending it on government programs, to borrowing MORE money from China and spending it on government programs. But in the end, all of this stimulus created few actual jobs, and most of those were in the field of tar-ball collecting.

December 29, 2010

Recycling: it’s not economics, it’s control

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

Gregg Easterbrook points out the stupidities of many municipal recycling programs:

Freeze! Drop That Discarded Dishwasher or I’ll Shoot! The New York Times recently reported that unwanted appliances — old washing machines and so on — placed on the curb for disposal in New York City have been “disappearing.” With scrap metal prices strong, what the article calls “thieves” have been driving along streets scheduled for used-appliance pickups — in New York City, this happens by published schedule — and taking away the unwanted junk before the city’s officially approved recycler arrives. The “thieves” then sell the unwanted junk as scrap metal.

Set aside whether it’s theft to take an unwanted item that has been discarded in a public place. New York City bureaucrats think so; they’ve instructed police to ticket anyone engaged in recycling without government sanction. Twenty years ago, New York City bureaucrats were demanding that citizens recycle whether they wished to or not, and imposing fines for failure to comply. Now if the average person is caught recycling, it’s a police matter.

This issue is not the cleanliness of streets or the environmental benefits of recycling — it’s control of money. The New York City Sanitation Department pays a company called Sims Municipal Recycling about $65 million annually to pick up and recycle metal, glass and aluminum. Notice what’s happening here? Recycling is supposed to make economic sense. If it did, then the recycling company would be paying the city. Instead the city is paying the company. Montgomery County, Maryland, my home county, imposed recycling rules saying they made economic sense. Now the county charges homeowners $210 annually as a recycling tax. If recycling made economic sense, government would pay homeowners for the privilege of picking up their valuable materials. Instead New York City, Montgomery County and many other government bodies charge citizens for something they claim makes economic sense.

Recycling of aluminum makes good economic sense, given the energy cost of aluminum and the high quality of recycled aluminum. Depending on where you are in the country, recycling of newspapers may make sense. Recycling of steel and copper usually makes sense. But recycling of glass, most plastics and coated paper is a net waste of energy. Often the goal of government-imposed recycling program is to use lack of understanding of economics to reach into citizens’ pockets and forcibly extract money that bureaucrats can control.

Notice what else is happening here — New York City pays a company millions of dollars to do something “thieves” will do for free. The “thieves” harm no one, and could save New York City taxpayers considerable money. But then bureaucrats wouldn’t be in control. And surely no-show jobs and kickbacks have nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with New York City sanitation contracts.

December 17, 2010

QotD: “all players in the game have revealed themselves to be interventionists”

Filed under: Economics, Government, Liberty, Politics, Quotations, USA — Tags: — Nicholas @ 08:21

. . . all players in the game have revealed themselves to be interventionists. (Okay, we knew this already but confirmation is nice.) Regardless of party, they see the economy as something to fix by turning a knob here, pulling a lever there, and stepping on a pedal over yonder in order to get the desired performance: higher consumer spending, lower unemployment, increased investment, and so on. It’s as though the economy were a machine in need of adjustments and a few quarts of oil. But an economy is not a machine. It’s a network of people engaged in myriad exchanges of goods and services — pursuing end-oriented activities informed by subjective values and expectations. Such information is largely unavailable to politicians, bureaucrats, and their economic advisers.

With unemployment officially at 9.8 percent, the economy indeed remains in the doldrums. None of the palliatives that George W. Bush or Obama tried has worked, but instead of realizing that government and its corporate-state policies are the obstacles to a flourishing economy, the ruling elite remains committed to the managed economy. So it’s decided not to raise taxes — for two years — and to reduce the employee payroll tax — for one year. These expiration dates are signs of political management. Understanding the necessity of a freed market would lead one to call for permanent — not temporary — government retrenchment.

Some questions were apparently overlooked. If tax rates may go up in two years, why make tax-sensitive long-term plans? If the payroll tax is to be two points lower in 2011, that implies it will most likely be two points higher in 2012. Will people spend the extra money next year or save it in anticipation of the tax increase to come? At any rate, they will need to make an unpleasant adjustment in their household economies on January 1, 2012. People do think long term, even if politicians don’t.

Something worth noting about the debate is that there was scarcely an acknowledgment that money subject to taxation belongs to someone and not the State. You’d think it magically appears in a common pot and the government’s job is to ladle it out effectively and fairly. I can recall hearing only one member of Congress say, “It’s their money,” during a television interview about why tax rates shouldn’t go up on high-income people.

Sheldon Richman, “A Boost for the Managed Economy: What did you expect?”, The Freeman, 2010-12-17

December 7, 2010

Never mind the scientists

Filed under: Britain, Bureaucracy, Government, Law, Science — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 07:19

The British government is finding that scientific evidence is getting in the way of what they want to do, so they’re scrapping the requirement to have scientists provide input:

Ministers will not be required to seek the advice of scientists when making drug classification policy in future, under new government proposals.

The police reform and social responsibility bill, published last week, contains an amendment to the constitution of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) that would remove the requirement on the home secretary to appoint at least six scientists to the committee.

A further amendment to the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 would allow the home secretary to place temporary controls on substances for a year by statutory instrument.

The proposals will be of concern to the many doctors and scientists who have criticised the government’s treatment of scientific evidence in the wake of the sacking, last year, of ACMD chairman David Nutt. The then home secretary, Alan Johnson, removed Nutt from the post after the scientist criticised politicians for distorting research evidence and claiming alcohol and tobacco were more harmful than some illegal drugs, including LSD, ecstasy and cannabis.

Why waste a great opportunity to get up in front of the media and sound all “tough on crime” just because the scientists say it’s a load of bollocks?

December 5, 2010

Police complaint filed after Tom Flanagan’s “fatwa”

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Law, Liberty, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:41

Consistency, people! If we condemn Islamic leaders who call for the death of people who “offend” Islam, we should also condemn Canadian political operatives who call for the assassination of Julian Assange:

Vancouver lawyer Gail Davidson filed a written complaint today (December 4) with Vancouver police and the RCMP against Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s former campaign manager, Tom Flanagan.

Davidson alleged that on a November 30 CBC television broadcast, Flanagan “counselled and/or incited the assassination of Julian Assange contrary to the Criminal Code of Canada”.

Assange is the founder of Wikileaks, which is releasing 250,000 U.S. diplomatic cables.

On the Power and Politics program hosted by Evan Solomon, Flanagan said: “Well, I think [Julian] Assange should be assassinated, actually. I think Obama should put out a contract and maybe use a drone or something.”

I doubt that the case will go very far, and it may not be meant to: it’s communicating a message.

November 27, 2010

Anyone remember when Homeland Security got the right to shut down websites?

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Government, Law, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:24

In addition to their role in defending the homeland, apparently they’re also now copyright enforcers:

The investigative arm of the Homeland Security Department appears to be shutting down websites that facilitate copyright infringement.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has seized dozens of domain names over the past few days, according to TorrentFreak.

ICE appears to be targeting sites that help Internet users download copyrighted music, as well as sites that sell bootleg goods, such as fake designer handbags.

The sites are replaced with a note from the government: “This domain named has been seized by ICE, Homeland Security Investigations.”

H/T to Ace of Spades HQ for the link.

It would be nice to know what part of the act of Congress that set up the Department of Homeland Security permits this kind of action. So that I can know whether to thank George Bush or Barack Obama.

[. . .]

First they were grabbing crotches in airports…

This overrreach by the DHS is breathtaking and clearly violates the spirit of the act of Congress that created it and the public’s understanding of the rationale for the creation of DHS. I’m not saying the domains were not involved in copyright infringement. I’m saying the DHS involvement is odd and the method — seizure of the domains — lacks a certain due process.

It’s ugly and ham-fisted. And it is difficult to see how it could be aimed at drawing the public’s attention away from the travails of the TSA. Rather, it looks like another run-of-the-mill stupid move on the part of Obama and Napolitano. It will be interesting next week to see the reaction of Representatives and Senators.

November 26, 2010

British Columbia: Canada’s Banana Republic

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Cancon, Government, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 13:50

A story in the Globe and Mail on how Elections BC rigged the rules after the fact to reject a petition:

Elections BC rejected a Fight HST recall application as too lengthy — but did so using rules that were drafted after it received the application.

The rejection has led recall organizers to suggest the province’s chief electoral officer deliberately thwarted their attempt to get approval to launch a petition to oust a Liberal MLA who supported the harmonized sales tax, and should step down.

While Elections BC has defended its new rules — which pushed the Fight HST application over a 200-word limit by counting the acronyms MLA and HST as eight words instead of two — recall organizers expressed concern that they were not included in the application form when they downloaded it from Elections BC’s website.

“It’s a total joke. This is the kind of thing they do in banana republics … when they don’t want to have elections or they don’t want people to win. And we’re doing it right here in Canada,” said Chris Delaney, an organizer of the Fight HST campaign.

H/T to Steve Muhlberger for the link.

November 17, 2010

Nuclear ghouls unmasked

Filed under: Britain, Bureaucracy, Government, Science — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:04

Tabloid headline is in this case completely justified:

Organs of nuclear workers secretly harvested for 40 years, report finds
The families of scores of nuclear power station workers whose hearts, lungs and other organs were secretly stored and tested over a period of almost 40 years were let down by the authorities, a report said yesterday.

Relatives were seldom told that their loved ones’ organs were to be removed, and as a result families buried or cremated incomplete bodies.

In many cases the truth that their organs had been illegally removed and then destroyed in the testing process emerged only many years later.

The three-and-a-half year investigation conducted by Michael Redfern, QC, covered events spread over almost four decades.

This is the sort of thing that retroactively justifies some of the weird paranoias of the last fifty years. It becomes more difficult to dismiss worries that “they” are doing shady and unethical stuff when it turns out that that’s exactly what they’ve been doing.

November 14, 2010

QotD: The lost election

Filed under: Government, Humour, Politics, Quotations, USA — Nicholas @ 11:19

I think we lost the election on November 2. Every race was won by a politician. True, we elected some angry nuts. These are preferable to common politicians. Their anger provokes honesty, and their mental illness prevents honesty from being obscured by charm. [. . .] We also elected some amateur politicians. However, politics is like vivisection — disturbing as a career, alarming as a hobby. And we may have elected a few reluctant politicians. But not reluctant enough.

We will win an election when all the seats in the House and Senate and the chair behind the desk in the Oval Office and the whole bench of the Supreme Court are filled with people who wish they weren’t there.

In a free country government is a dull and onerous responsibility. It is a parent-teacher conference. The teacher is a pompous twit. Our child is a lazy pain in the ass. We undertake this social obligation with weary reluctance. And we only do it at all because the teacher (political authority) deserves cold stares, hard questions, and maybe firing, and the pupil (that portion of society which, alas, needs governing) deserves to be grounded without TV and have its Internet access screened and its allowance docked.

America’s elected and appointed officials ought to be longing to return to their personal lives and private interests. They should feel burdened by their powers, irked with their responsibilities, and embarrassed at their prominence in the public eye. When they say they want to spend more time with their families, they should mean it.

P.J. O’Rourke, “I Think We Lost the Election: How about politics without politicians?”, Weekly Standard, 2010-11-13

November 8, 2010

We’d love to talk about this First Amendment case, but we’re not allowed to

Filed under: Government, Law, Liberty, Media, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 13:08

I sometimes wonder if there was ever any point in the US founding fathers putting that pesky Bill of Rights in place, when it’s so easy for those rights to be circumvented:

Liptak, who has seen part of the secret 10th Circuit order that keeps the amicus brief sealed, says one reason the appeals court gave for its decision is that allowing distribution of the brief would help I.J. and Reason publicly make their case that Reynolds is being persecuted for exercising her First Amendment rights. One of their goals, the Court said, “is clearly to discuss in public amici’s agenda.” Obviously, we can’t have that.

It bears emphasizing that the I.J./Reason brief is based entirely on publicly available information. It does not divulge any confidential grand jury information, protection of which is the rationale for sealing the documents related to Reynolds’ case. The only purpose served by sealing it is to make talking about the case harder.

Discouraging public dissent, of course, is how this case got started. Tanya Treadway, the assistant U.S. attorney who prosecuted Stephen and Linda Schneider, was so irked by Reynolds’ public defenses of the couple that she unsuccessfully sought a gag order telling Reynolds to shut up. Later Treadway initiated a grand jury investigation that resulted in subpoenas demanding documents related to Reynolds’ activism as head if the Pain Relief Network (PRN), including a Wichita billboard defending the Schneiders and a PRN documentary about the conflict between drug control and pain control. Those subpoenas, supposedly aimed at finding evidence of obstruction of justice, are the subject of Reynolds’ First Amendment challenge.

First there were those secret laws in the wake of 9/11, now you’ve got courts ordering information on First Amendment cases to be kept from the public. One fears to ask “what’s next” for fear that they’ll already have an authoritarian answer teed up and ready to go.

November 4, 2010

Globe editorial: “Mr. Clement has much to explain”

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Government, Politics — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 07:56

I keep wondering if there are any actual conservatives left in Stephen Harper’s merry band of economic nationalists:

Tony Clement, the federal Minister of Industry, has much to explain after his laconic rejection of BHP Billiton Ltd.’s application for permission to proceed with its offer to buy Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan Inc.

Canadians and investors around the world — not least Potash Corp.’s own shareholders — are entitled to learn what Mr. Clement thinks is the meaning of “net benefit” to Canada, in the words of the Investment Canada Act. Evidently, in his and his colleagues’ minds, free markets and the free flow of investment are not sufficient.

Canada, as an exporting nation, has far more to lose by kicking off this kind of protectionist move than any imaginable gains. We might as well write off any economic growth from exports if this is the new modus operandi of the federal government.

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