Quotulatiousness

March 21, 2012

This is why Paul Ryan’s budget proposals will go nowhere

Filed under: Economics, Government, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:40

It’s because he’s not only requiring the middle classes to take a hit for the team, but he’s also trying to get rid of all the custom-crafted deductions, loopholes, shelters, and special favours in the tax code. Middle class voters have been sending their elected representatives to Washington to add to the special tax “tweaks” that disproportionally benefit the middle class. That’s how politicians ensure their re-election chances.

Unveiling his new budget proposal, Paul Ryan once again reminds us that he is one of the few men in Washington with guts and brains operating in harmony. His budget asks the big question in American politics: What is the middle class willing to give up in order to save the country?

I am afraid that the answer will be: Not very much.

[. . .]

The reaction to Ryan’s tax plan will be the truly telling thing. He proposes to create two relatively low tax brackets but to do so in a way that achieves revenue neutrality by eliminating most deductions and exclusions. Almost certainly this will mean reducing or eliminating the mortgage-interest deduction, deductions for state and local taxes, and deductions for charitable giving. (Ramesh’s beloved child tax credit probably will survive, unfortunately.) The Committee to Reinflate the Bubble will fight tooth and talon to defend the mortgage-interest deduction, and they’ll have a great many middle-class homeowners behind them.

H/T to Kathy Shaidle for the link.

Update: Nick Gillespie thinks that the Ryan budget proposal is merely an echo of Obama’s plan, not a serious attempt to get the government’s finances in order:

In brief, the Ryan plan is not as bad as [President Obama’s] budget, which wants to spend $3.8 trillion in FY2013 and envisions spending $5.8 trillion in FY2022. Over the next 10 years, Obama assumes that federal spending would amount to 22.5 percent of GDP while revenues would average just 19.2 percent of GDP. That ain’t no way to run a country.

In this sense, Ryan’s plan is slightly better but still doesn’t pass the laugh test. He would spend $3.5 trillion in 2013 and $4.9 trillion in 2022 (all figures in the post are in current dollars unless otherwise noted). Spending as an average of GDP would average 20 percent of GDP and revenue would amount to just 18.3 percent.

[. . .]

Yet Ryan’s plan is weak tea. Here we are, years into a governmental deficit situation that shows no sign of ending. How is it that Ryan and the Republican leadership cannot even dream of balancing a budget over 10 years’ time? All of the discussion of reforming entitlements and the tax code and everything else is really great and necessary — I mean that sincerely — but when you cannot envision a way of reducing government spending after a decade-plus of an unrestrained spending binge, then you are not serious about cutting government. If Milton Friedman was right that spending is the proper measure of the government’s size and scope in everybody’s life, then the establishment GOP is signaling what we knew all along: They are simply an echo of the Democratic Party.

March 20, 2012

Kathy Shaidle on the SPLC’s most recently discovered threat to national security

Filed under: Liberty, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:39

In her column at Taki’s Magazine, Kathy examines the Southern Poverty Law Center’s most recent revelation:

The armchair Freedom Riders at the weirdly named Southern Poverty Law Center (or “$PLC” as one of its dogged critics prefers) have been courageously, er, browsing the Internet and have uncovered a potentially devastating threat to not only America’s females, but its national security:

Dudes trading tips on getting laid.

Yep. The biggest threat since David Duke and the rabid Klansmen are … pick-up artists.

Woodland white supremacists? Old and tired. New hotness? According to the SPLC’s most recent “Intelligence Report,” the latest “hate group” plaguing the United States is the online “pickup artist” “community,” AKA the “manosphere.”

[. . .]

“Roissy” — he took his nom de poon from a character in the S&M classic The Story of O — is the Tolkien of pickup artist Middle Earth, having invented or refined the manosphere’s glossary: alpha male, game, wingman, the “anti-slut defense” (“I don’t usually do this sort of thing…”), and negging (offering attractive women teasing insults instead of compliments: “You have really big ears. Don’t worry, I think it’s cute, kind of like a bunny.”).

Speaking of “Roissy” (who now uses the name “Heartiste” for his online activities), here is his take on Charles Murray’s Coming Apart: The State of a Politically Acceptable Bell Curve:

I don’t have an argument with his economic numbers, although I think he probably understates the role automation, immigration and skill prerequisite inflation have had in the gutting of working class men’s job prospects and ability to merge seamlessly into functional family formation.

Murray is closer to the truth than a lot of his critics are when he blames cultural factors and bad policy for the dysfunction of the left side of the bell curve.

[. . .]

How absolutely brave… brave, I say! …of Murray to apportion most of the blame for the current state of affairs to men. Or, in this case, white men. This will surely win him lots of enemies amongst the feminists and social elites whose cocktail party invitations he haughtily throws in the trash in righteous, principled fury.

Look, I have no problem with shaming men who don’t want to work, or who can’t muster the motivation to at least try to find work. It’s not like the existence of self-destructive male bums is unheard of. But Murray DIRECTLY CONTRADICTS his proposed shaming solution with his explanation for the bleak male employment scenario just a few paragraphs above in the very same article! Once more:

    Simplifying somewhat, here’s my reading of the relevant causes: Whether because of support from the state or earned income, women became much better able to support a child without a husband over the period of 1960 to 2010. As women needed men less, the social status that working-class men enjoyed if they supported families began to disappear.

Where, pray tell, in that explanation does it follow that men are primarily to blame for their poor employment numbers? Doesn’t the exact opposite conclusion — that women’s mate choices are to blame for men dropping out — seem more obvious? Shouldn’t it be the case then, that single working women on the fast track to single motherhood and alpha cock carouseling are the ones deserving of shame?

Australian billionaire claims Greenpeace accepts CIA funding to fight coal exports

Filed under: Australia, Economics, Environment, Pacific, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 08:41

Australian bush hats can apparently be made of tinfoil:

Australian Mining Magnate Clive Palmer has declared the CIA is behind a Greenpeace campaign that aims to slow the growth of Australia’s export coal industry.

[. . .]

The Greenpeace campaign centres on a document titled Stopping the Australian Coal Export Boom (PDF) which explicitly states that “Our strategy is to ‘disrupt and delay’ key projects and infrastructure while gradually eroding public and political support for the industry and continually building the power of the movement to win more.” Greenpeace hopes to do so in order to build support for fuels other than coal, in order to reduce global carbon dioxide emissions.

The Greenpeace document says it is “… based on extensive research into the Australian coal industry, made possible by the generous support of the Rockefeller Family Fund.”

That statement is Palmer’s smoking gun, as he said at an event today, as reported by the Australian Broadcasting Commission and other outlets, that “You only have to go back and read the Church Report in the 1970s and to read the reports to the US Congress which sets up the Rockefeller Foundation as a conduit of CIA funding.”

March 19, 2012

Illinois railfan photographer threatened with being added to terror watch list

Filed under: Law, Liberty, Railways, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 11:17

Photography within 550 feet of a railway line is illegal in Illinois, according to a police deputy who likes to make up his own laws:

A man who was taking pictures near a train track in Illinois was confronted by a sheriff’s deputy who informed him that he was breaking the law, so therefore he had no choice but to report the photographer to Homeland Security.

The photographer, who describes himself as a disabled war veteran and former state worker, was left wondering if the deputy had any legal basis for adding him to a terrorist watch list.

[. . .]

RustyBug, who never states which sheriff’s department harassed him, said the deputy told him it was against the law to shoot within 550 feet from train tracks, which is complete hogwash.

RustyBug said he really wasn’t buying it, but he wasn’t sure either, which shows us the importance of knowing the law when it comes to photography because too many cops don’t know the law.

The PR problem of NASA

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Media, Politics, Space, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:49

L. Neil Smith explains why and how NASA has managed to become so uninspiring (hint: it was deliberate).

The truth is, there are three kinds of people in the world, those to whom traveling to, landing on, settling, and terraforming the planet Mars requires no explanation, those for whom no explanation of any kind will ever suffice, and those who remain to be convinced.

Our job in that respect really amounts to putting the romance back into space exploration that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration carefully throttled out of it over the past half century. I think their secret motto was, “If you’re having any fun, you’re not doing it right.”

All that time, NASA and its supporters seemed to be asking desperately, why is the American public losing interest in what we’re doing? But the answer was in the mirror before them. In a desperate bid for false respectability, in a misplaced desire not to evoke visions of Flash Gordon or Buck Rogers or Captain Video, they ended up not evoking any visions at all, and thereby destroyed any reason for the average individual, the average man, woman, or child, to support their program.

I have also come to think — very reluctantly, believe me — that there has been a secret agenda, probably in echelons much higher than NASA itself, to prevent that average individual from ever getting into space, which may be why they opposed the whole “space tourism” idea so hysterically.

March 18, 2012

“Santorum’s own web site suggests that seeing this turned between 15 and 25% of the crowd insta-gay”

Filed under: Liberty, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 10:31

Title courtesy of Popehat’s Twitter feed. Article at Gawker:

Santorum’s virgin eyes have been tarnished by sin — as a protest against the Republican presidential candidate’s vehemently anti-gay policies, two men got the attention of the crowd at an Illinois rally and kissed each other. Guards removed the men from the gym as the crowd chanted “U-S-A.” Because nothing is more American than repression.

March 17, 2012

P.J. O’Rourke on the Cato-Koch shootout

Filed under: Economics, Liberty, Politics, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 11:59

His latest column is on the infighting over control of the libertarian Cato Institute:

The Koch brothers’ motive seems clear, to the extent there’s clarity in human motivation. They want to rid the Oval Office of a pest and Congress of the pestilence’s plague-carriers. In their battle against statist disease, the Kochs seem to regard Cato’s individualism as too individualistic. They want a more collective effort to cure collectivism.

Current Cato board chairman Bob Levy met with David Koch and some of Koch’s political advisers last November. According to Levy, “They said that a principal goal was to defeat Barack Obama. The way David put it was, ‘We would like you to provide intellectual ammunition that we can then use at Americans for Prosperity and our allied organizations.’ AFP and others would apply Cato’s work to advance their electoral goals.”

Of course, if David Koch had bothered to read the Cato trove of books, articles, policy analysis, and research on the Obama administration’s bunk and boners, he would have found six-shooter ammunition enough to burst through the swinging doors of the Electoral Goals Saloon and make every sarsaparilla-drinking tenderfoot in the Democratic party dance.

[. . .]

And Cato couldn’t be involved in partisan politics. Everyone there is a libertarian. You might as well command your cat to bring you your pajamas as tell a bunch of libertarians to get on the same political platform. I know these people. Ron Paul is a bien-pensant by comparison. Cato scholars prize contentious thought. Get in a debate with one and you’ll find out he doesn’t even agree with himself.

[. . .]

It can be said, with some justice, that libertarians apply only one measure to every issue. But what a sublime yardstick it is. Libertarians ask, about each thing they encounter in public life, “Does this promote the liberty, responsibility, and dignity of the individual?” Libertarianism can have political implications, but politics is, by definition, mass action. And libertarians don’t believe in the masses. They believe in the individuals huddled in those masses. A pure libertarian is opposed to politics down to the soles of his shoes (or, libertarians being libertarians, down to the bottom of his sandals worn with socks). Libertarianism is contra-political, an emetic dose to be given to politics. As we’ve seen lately, all politics needs one sometimes.

H/T to Walter Olson for the link.

March 15, 2012

Santorum vows to eliminate online porn

Filed under: Liberty, Media, Politics, Technology, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:26

As if he wasn’t already socially conservative enough, Rick Santorum is now promising a moral crusade to clean up the internet:

Internet pornography could conceivably become a thing of the past if Rick Santorum is elected president.

The unapologetic social conservative, currently in second place behind Mitt Romney for the GOP nomination, has promised to crack down on the distribution of pornography if elected.

Santorum says in a statement posted to his website, “The Obama Administration has turned a blind eye to those who wish to preserve our culture from the scourge of pornography and has refused to enforce obscenity laws.”

If elected, he promises to “vigorously” enforce laws that “prohibit distribution of hardcore (obscene) pornography on the Internet, on cable/satellite TV, on hotel/motel TV, in retail shops and through the mail or by common carrier.”

Abusing the homeless … by giving them money to perform tasks

Filed under: Media, Politics, Technology, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:13

Chris Selley skewers the bien-pensant journalists who got so upset that some homeless people were given an opportunity to earn money:

Now, you might think homeless people, development directors at homeless shelters and anti-homelessness activists would know a thing or two about what homeless people need and want, and you would be correct. You might therefore think this was a good-news story, and you would be wrong. BBH took heavy fire from keyboard warriors who think the program was just ghastly.

Here in Canada, Maclean’s technology correspondent Jesse Brown, perhaps testing out a new hyperbole app, led the pack. He called it a “disgusting marketing ploy,” an “epic milestone in the history of bad taste,” “grotesque” and “degrading — literally.” Yes, literally.

“Yes, [the employee] keeps the money. No, that doesn’t make it okay,” he sniffed, presumably enjoying easy access to many multiples of $50 as he typed.

[. . .]

There ought to be an official term for this phenomenon, wherein well-meaning, bien-pensant carer/sharers freak out on behalf of a group of (homeless, poor, oppressed, disaster-afflicted) people, only to be told by those people to shut their goddamn pie holes. We saw it after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, when people criticized Royal Caribbean cruise lines for continuing to sail to its private beaches in the country, where it employs locals and, for a time, donated the proceeds of its visits to relief efforts. Such bad taste!

March 14, 2012

A possible solution to Canada’s long, long search for new search-and-rescue aircraft

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Cancon, Italy, Military, USA — Tags: — Nicholas @ 11:46

David Akin in the Toronto Sun:

Here’s the back story: For nearly a decade, the Department of National Defence has had cabinet approval to go out and spend $3.1 billion on new search-and-rescue planes. That’s a big contract and several aircraft vendors wanted to win that deal.

Aircraft makers and their lobbyists knew which buttons to push within DND but also at other key government departments such as Public Works and Government Services and at Industry Canada.

The goal of the lobbyists was to rig the bid so only their plane could win.

Pulled eight ways to Sunday by the heavy lobbying, the bureaucrats at three departments kept pushing pieces of paper at each other but never got close to making some purchase decisions.

Now, with the possibility that the search-and-rescue purchase process could be tied up in the bureaucracy for yet another year (followed by delivery of planes years after that!) the government may be ready to slice through this Gordian Knot and simply turn to our American allies to pick up most of their fleet of C-27 Spartans.

Apparently one of the remaining hurdles to be cleared is that the manufacturer of the Spartan aircraft, Alenia Aermacchi, is trying to prevent the sale and is even threatening not to provide spare parts or service to any country that buys the aircraft from the US. I have no idea why, but I’m sure there’s a reason for it.

The culture of Goldman Sachs

Filed under: Economics, History, Humour, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 11:31

Joshua M. Brown responds to the “why I’m leaving x” meme, specifically about Goldman Sachs variants:

The “culture” of Goldman Sachs was, is and always will be about making money, often at the expense of a client. Do you even know where the term “wirehouse” originally came from? Let me help you out with that. In the 1920’s, there was no CNBC or internet — there was only news delivered by wire and cable, stock market news and prices included. The “wirehouse” firms like Goldman would transmit stock and bond prices to their far-flung offices around the country from Wall Street where the action was taking place. It is a peculiar and yet telling fact of history that during the Crash of 1929, not a single major Wall Street brokerage firm went under. Wanna know why? Because when the sell-off began, they dumped all their holdings prior to wiring the news out to the rest of the investing public and their clientele across the country. Sound familiar, motherfucker? THAT is your firm’s culture, going back a hundred and fifty years.

Deal with it or leave and open an Etsy store.

March 12, 2012

Bad Romance: Women’s Suffrage

Filed under: History, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 15:00

Bad Romance: Women’s Suffrage is a parody music video paying homage to Alice Paul and the generations of brave women who joined together in the fight to pass the 19th Amendment, giving women the right to vote in 1920.

H/T to Katherine Mangu-Ward for the link.

GM: the re-Volting face of corporatism

Filed under: Economics, Government, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:14

Redmond Weissenberger on the decline of GM from world-class manufacturer to crony capitalist shell:

General Motors was once the Jewel in the crown of American Capitalism. By many, it was considered the greatest manufacturing company in America, if not the world. The company was destroyed by the insidious nature of the Neo-National Socialism that has infected the USA for well on 80 years now, when the merger of state and corporate power that swept across Europe was aped first by Hoover and then by FDR in the disastrous New Deal. The unions that were encouraged to eat away at GM from the inside were bailed out and the US Federal government took a 25% ownership in company. In the 2009 deal to “restructure” GM, the bondholders were wiped out, and the Unions were given a free pass to continue their destructive behaviors.

Built by what is now a de facto state-owned corporation, the Volt was the child of the green-washed brains of the Obama administration. The Volt was built for no-one, but a vision of the perfect, “New eco-Socialist Man”. Who is buying the Volt? According to Bill Visnic, senior editor of Edmunds.com, “The Volt appeals to an affluent, progressive demographic” General Motors itself stated that the average income of a Volt buyer is $175,000 a year. This trend does of course line up with the type of individual who has been at the forefront of the environmental movement since day one. A rarefied elite, righteously indignant, statist in nature, ready to have the government force eco-correct behavior on all who inhabit the land. The classic example is Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, who once opined that “In the event that I am reincarnated, I would like to return as a deadly virus, to contribute something to solving overpopulation”.

The Volt is a very good example of what happens when the means of production falls into the hands of the State. The system of profit and loss that can only operate when prices are set by the private owners of the materials and the means of production. The Chevy Volt can only exist within the sphere of the state wherein there is no rational economic calculation possible.

[. . .]

It is estimated by Tom Gantert that the Volt has received up to $3 Billion in Local, State and Federal Subsidies. And if you believe that GM has indeed sold 6,000 Volts, then the total subsidy per car can be estimated anywhere from $50,000 to $250,000. All of this for a mid-sized 4 door sedan that retails for $39,828 (eligible for a $7,500 federal rebate of course).

March 11, 2012

“[S]ince Vietnam, improved body armor has reduced casualties by more than half”

Filed under: Health, Military, Technology, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 11:19

Strategy Page on the benefits and drawbacks of current body armour options for US troops in Afghanistan and other combat deployments:

The U.S. Army has been trying to reduce the load infantrymen carry into combat. This has proved difficult, no, make that extremely difficult. The problem began with the appearance of, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, of new body armor that offered better protection. The new “protective vest” was heavier and bulkier, thus inducing fatigue and hindering mobility. This often led to battlefield situations where a less tired, and more agile, infantryman could have avoided injury. Military and political leaders usually do not appreciate this angle. But the troops do, as it is a matter of life and death for them.

[. . .]

Until the 1980s, you could strip down (for actual fighting) to your helmet, weapon (assault rifle and knife), ammo (hanging from webbing on your chest, along with grenades), canteen and first aid kit (on your belt) and your combat uniform. Total load was 13-14 kg (about 30 pounds). You could move freely, and quickly, like this, and you quickly found that speed and agility was a lifesaver in combat. But now the minimum load carried is twice as much (27 kg), and, worse yet, more restrictive.

While troops complained about the new protective vests, they valued it in combat. The current generation of vests will stop rifle bullets, a first in the history of warfare. And this was after nearly a century of trying to develop protective vests that were worth the hassle of wearing. It wasn’t until the 1980s that it was possible to make truly bullet proof vests using metallic inserts. But the inserts were heavy and so were the vests (about 11.3 kg/25 pounds). Great for SWAT teams, but not much use for the infantry. But in the 1990s, additional research produced lighter, bullet proof, ceramic materials. By 1999 the U.S. Army began distributing a 7.3 kg (16 pound) “Interceptor” vest that provided fragment and bullet protection. This, plus the 1.5 kg (3.3 pound) Kevlar helmet (available since the 1980s), gives the infantry the best combination of protection and mobility. And just in time.

[. . .] The bullet proof vest eliminates most of the damage done by the 30 percent of wounds that occur in the trunk (of which about 40 percent tend to be fatal without a vest). The Kevlar helmet is also virtually bulletproof, but it doesn’t cover all of the head (the face and part of the neck is still exposed). Even so, the reduction in deaths is significant. Some 15-20 percent of all wounds are in the head, and about 45 percent of them are fatal without a helmet. The Kevlar helmet reduces the deaths by at least half, and reduces many wounds to the status of bumps, sprains and headaches. Half the wounds occur in the arms and legs, but only 5-10 percent of these are fatal and that won’t change any time soon. Thus since Vietnam, improved body armor has reduced casualties by more than half. The protective vests used in Vietnam and late in the Korean war reduced casualties by about 25 percent since World War II, so the risk of getting killed or wounded has been cut in half since World War II because of improved body armor.

March 10, 2012

“[A]theists and theists […] are quacking and waddling in the same way in different ponds”

Filed under: Media, Religion, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 13:19

Kennedy expresses the idea that atheism is a religion and becomes “a minor celebrity and a major troll” to her social media circles:

I didn’t know what fire and brimstone was until I made a throwaway claim recently during an appearance on Real Time with Bill Maher. It seemed pretty unaudacious at the time, but by dropping the simple sentence “Atheism is a religion,” I opened a biblical floodgate of ridicule, name-calling, and abuse.

My Twitter feed and Facebook page became engorged with angry responses. “Your adherence into adulthood to what is usually an adolescent phase (Libertarianism), speaks volumes about your confirmation bias levels,” wrote Kernan. Touchstone Supertramp added; “Damn girl you got a big forehead.” A guy named Kevin and about 70 other people shared this bumper-sticker nugget: “‎If atheism is a religion, then off is a TV channel.” Liz wrote, “Kennedy, is that if atheism constitutes a religious belief than anorexia is whenever you don’t eat.” Michael wrote: “re·li·gion /riˈlijən/ Noun: 1. Whatever Kennedy says it is.” That was awesome. Beth called me a minor celebrity and a major troll—and it was also awesome to have somebody think I’m a celebrity.

[. . .]

Newberg and his late partner Eugene D’Aquili mapped various parts of the brain showing activation in specific areas when people were undergoing certain religious rituals or experiences, such as a shaman being in a trance or a Buddhist entering a mystical state. Regardless of the religion, the brain function was the same. Something was happening when these people experienced their version of religious phenomena, and the scans lit up like Robert Redford’s suit in The Electric Horseman.

This does not prove God exists, but it does show humans are wired or biologically predisposed to believe in something. When I interviewed him for this article, Newberg said his research demonstrates that “we are wired to have these beliefs about the world, to get at the fundamental stuff the universe is about. For many people, it includes God and for some it doesn’t. Your brain is doing its best to understand the world and construct beliefs to understand it, and from an epistemological perspective there is no fundamental difference.”

[. . .]

When atheists rail against theists (as many did on my Facebook page), they are using the same fervor the religious use when making their claims against a secular society. By calling atheism a religion, I am not trying to craft terms or apply them out of convenience. I just see theists and atheists behaving in the same manner, approaching from opposite ends of the runway. The entire discourse about religion stems from those who think they know more than the other guy. But what we really know is that we don’t know much. And we seem to share the same mechanism in our brains that drives us to make claims of faith and rationalism as a way of making sense of the great unknown.

You can call atheism a belief system, which Newberg guardedly does, or you can make a stronger assertion and say that atheists and theists, who have conveniently developed hate-tinged froth and vitriol for one another, are quacking and waddling in the same way in different ponds. Either way, they are ducks and atheism is a religion. At least it is in the hands of those who are so religious about their disbelief that they place the weight of the argument on the feathery shoulders of their believing brothers and sisters.

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