Quotulatiousness

May 28, 2010

Is it too late to cancel?

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Cancon, Economics, Government, Politics — Tags: , , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 14:33

Chris Selley rounds up the (almost unanimous) pundits’ opinions about the billion-dollar-boondoggle-summit-set:

Is it too late to cancel the G8 and G20 summits?

The National Post‘s Don Martin for the win: “No amount of righteous government bluster about living in post-9/11 protection paranoia, last week’s bank firebombing in Ottawa or the precedent of hosting two back-to-back summits can explain how an $18-million security tab for the G20 in Pittsburgh last September, which involved 4,000 police, must balloon to a billion dollars in Toronto requiring 10,000 cops on the ground.” Yup. It’s outrageous, and the government seems very oddly . . . proud of it. We can hardly wait for the Auditor-General and Parliamentary Budget Officer to find out just where this money went. Especially in a climate where Canadians are thoroughly cheesed off about government spending in the first place, it’s not too much of a stretch to say this is the sort of issue that might bring down a government.

“A case of bureaucracy gone wild,” is Jeffrey Simpson‘s uncontroversial verdict in The Globe and Mail, “or planning gone crazy, of fear sinking itself into every official’s and security person’s heart.” Imagine what we could have bought with that $1-billion! A bunch more Canada Research Chairs, or a whack of “clean-energy projects,” or assistance for “cultural groups” — so sleepy — or, hey, now we’re talking, a massive injection of cash for infrastructure on aboriginal reserves. Or, as Simpson says, “whatever.” Almost literally anything would be better. We’d arguably be better off flushing the $1-billion down the john.

For those of you looking forward to suffering through the event, here’s the official map of the restricted area around the Metro Convention Centre:

The best advice — unless you’re hoping for a run-in with the police — is to avoid Toronto for that weekend (plus a few days in either direction).

May 27, 2010

The absurdity of spending $1 Billion for G20 meeting security

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 13:30

Hard to disagree with anything Rex Murphy says here:

Summits are useless, expensive and potentially dangerous anachronisms.

Let’s take the G20 summit, which will be held June 26-27 in Toronto. No one from the general public will be meeting with the world leaders — summits are not for mingling. So why are the leaders gathering in the middle of Canada’s most populous city when the very idea of interacting with any of the city’s population is absolutely impossible?

Once inside the summit venue the leaders — and their insanely bloated retinues — will be almost antiseptically sealed off from every other bit of Toronto. It’s all fortified meeting rooms and security-proofed hotels for them. Effectively, they will come to Toronto, stay behind a shield of impassable security and talk to leaders they’ve already met. It makes zero sense.

If you’re of a Toronto-centric, anti-Stephen Harper mindset (that would be most Toronto voters), you might attribute it to Harper recreating the famous pacification policy of Henry II: imposing the costs of supporting the royal court by visiting the powerful nobles (that is, the victim can’t refuse the honour of hosting the King, and then has no money or time to plot or scheme against same).

Update: Kelly McParland makes another good point:

Hard as it is to fathom, the Conservatives appear to have successfully created a bigger waste of money than the Liberal gun registry. It took a long time — they’ve had 15 years to study how the Liberals went about wasting so much money on an agency that costs a lot and doesn’t work — but they’ve managed.

In doing so, they’ve disqualified themselves from ever complaining again about money-wasting Liberal schemes, or the gun registry itself for that matter. If Tories can blow a billion forcing everyone in Toronto to find somewhere else to spend the weekend of June 26-27, Liberals can force farmers to get shotgun licences.

May 25, 2010

The dangers of writing near-future SF

Filed under: Books, Britain, Media, Politics — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 10:17

Charles Stross gets sandbagged by the unforeseen:

Back in mid-2008 I mentioned that what I thought was a futuristic-circa-2023 technology for the next novel was too damn close. Slightly more recently, in Living through interesting times, I mentioned that it was becoming near-as-dammit impossible to write near-future SF; I was sore because Bernie Madoff had stolen the plot of my next novel.

Well, I picked myself up, dusted myself down, re-framed the novel in question, and I’m currently about 80% of the way through writing it when it all happened again. First of all, Lothian and Borders Police actually established a recognizable-as-the-embryonic-form version of the unit that one of my protagonists, circa 2023, manages. (Only I got the staffing level and departmental mission statement slightly off-whack …) Next, there’s just been another revolution in Kyrgyzstan (a country which, for reasons I’m not going to discuss here, plays a significant role in “Rule 34”).

But the worst thing? I’ve been sandbagged by an unanticipated event.

Of course, it’s quite understandable — after all these years, who knew there even was a “libertarian arm of the Conservative party” to mess up Charlie’s plot of the near-future?

May 24, 2010

Why the Canadian political sphere lacks zest

Filed under: Britain, Cancon, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 17:33

It’s a fundamental issue that prevents any form of excitement from being discussed, or acted upon:

In Britain, even post-Blair, many of the best and brightest still go into politics. Until the expenses scandal, there was something of a cache to being an MP, something which will probably return in time. The typical Canadian Cabinet is, by comparison, made of poorer quality timbers. The average minister of the crown, here in the Elder Dominion, might make it as a parliamentary secretary back in the Mother Country. Our best and brightest go into business, science and down South. In Canada, those who can’t do, teach, those who can’t teach, teach gym, and those who fail at that run for elected office. There are exceptions. Very few.

The other reason British parties are, relatively, more principled than their Canadian derivatives is national unity. Until about the mid-1990s, no one seriously talked about the break up of the United Kingdom. Even the bleeding ulcer of Ulster was unlikely to be resolved by uniting North and South. This is not the case in Canada. On pretty much every major national issue of the last century and a half — Catholic Schools, prohibition, conscription, foreign policy, Medicare, Afghanistan — English speaking Canada leans one way, and French Canada the other. Raise controversial issues and you might start reminding the Solitudes how much they dislike each other. Thus our national politics has the colour, consistency and firmness of oatmeal. It’s why Mackenzie King, the Great Equivocator, was our longest serving Prime Minister.

May 22, 2010

Another reason public service pensions are better than private ones

Filed under: Economics, Politics, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:03

Megan McArdle points out another key difference between “ordinary” pensions and US state government pensions:

Public employees rack up overtime in their last year of work, with the active encouragement of their supervisors and even local politicians, then they retire with inflated pensions that can be greater than their base salary.

New York is the understandable focus, but these problems are hardly unique to my home state. In fact, New York is among the better states on funding of pensions, because they actually have to do some. Other states kinda sorta haven’t really bothered — at least not at anywhere near the levels that would be needed. New York’s problem is notable only because its public sector unions are unusually powerful.

The problem is that these things are nearly impossible to change. People have worked for twenty years or more under the expectation of pensions that were calculated this way; you can’t just wait until they’re 58 and say “Ha, ha, just foolin’.”

<sarcasm>Of course, the money will always be there, right? No reason for anyone to change their expectations.</sarcasm>

May 21, 2010

California’s version of the Greek public service problem

Filed under: Economics, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:54

David Crane shows why California’s public pension scheme has much in common with the Greek pension scheme, in the sense of a mind-boggling disconnect from economic reality:

In 1999 then California Governor Gray Davis signed into law a bill that represented the largest issuance of non-voter-approved debt in the state’s history. The bill SB 400 granted billions of dollars in retroactive pension boosts to state employees, allowing retirements as young as age 50 with lifetime pensions of up to 90% of final year salaries. The California Public Employees’ Retirement System sold the pension boost to the state legislature by promising that “no increase over current employer contributions is needed for these benefit improvements” and that Calpers would “remain fully funded.” They also claimed that enhanced pensions would not cost taxpayers “a dime” because investment bets would cover the expense.

What Calpers failed to disclose, however, was that (1) the state budget was on the hook for shortfalls should actual investment returns fall short of assumed investment returns, (2) those assumed investment returns implicitly projected the Dow Jones would reach roughly 25,000 by 2009 and 28,000,000 by 2099, unrealistic to say the least (3) shortfalls could turn out to be hundreds of billions of dollars, (4) Calpers’s own employees would benefit from the pension increases and (5) members of Calpers’s board had received contributions from the public employee unions who would benefit from the legislation. Had such a flagrant case of non-disclosure occurred in the private sector, even a sleepy SEC and US Attorney would have noticed.

Until very recently, public service pension schemes might as well have been listed in the dictionary under “soporific” — except for the beneficiaries, nobody paid much attention. Even so, you’d think that the breathtaking assumptions in the Calpers bill would have woken up at least a few politicians and reporters. Of course, no political body has an effective “Office of Realistic Assumptions” to run proposed legislation past (although it wouldn’t be a bad idea), so it might well be that nobody bothered to check the sums before the bill was passed.

Or, more likely, that nobody voting that day expected to be held accountable for the outcome.

Update: Good news! The state legislature just passed new regulations! That’s bound to fix the problem, right?

Oh, wait . . .

California’s public pension funds would have to report the ethnicity and gender of some of the outside investment managers they hire under a bill that passed the state Assembly on Thursday.

The bill states that businesses owned by women and minorities are not adequately represented in the state’s pension fund portfolios, compared to their proportion of California’s population. It passed on a 41-22 vote and now moves to the state Senate.

Well, that will certainly fix the funding issues in no time, won’t it? Your California state legislature, constantly working for you!

May 20, 2010

QotD: Recruiting protesters for the G20 in Toronto

Filed under: Cancon, Media, Politics, Quotations — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 17:07

Are you a woman, person of colour, indigenous person, poor person, queer, trans-gendered or disabled?

If so, the G8/G20 Toronto Community Mobilization team assumes you must sympathize with civic disruption, lawbreaking and maybe even a little good old fashioned terror. They want your help. They’re mobilizing to disrupt the gathering of democratically elected politicians who are meeting in Toronto next month and they assume — just because you’re a woman or a disabled person — that you must hate civilized society as much as they do.

That’s their logo, above.

The CN Tower, torn from its roots, used to stab the G20 like a knife in the heart. Gee, isn’t that inclusive, co-operative and non-violent. Hard to imagine anything more likely to attract widespread public support than an image like that. Hey, women and indiginous people, wanna stab some white guys? How about you, queers and indigenous people? Because we here at the Community Mobilization team take for granted that you must be as twisted, angry, vengeful and keening for violence as we are.

Kelly McParland, “Anti-G20 activists want your help in spreading the hate”, National Post, 2010-05-20

May 18, 2010

Someone has to make this campaign video

Filed under: Humour, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 13:16

Frank J. considers what his campaign video would be like if he was running for office:

This makes me think of the ad I might run if I one day campaigned for an office. I think I could improve on his ad, though. Here’s what I would do in my campaign ad:
* Ride into the commercial on a Liger.
* Every scene, I’d be stroking a different gun.
* Vow that if elected, our enemies will be eaten by genetically resurrected dinosaurs.
* In the middle of the ad, pause to shoot a hippy dead.
* Not only call the other politicians “thugs and criminals” but also promise to lock them in a room with a bear.
* Draw a picture of Muhammad while talking.
* Look up at the moon and yell, “You’re going down!”
* End with an awesome guitar solo while my farm explodes behind me.

Yeah, I’d be so awesome commissioning agriculture or whatever.

By the last item, I was already seeing it . . . someone’s got to make this video. It doesn’t even matter what he’s running for!

May 13, 2010

QotD: Because your government cares about your health

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Politics, Quotations — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:55

If there ever was a reason to get the Ontario government out of the liquor business, this is it. While taxes on booze will drop on July 1, thanks to the introduction of the province’s new Harmonized Sales Tax, the price of your favourite poison will actually increase because — wait for it — the government doesn’t want to turn you into an alcoholic.

[. . .]

Actually, the whole modus operandi of the LCBO is counter-intuitive. At the same time that it preaches social responsibility, the LCBO inundates Ontario households with glossy brochures that take lifestyle advertising to new heights. The latest one cheekily invites customers to take “French lessons”, and features winsome couples in various states of embrace (hey, aren’t the French always making out?). A concurrent radio campaign features a sexy French-accented female voice extolling the virtues of Bordeaux. You get thirsty just listening to her.

Such campaigns are designed to make Ontarians drink more, not less, of course, funneling more cash into LCBO coffers and keeping its employees on the public payroll at juicy union wages. All fuelled by taxes and a staggering mark-up of 71.5% on that latest imported bottle which pairs so well with flank steak and frites.

This kind of hypocrisy is but one reason why the government shouldn’t be in the liquor business. The others include higher prices, less consumer choice, and the general inefficiency inherent in any monopoly business, whether public or private.

Tasha Kheiriddin, “Lower taxes, higher prices, courtesy of your local LCBO”, National Post, 2010-05-13

May 12, 2010

Welcome to the new British PM: “Dick Clameron”

Filed under: Britain, Government, Liberty, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:19

The Register‘s guide to the new British government:

The people have spoken — and party leaders Nick Clegg and David Cameron, henceforth to be known as Dick Clameron, have filled in the details.

A document released this afternoon reveals what Lib Dems and Tories have been talking about for the last four days, and what our new coalition overlords have in store for us over the next four years.

As with every political stitch-up, it’s going to be a Curate’s Egg, but there are some positive things being promised:

On civil liberties, there is much to please (most) Reg readers, including

A Freedom or Great Repeal Bill

* The scrapping of the ID card scheme, the National Identity register, the next generation of biometric passports and the Contact Point Database
* Outlawing the finger-printing of children at school without parental permission
* The extension of the scope of the Freedom of Information Act
* Adopting the protections of the Scottish model for the DNA database
* A review of libel laws to protect freedom of speech
* Safeguards against the misuse of anti-terrorism legislation
* Further regulation of CCTV
* An end to storing internet and email records without good reason
* A mechanism to prevent the proliferation of unnecessary new criminal offences

As with any coalition, there’s no guarantee that any of their announced plans will be carried through, but this list of improvements would be a very good thing.

The full text of the agreement between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats is at The Times. On reading through the document I’m actually rather pleasantly surprised: more of the sensible policies from each party appears to have slipped into the mix and rather fewer of the authoritarian (Tory) or redistributionist (Lib-Dem) ideas. Yes, it’s only a temporary agreement, but it’s better than I expected.

When politics takes on religious attributes

Filed under: Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 08:48

Frequent commenter Lickmuffin sent this link, discussing some interesting notions from the 2008 US presidential campaign:

Cast your mind back to January 2009, when Barack Obama became the president of the United States amid much rejoicing. The hosannas — covering the inauguration was “the honor of our lifetimes,” said MSNBC anchor Chris Matthews — by then seemed unsurprising. Over the course of a long campaign, hyperbolic rhetoric had become commonplace, so much so that online wags had started calling Obama “the One” — a reference to the spate of recent science-fiction movies, especially The Matrix, that used that term to designate a messiah.

It all seems so long ago now, as one contemplates President Obama’s plummeting approval ratings and a suddenly resurgent Republican Party. Yet it’s worth looking closely and seriously at the election-year enthusiasm of media elites and other Obamaphiles, much of which was indeed, as the wags recognized, quasi-religious. The surprising fact is that the American Left, for all its claims to being “reality-based” and secular, is often animated by the passions, motivations, and imagery that one normally associates with religion. The better we understand this religious impulse, the better we will understand liberal America’s likely trajectory in the years to come.

May 9, 2010

“Canada sucks” says Heather Mallick

Filed under: Britain, Cancon, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 11:18

Seeking to aid the poor folks in Britain currently struggling under the unaccustomed weight of a “hung parliament”, Heather Mallick advises them to avoid having anything to do with Canadian precedent:

Right now, Canada sucks, and all because we have a hung Parliament and no one’s done anything about it for years. We are ruled by Stephen Harper, a hard-right hick with a grudge who after serial elections cannot get a clear mandate from the voters.

When you have a hung Parliament, you try to form coalitions. We have formed none. We remain hanging, like a dry-aged haunch of venison out back of the garage. Our MPs hurl figurative faeces at each other in the House of Commons and then go to monkey sleep under their minute Parliamentary desks, dreaming of democracy.

Apparently, I was having delusions when the Liberals and NDP tried to team up with the support of the Bloc . . . didn’t happen. Sorry for any confusion I may have caused. I stand corrected.

Excellent campaigning. If only our hateful pseudo-human prime minister would meet a nice granny in Kamloops and hurt her feelings. Actually, Harper would knee her in the groin and block her hip replacement, he’s that personal in his hates.

Canada has a Conservative minority government right now that does have a core belief. It’s that Canadians deserve a good stomping, all of them. Conservatives can’t stand people, particularly if they’re female, or second-generation Canadian, or educated, or principled, or not from Alberta, which is the home of the hard-right belly-bulging middle-aged Tory male. Watch them at the G8, ostensibly fighting for women’s health internationally while blocking abortions for raped Congolese.

Harper cannot get a real majority. If the centre-right Liberals and the centre-left New Democrats would form a coalition, Harper would be toast and we’d get started on what we need: national day care, TGV trains, an economic strategy, a green strategy, oh a strategy for anything, a plan is all we seek.

Some lovely drive-by characterizations there. Of course, most Brits know little about Canada (and many of them know things that aren’t true), so this little diatribe isn’t likely to cause anyone to change their mind on any issue of substance. And just as well . . .

May 4, 2010

Introducing the Greaves Underdog Strategy

Filed under: Britain, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 07:04

Occasional commenter Chris Greaves sent me this link, saying

Read down towards the bottom:

“Duffy told the Mail she wasn’t impressed. “Sorry is a very easy word, isn’t it,” she was quoted as saying, adding that she would not be casting her vote for Brown — or anyone else — in the election.”

Herein lie the seeds for the Greaves Underdog Strategy:

* If you are the underdog, insult as many bigoted voters as you can reach; it inoculates them against voting, thereby reducing the overdog’s lead.

Gordon Brown is right on track . . .

May 3, 2010

“Remember when reporters had guts?”

Filed under: Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 13:16

Frequent commenter “Lickmuffin” sent this interesting link, suggesting:

This is sort of related to your “White House threatens to yank the ovaries out of those who would criticize The One” post [. . .] same tactics, really. And considering how reporters have become such wusses — perhaps they’ve all been hit with the German girlification spray — I believe it is accurate to say that all of them, especially the “males”, fear for their ovaries.

The White House post is here and the “girlification” post is here, in case you didn’t see them before.

Michael Malone is wondering where all the real reporters went, and remembers what it was like when he started in the field:

Remember when reporters had guts?

In the late Seventies, when I was just out of college, and even before I began my career as a journalist, I worked in public relations at Hewlett-Packard Co.

[. . .]

Simon broke insider stories, published internal strategy memos and pre-introduced secret projects, all with seeming abandon . . . leaving corporate PR departments, like us at HP, scrambling to do damage control and plug the leaks.

As the kid in HP corporate PR department, I both feared Simon for the damage he could do with his breaking stories — my turf was a hugely successful calculator business — and was in awe of his reporting skills. I also wasn’t allowed to talk much with him when he came into our offices for fear I would slip up and accidentally give my counterpart another news hook.It wasn’t until years later, when I was a reporter myself (and talked with Mark) that I came to realize that all Simon was doing was just good hard reporting.

So, what does this trip down memory lane have to do with modern reporters?

This week, Chen’s house was raided by officers from California’s Rapid Enforcement Allied Computer Team (REACT), a special task force of police officers and federal agents created to combat computer-related crimes — and which just happens to have Apple on its steering committee. The cops took all of Chen’s computer equipment. Meanwhile, the San Mateo County District Attorney is considering whether to bring charges against Chen. It all hinges around whether California’s journalist shield law covers bloggers. Well, speaking as someone who was an investigative reporter for one of the nation’s top ten newspapers: of course it does.

This is appalling. As Instapundit uber-blogger Glenn Reynolds has rightly noted, this is basically “gangland politics” with one side getting to use to the police as its muscle. He’s also correct in noting that neither the police nor Apple would never have tried this against, say, the San Jose Mercury-News (I know because I worked there).

I’m still not clear if Apple played the role of Mafia don and ordered up a hit on Chen (to be performed by their soldiers in the REACT mob), or if someone with authority over REACT used them to attempt to curry favour with “Don” Jobs. Either way, it’s a very disturbing development.

Either way, it will function to continue and even accellerate the subservience of the media to (certain) corporate and political interests, which is not good for the public, the media, or even the temporarily favoured entities.

Virginia cracks down on smut . . . on the state seal

Filed under: Politics, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 08:57

Some folks just don’t “get” art. Others think they do, but they’re wrong:

Virginia’s attorney general Ken Cuccinelli is hard at work on the important issues of the day — like making sure the Roman goddess depicted on his state’s official seal isn’t exposing herself.

The current seal shows “Virtus, the goddess of virtue, dressed as a warrior,” with her foot resting “on the chest of the figure of tyranny, who is lying on the ground.” She is holding a spear and her left breast is exposed.

Or at least it was exposed. At a recent meeting, Cuccinelli provided pins to his staff with a new seal on which “Virtus’ bosom is covered by an armored breastplate,” the Virginian-Pilot reported. These new pins were not paid for by taxpayer dollars, Cuccinelli’s office insisted.

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