Quotulatiousness

December 23, 2010

Prichard, Alabama defaults on civil service pensions

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

The town failed to fully fund the pension plan for their employees, and it ran out of money in 2009. In spite of state law, they stopped paying the pensioners:

Since then, Nettie Banks, 68, a retired Prichard police and fire dispatcher, has filed for bankruptcy. Alfred Arnold, a 66-year-old retired fire captain, has gone back to work as a shopping mall security guard to try to keep his house. Eddie Ragland, 59, a retired police captain, accepted help from colleagues, bake sales and collection jars after he was shot by a robber, leaving him badly wounded and unable to get to his new job as a police officer at the regional airport.

Far worse was the retired fire marshal who died in June. Like many of the others, he was too young to collect Social Security. “When they found him, he had no electricity and no running water in his house,” said David Anders, 58, a retired district fire chief. “He was a proud enough man that he wouldn’t accept help.”

The situation in Prichard is extremely unusual — the city has sought bankruptcy protection twice — but it proves that the unthinkable can, in fact, sometimes happen. And it stands as a warning to cities like Philadelphia and states like Illinois, whose pension funds are under great strain: if nothing changes, the money eventually does run out, and when that happens, misery and turmoil follow.

Prichard is only the start: far too many local governments are approaching the same situation.

Not everyone can get into the Christmas spirit

Filed under: Australia, Environment, Humour, Politics — Tags: — Nicholas @ 09:11

Ethan Greenhart wants to rename Christmas as “Turkey Genocide Day”:

Just as there’s nothing civilised about organising society around the wants of Gaia-mauling human beings, and nothing green about traipsing halfway across the planet to trek with donkeys in Peru (how do you know the donkeys want to trek?), so there can never be anything ethical about a holiday whose centrepiece is a dead bird sexually molested by sage; whose star turn is an obese man who drinks that imperialist tipple Coca-Cola and delivers yet more stuff to already stuffed brats; and where taking a tree from a forest, humiliating it with tinsel and sticking it in a living room is seen as a perfectly normal — nay, fun — thing to do.

This is no holiday; it’s a hell-iday for the defenceless creatures and plants of this ball of gas and air we have arrogantly labelled “Earth”. The signs were there 2000 years ago when a knocked-up teenager enslaved a donkey and forced it to carry her hundreds of miles to Bethlehem before ousting cows and sheep so she could give birth in their home.

If that weren’t bad enough, so-called “wise men” (another contradiction in terms) raided nature to find gifts for the resource-user that this young woman unthinkingly gave birth to, including myrrh, which is literally made from the blood that oozes from the wounds of the Commiphora species of trees, and frankincense, which is stolen from the Boswellia tree.

And so it was that this 2000-year-old orgy of animal enslavement, human breeding and gift-giving became an inspiration to the brainless inhabitants of Christendom, who every year ape the Holy Family by abusing animals and dishing out unnecessary gifts and calling the whole stupid shebang a celebration.

Overall, not a bad rant, although it only manages a close second to the Prince Regent’s complaint:

Edmund: So, shall I begin the Christmas story?

Prince: Absolutely! As long as it’s not that terribly depressing one about the chap who gets born on Christmas Day, shoots his mouth off about everything under the sun, and then comes a cropper with a couple of rum-coves on top of a hill in Johnny Arabland.

Edmund: You mean Jesus, sir?

Prince: Yes, that’s the fellow! Just leave him out of it — he always spoils the X-mas atmos.

H/T to Roger Henry for the link.

December 21, 2010

Reason TV: Detroit’s Train to Nowhere

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Politics, Railways, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:56

December 20, 2010

Boris trims his sails

Filed under: Britain, Environment, Politics — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 07:56

James Delingpole has a bit of fun at London mayor Boris Johnson’s expense:

. . . what sounds like a fervent declaration of faith in the Warmist creed may on closer examination be a perfectly innocuous statement of the bleeding obvious cunningly calculated to appease all Boris’s rentseeking chums in the City who stand to make a fortune from the Great Carbon Scam and would be most displeased if the Mayor of London were to show signs of wobbling.

Yet wobbling is, of course, exactly what Boris is doing. Or rather — remember, this is the man so ambitious he makes Alexander The Great look like Olive from On The Buses — he is slyly repositioning himself to take advantage of the inevitable collapse of public faith in the Great Anthropogenic Global Warming Ponzi Scheme.

All those thousands of people who’ve had their Christmas ruined as a result of Heathrow airport’s pathetic inability to operate in the snow; all those thousands who have been stranded shivering for eight hours at a stretch on our motorways; all those thousands who can’t use their local municipal sports club because the staff — as is the wont of public sector workers — can’t be bothered to allow themselves to be inconvenienced by the inclement conditions; all those people who are going to look at their electricity and gas bills come the end of next quarter and be appalled beyond measure by how increasingly unaffordable they are; all those businesses big and small whose profits are going to be seriously dented by our political class’s ongoing failure to address our transport infrastructure (and no I don’t mean the irrelevant high-speed rail link to Birmingham; I mean the much bigger problem of our shortage of runways at the airports serving London).

All these thousands of people add up to a lot of disgruntled voters ready to ask hard questions about everything from the size of the state (so patently NOT being shrunk to any significant degree by Cameron’s useless Coalition of the Unwilling) to the three main parties’ position on “Global Warming”.

“The typical budgeting strategy of most Canadians is 1. Get paid 2. Spend it all 3. Borrow more.”

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Politics — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 07:50

Kelly McParland looks at the efforts of the Canadian and provincial governments to come to some sort of agreement over pension reform:

If you want a hint of the difficulty of winning agreement on an issue like Canada’s creaking pension system, consider this carefully considered statement from Finance Minister Jim Flaherty:

“It’s a multi-jurisdictional challenge to get a consensus on the CPP,” he said.

If you speak politics, you realize that “multi-jurisdictional challenge” means that getting the country’s federal and provincial leaders to agree on anything beyond what time to quit for lunch is beyond the power of mere mortals. It is especially hopeless on an issue as fraught with electoral danger pensions, which, after all, are all about old people and their money. Who votes in far bigger numbers than any other demographic? Old people. What gets them more excited than half-price fares to Florida? Their money.

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 14, 2010

Christopher Hitchens on the real Henry Kissinger

Filed under: History, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:14

I must admit that I never understood the adulation Henry Kissinger has attracted. I started paying attention to politics in the early 1970s, and Kissinger was one of the main players on the world political stage at that point. His connection to the deeply repugnant Richard Nixon should have been enough to keep him out of the limelight after his boss was forced out of the presidency. Yet he somehow managed not only to stay in the public eye, but to increase his popularity.

Christopher Hitchens thinks that the latest revelations from that era will finally bring Kissinger the odium he so richly deserves:

Henry Kissinger should have the door shut in his face by every decent person and should be shamed, ostracized and excluded. No more dinners in his honour; no more respectful audiences for his absurdly overpriced public appearances; no more smirking photographs with hostesses and celebrities; no more soliciting of his worthless opinions by sycophantic editors and producers. One could have demanded this at almost any time during the years since his role as the only unindicted conspirator in the Nixon/Watergate gang, and since the exposure of his war crimes and crimes against humanity in Indochina, Chile, Argentina, Cyprus, East Timor and several other places. But the latest revelations from the Nixon Library might perhaps turn the scale at last.

Chatting eagerly with his famously racist and foul-mouthed boss in March 1973, following an appeal from Golda Meir to press Moscow to allow the emigration of Soviet Jewry, Kissinger is heard on the tapes to say:

“The emigration of Jews from the Soviet Union is not an objective of American foreign policy. And if they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union, it is not an American concern. Maybe a humanitarian concern.”

(One has to love that uneasy afterthought….)

In the past, Kissinger has defended his role as enabler to Nixon’s psychopathic bigotry, saying that he acted as a restraining influence on his boss by playing along and making soothing remarks. This can now go straight into the lavatory pan, along with his other hysterical lies. Obsessed as he was with the Jews, Nixon never came close to saying that he’d be indifferent to a replay of Auschwitz. For this, Kissinger deserves sole recognition.

It’s hard to know how to classify this observation in the taxonomy of obscenity. Should it be counted as tactical Holocaust pre-denial? That would be too mild. It’s actually a bit more like advance permission for another Holocaust. Which is why I wonder how long the official spokesmen of American Jewry are going to keep so quiet. Nothing remotely as revolting as this was ever uttered by Jesse Jackson or even Mel Gibson, to name only two famous targets of the wrath of the Anti-Defamation League. Where is the outrage? Is Kissinger — normally beseeched for comments on subjects about which he knows little or nothing — going to be able to sit out requests from the media that he clarify this statement? Does he get to keep his op-ed perch in reputable newspapers with nothing said? Will the publishers of his mendacious and purloined memoirs continue to give him expensive lunches as if nothing has happened?

Conservatives now still pushing corporate welfare

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Politics, Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 07:35

Okay, they’re not even pretending to be fiscally conservative any more:

The Conservative government has announced it is loaning aerospace giant Pratt & Whitney Canada $300 million for a $1 billion research project to develop the next generation of aircraft engines.

Industry Minister Tony Clement made the announcement on Monday saying it will create 700 high-skilled jobs in the GTA and more than 2,000 over the 15-year lifespan of the project. He also claimed the firm is in the process of hiring 200 engineers.

[. . .]

‘Create and maintain Canadian jobs’ has been the Conservative mantra during their recent shift to Keynesian economics and massive long-term deficits for the next half decade. The same political party that once decried government largesse and inexplicable corporate subsidies (also known affectionately as corporate welfare) is now a major player in the ‘too big to fail’ macroeconomics game.

This is nothing new: under former minister Maxime Bernier, the current darling of the small-government wing of the Conservative party, Pratt & Whitney got $350 million in corporate welfare just four years ago. That debt hasn’t been repaid.

December 13, 2010

Aha! A new conspiracy theory

Filed under: Britain, Law, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 08:27

Following up to this post, Chris Greaves offers both a link, and a theory to explain the link.

The prince’s office also declined to comment, but stressed that the royal couple did not seek medical help after Thursday’s altercation.

Officials are assessing royal security after the attack on Charles and Camilla, whose Rolls-Royce strayed into the path of protesters against tuition fee hikes.

They hit the car with sticks, fists and bottles and chanted “Off with their heads” before the vehicle pushed its way through the crowd and drove off.

One casualty of the review may be the classic Rolls-Royce Phantom VI the couple were using, a gift to the Queen on her Silver Jubilee in 1977. The 33-year-old limousine does not have bulletproof windows or other modern protection features.

So what’s the conspiracy theory, you ask? Here you go:

Liz Windsor: (Thinks) How to get rid of Camela?
(later) I know, I’ll give her a Rolls Royce whose windows are not bullet-proof.
Heh heh.

December 11, 2010

“They came close to drawing their guns on protesters, who were heard to chant ‘off with their heads'”

Filed under: Britain, Law, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 00:39

The close call reported earlier now seems to have been even closer:

Officers guarding the royal couple were using radios on a different channel from those patrolling Thursday’s student riots, meaning they received no warning that protesters were blocking their route.

As a result, dozens of thugs subjected the convoy to an attack in which the Duchess was jabbed in the ribs with a stick through an open car window as the couple were being driven to the Royal Variety Performance.

Sir Paul Stephenson, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, praised armed protection officers for showing “very real restraint”, suggesting that they came close to drawing their guns on protesters, who were heard to chant “off with their heads”.

I’m pretty far from being a staunch royalist, but this incident was an “own goal” on the part of the protesters. There are many ways to express your concern and anger, but attacking innocent bystanders will usually lose you the public support you might otherwise be able to depend on. Attacking members of the royal family — who don’t have a constitutional role in setting government policy — is just plain stupid.

H/T to Chris Greaves for the link.

Update: Chris followed up with this observation.

[. . .] just between you and me I was struck by the parallels between the accounts of Charles & Camel, and the minute-by-minute goof-ups of Archduke Wossit and his morgantic wife; the chauffeur taking a wrong turn on the way back from the town hall, the poor security in place, etc.

Any would-be republicans should be blessing their luck that this turned out to be less harmful than the Sarajevo incident in 1914. Had any harm come to the Prince of Wales, British public opinion would (based on past events) have swung heavily in favour of the royal family. Prince Charles is perhaps the least well-liked royal at the moment, but if he’d been “martyred” by the mob, do you think there’d be any hope for getting rid of the monarchy for at least another generation?

December 6, 2010

British parents unable to say no, may get Nanny(state) to do it for them

Filed under: Britain, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:34

Apparently, British parents are so fearful of the disapproval of their own children that they’re afraid to say “no”:

Retailers selling sexualised products aimed at children could face new restrictions under plans being considered by the government.

An inquiry to explore whether rules should prevent the marketing of items such as “Porn star” T-shirts or padded bras to children has been set up.

A code of conduct on “age appropriate” marketing and a new watchdog are among plans being considered by the review.

Children’s Minister Sarah Teather said parents faced a tidal wave of pressure.

She said: “Parents often find themselves under a tidal wave of pressure, buffeted by immense pester power from their children for the latest product, craze or trend.

“I want this review to look at how we can equip parents to deal with the changing nature of marketing, advertising and other pressures that are aimed at their children.”

Parents need the government to step in and protect them from “pester power”? Pathetic.

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.

December 2, 2010

Smug, but nursing that inferiority complex: urban Canada in a nutshell

Filed under: Cancon, Media, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 01:28

John Geddes seems puzzled by the apparent contradiction:

Can we settle on the putdown of preference when it comes to right-wingers expressing their disdain for Canada?

They often resort to either of two seemingly contradictory, but equally condescending, lines about Canadians: we are insufferable in our sense of moral superiority, or we exhibit an equally tiresome inferiority complex.

Now, I’m willing to take my lumps, but do they have to come from both directions at once? Can’t you decide if my national ego is obnoxiously over-developed or pathetically under-developed?

I can only assume that Mr. Geddes hasn’t attended too many parties in Toronto or Ottawa. Both psychological maladies are often displayed by the same people . . . sometimes in the same conversation. Torontonians in particular are capable of sneering at vulgar Americans in one moment, then fretting that they don’t pay enough attention to our “world class” city in the next. Short of finding a way of expressing both thoughts simultaneously, I’d say that was a strong indication that urban Canadians can hold both thoughts without an overwhelming sense of contradiction.

December 1, 2010

Five Books interview with P.J. O’Rourke

Filed under: Books, Economics, Liberty, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:05

P.J. O’Rourke is asked to talk about five books from the field of political satire:

P J O’Rourke talks Swift, Huxley, Orwell and Waugh and says we now live in the world of 1984 but, instead of being a horror show, a television that looks back at you is just a pain in the ass. It’s 1984-Lite. Sad in one way, but a relief in another.

The category of political satire books is simply closed. The top five are so good that in order to make any surprising choices one has to go a long way down to the next level.

[. . .]

I’ll be careful. Animal Farm and 1984.

Yes. One is comic satire and the other is tragicomic satire.

Let’s start with the comic.

Well, Animal Farm sticks in everybody’s mind. All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others. Again, something read twice. I read it for the first time when I was 14 or 15 and it was a funny story about badly behaved animals and then I read it again at college and someone pointed out to me that this was sharp social satire. I thought it was an animal story, a kids’ book, but when I took another look at it I realised what he was getting at. The Soviet leadership was pretty well represented there. But one of the things that’s interesting to me about both Animal Farm and 1984 is that they are warnings against collectivism from a man of the left. Sure, any old Tory or Republican might be likely to make this point, though not so well, perhaps, nor so amusingly, but the fact that it comes from a man of the left is interesting. It seems to me to be something Orwell never fully came to grips with. Maybe if he’d lived longer…

What do you mean?

The necessity for collectivism under his leftist ideals and yet the danger of collectivism no matter who it’s done by seems like something he really wrestled with. I think we all buy the necessity for collectivism in a way.

[. . .]

Have you actually been to Sweden? I’ve never been, but I find myself constantly holding it up as the pinnacle of socialist marvellousness. It could be a complete shit-hole for all I know.

I have been and you know what it is? It’s very foreign. It’s full of Swedes. I mean, there are a few immigrants, and it has more now than it did 15 years ago when I was there, but Swedes are really Swedish. They are just remarkably alike. So, when you have a country of only eight and a half million people and they’re very like each other and you take 80 per cent of their income away and redistribute it through political means and they go: ‘Ya, ya, dat’s vot I vonted! Abba records! Herring and a PhD!’ And it’s all okey-dokey. But if you take a country as diverse as the United States and you take everything away from everybody and redistribute it — oh my God, there’d be hell to pay! I mean, some people would want guns, and some people… I wouldn’t even want to ask what some people would want.

[. . .]

1984.

That’s satire more in the Roman mode. The usual definition of satire is humour used to a moral end for a moral purpose, and there’s certainly a moral purpose to 1984 but it’s not funny really. I mean there is a certain dark humour to rewriting history and things going down a memory hole.

It’s funny in the Russian sense of the word.

I like that. Believe me, I’ll steal that phrase.

I’ll see you in court.

It’s sort of like being popular in Japan.

November 30, 2010

Ireland’s debt problem

Filed under: Economics, Europe, Humour, Italy, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 07:48

James Howard Kunstler looks at Ireland’s plight:

When you’re out of the country, as I was last week, it’s good to know that the home folks are keeping up with the Kardashians and bravely venturing into the blood-splattered chambers of cable TV’s latest hit, Bridal Plasty — where candidates for marriage are transformed from Holstein cows into inflatable sex toys by magic surgical technology — not to mention all those humble guardians of freedom who kept the parking lots of WalMart safe for consumerism in the wee small hours of Black Friday. These are, after all, perilous times.

Elsewhere, Ireland and the rest of Europe wore themselves out with soul-searching all week over how to handle national bankruptcy within a currency system that bears only a schematic relation to reality. Does the bankruptee go broke all at once, or is she recruited into permanent debt slavery so that the bond-holders of various banks can keep their loved ones in marzipan and Fauchon’s wonderful marrons glacés for one more holiday season? As of Monday morning, Ireland has been commanded to, er, bend over and pick up the soap, shall we say, for about a hundred billion euros in loans that will not be paid back until a mile-high ice-sheet covers Dublin (something that might happen sooner rather than later if the climate mavens are right).

We’ll see how this bail-out goes down with the French and German voters, too, who have to pay for it, after all, especially as Portugal, Spain, and Italy line up at the cash cage for their cheques (and bars of soap). Of course, a few more basis points in the interest rate spreads could prang the whole Euro soap opera — does anybody really believe this game of kick-the-can will go on after New Years? I’m not even sure it goes on past this Friday, but I am a notoriously nervous fellow.

This is almost as good as the (temporarily discontinued) daily Financial Briefings from Monty.

H/T to Terry Kinder for the link.

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