Quotulatiousness

March 17, 2010

Debunking “No Irish Need Apply”

Filed under: Britain, History, Religion, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:51

By way of Kathy Shaidle, a debunking of the notorious “No Irish Need Apply” era of labour:

Irish Catholics in America have a vibrant memory of humiliating job discrimination, which featured omnipresent signs proclaiming “Help Wanted — No Irish Need Apply!” No one has ever seen one of these NINA signs because they were extremely rare or nonexistent. The market for female household workers occasionally specified religion or nationality. Newspaper ads for women sometimes did include NINA, but Irish women nevertheless dominated the market for domestics because they provided a reliable supply of an essential service. Newspaper ads for men with NINA were exceedingly rare. The slogan was commonplace in upper class London by 1820; in 1862 in London there was a song, “No Irish Need Apply,” purportedly by a maid looking for work. The song reached America and was modified to depict a man recently arrived in America who sees a NINA ad and confronts and beats up the culprit. The song was an immediate hit, and is the source of the myth. Evidence from the job market shows no significant discrimination against the Irish — on the contrary, employers eagerly sought them out. Some Americans feared the Irish because of their religion, their use of violence, and their threat to democratic elections. By the Civil War these fears had subsided and there were no efforts to exclude Irish immigrants. The Irish worked in gangs in job sites they could control by force. The NINA slogan told them they had to stick together against the Protestant Enemy, in terms of jobs and politics. The NINA myth justified physical assaults, and persisted because it aided ethnic solidarity. After 1940 the solidarity faded away, yet NINA remained as a powerful memory.

The secret life of the F-18

Filed under: Military, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:11

Another interesting article from Strategy Page:

The U.S. Navy has grounded 16 percent (104 of 635) of its older (A/B/C/D models) F-18 fighters. The reason is the discovery of cracks in the airframe. Small cracks were expected to show up eventually, the result of all the stress put on the metal from violent aerial maneuvers, and carrier landings. But in this case, the cracks were showing up sooner than expected. Most of the grounded aircraft can still be flown in an emergency. All these older F-18s have to be examined, and those found with cracks (usually where the wing meets the fuselage), repairs can be made.

Over the last few years, the navy has found that both their older F-18C Hornet fighters, and their newer F-18E “Super Hornet” are wearing out faster than expected. This was sort of expected with the F-18Cs, which entered service during the late 1970s and early 80s. These aircraft were expected to last about twenty years.

This is of interest to a lot of American allies, as the F-18 is in use by many of their air forces. Partly due to the faster aging of the US aircraft, the manufacturer is still producing spare parts (which benefits both the US Navy and allied air forces).

One very interesting detail I didn’t know:

There are actually two quite different aircraft that are called the F-18 (the A/B/C/D version, and the E/F/Gs). While the F-18E looks like the original F-18A, it is actually very different. The F-18E is about 25 percent larger (and heavier) than the earlier F-18s, and has a new type of engine. By calling it an upgrade, it was easier for the navy to get the money from Congress. That’s because, in the early 1990s, Congress was expecting a “peace dividend” from the end of the Cold War, and was slashing the defense budget. There was a lot of commonality between the two F-18s, but they are basically two different aircraft.

Rather like the Royal Navy managing to sneak their last generation of aircraft carriers through the budget process by calling them “through-deck cruisers”.

March 15, 2010

Latest Iraq war drama bombs at box office

Filed under: Media, Military, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 11:00

Hard though it may be to believe, American film-goers still don’t seem to want to watch anti-American movies:

In Team America: World Police, the first Hollywood-financed movie inspired by the U.S. invasion of Iraq and its attendant political controversy, South Park‘s Trey Parker and Matt Stone dispatched a squad of U.S. guerrillas — all in marionette form — to take down an Axis of Evil dictator and, in the process, slaughter the real villains of the piece: a bunch of self-important celebrities who had publicly opposed the U.S. policy. One of these stars is Matt Damon, who’s portrayed as such an idiot that all his dialogue consists of his grinning stupidly and saying, “Matt Damon!” The puppet Damon ends up dead, his head snapped by a Team America hero.

The real Matt Damon didn’t fare much better as the star of the new Green Zone: he went looking for the truth about Iraq’s WMDs, and got blown up by the IED of public indifference. The box-office curse of movies about the U.S. Mess-o-potamian escapade remained unbroken, as Damon became the latest star — after George Clooney, Jamie Foxx, Tom Cruise, Robert Redford, Meryl Streep, Tommy Lee Jones, Reese Witherspoon and Jake Gyllenhaal, not to mention the South Park guys — whose attempts to address the blood and blunders in our Mideast wars tanked with the mass audience.

Green Zone, reteaming Damon with Paul Greengrass, his director in the last two, very popular Jason Bourne films, earned just $14.5 million in its first three days at North American theaters, according to early studio estimates. That’s way below industry predictions (in the low to middle $20 millions) and less than a quarter of the $62 million amassed this weekend by the defending champ, Alice in Wonderland, which has leapt like a White Rabbit past the $200 million mark in just 10 days.

Full disclosure: haven’t seen it, almost certainly won’t see it. I’m not much of a movie fan, especially the type of movie with heavy-handed “message” overtones. Even though I’m well-read in military history, I rarely watch war movies (I suspect I have a touch of “extreme empathy“, honestly).

Update: Frank J. thinks it’s not all bad:

I’m sure Green Zone will make up the money in the merchandising like the McDonald’s Happy Meals tie ins.

March 14, 2010

Far from supporting Britain, US Navy on manouvre with Argentines

Filed under: Americas, Military, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:02

Gordon Brown may have hoped to get some tacit sign of support from the United States in the diplomatic kerfuffle over the Falkland Islands, but if you look closely here, you’ll see which side President Obama prefers:

Courtesy of Strategy Page, that’s the USS Bunker Hill (note the deliberate anti-British choice of name for the ship) and the Argentinian frigate ARA Gomez Roca together for operations recently.

March 12, 2010

Striking at the enemy’s head

Filed under: Middle East, Military, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:44

Strategy Page looks at the relative success of both intelligence and implementation in attacks directed at Taliban leaders:

The American campaign against the Taliban and al Qaeda leadership in Pakistan continues, mainly because it works. Since this “decapitation” (of key terrorists) program began in 2008, about 120 attacks have been made, killing about a thousand people. Some 30 percent of the dead were civilians, as the terrorists try to surround themselves with women and children. They believe that the American ROE (Rules of Engagement) will not permit missiles to be fired at them when there are obviously civilians nearby. But most of the missiles hit buildings at night. The Taliban and al Qaeda don’t like to discuss these attacks, even to score some media points by complaining of civilian casualties. But the U.S. and Pakistani intelligence services do monitor radio and email in the area, and believe that about 700 terrorists, including two dozen senior al Qaeda and Taliban leaders, and nearly a hundred mid-level ones, have died from the UAV missile attacks. Civilian deaths are minimized by trying to catch the terrorists while travelling, or otherwise away from civilians.

[. . .]

While the terrorist groups are concerned about the losses, especially among the leadership, what alarms them the most is how frequently the American UAVs are finding their key people. The real problem the terrorists have is that someone is ratting them out. Someone, or something, is helping the Americans find the terrorist leaders. That would be Pakistani intelligence (ISI), which promptly began feeling some heat when the civilians were back in power in 2008. After the purge of many Islamic radical (or pro-radical) officers, the information from the Pakistani informant network began to reach the Americans.

This Hellfire campaign is hitting al Qaeda at the very top, although only a quarter of the attacks so far have taken out any of the most senior leaders. But that means over half the senior leadership have been killed or badly wounded in the last two years. Perhaps even greater damage has been done to the terrorist middle management. These are old and experienced lieutenants, as well as young up-and-comers. They are the glue that holds al Qaeda and the Taliban together. Their loss is one reason why it’s easier to get more information on where leaders are, and why rank-and-file al Qaeda and Taliban are less effective of late.

March 11, 2010

News bulletin: school still sucks

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Education, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:01

Things aren’t improving in schools, as this report from James Stephenson makes clear:

I remember the day they installed the cameras in my high school. Everyone was surprised when we walked and saw them hanging ominously from the ceiling.

Everyone except me: I moved to rural Virginia from the wealthier and more heavily populated region of northern Virginia. Cameras have watched me since middle school. So I wasn’t surprised, just disappointed. “What have we done?” asked one of my friends. It felt like the faculty was punishing us for something. A common justification for cameras is that they make students safer, and make them feel more secure. I can tell you from first hand experience that that argument is bullshit. Columbine had cameras, but they didn’t make the 15 people who died there any safer. Cameras don’t make you feel more secure; they make you feel twitchy and paranoid. Some people say that the only people who don’t like school cameras are the people that have something to hide. But having the cameras is a constant reminder that the school does not trust you and that the school is worried your fellow classmates might go on some sort of killing rampage.

Cameras aren’t the worst of the privacy violations. Staff perform random searches of cars and lockers. Most of the kids know about locker searches because they see the administration going though their stuff in the hall. But not everyone knows about the car searches, all the way out in the parking lot where administrators aren’t likely to be observed. (People don’t often bother to lock their cars, either).

In a world where everyone seems to be desperately worried about dangers to kids, the one thing that’s overlooked is the almost complete loss of human rights: being a student in the public school system means you don’t have many rights at all. It’s not much of an exaggeration to say that prisoners in jail have more rights — and better-protected rights — than children and teenagers in school.

Petty acts of rebellion–and innocent little covert activities–kept our spirits up. The school’s computer network may have been censored, but the sneakernet is alive and well. Just like in times past, high school students don’t have much money to buy music, movies or games, but all are avidly traded at every American high school. It used to be tapes; now it’s thumbdrives and flash disks. My friends and I once started an underground leaflet campaign that was a lot of fun. I even read about a girl who ran a library of banned books out of her locker. These trivial things are more important than they seem because they make students feel like they have some measure of control over their lives. Schools today are not training students to be good citizens: they are training students to be obedient.

Of course, obedience must be enforced.

March 9, 2010

It’s pesticide-free . . . but don’t call it “organic”

Filed under: Economics, USA, Wine — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 17:43

Organic wine, in theory, should be better quality than non-organic wine because the lack of pesticides requires much more manual labour in the vineyard to produce useful grapes. If you have to put in all that extra effort just to get sufficient grapes at harvest, it’s prudent to treat the resulting wine with care and further attention (otherwise, you’re wasting all that effort up front to grow the grapes in the first place). But, after all that (at least in California), don’t put the word organic on the label:

“You’ve heard of the French paradox?” quipped Delmas, associate professor of management at UCLA’s Institute of the Environment and the UCLA Anderson School of Management. “Well, this is the American version. You’d expect anything with an eco-label to command a higher price, but that’s just not the case with California wine.”

[. . .]

So long as they didn’t carry eco-labels, these wines commanded a 13-percent higher price than conventionally produced wines of the same varietal, appellation and year. Their ratings on Wine Specator’s 100-point scale, in which wines tend to range between the mid-50s and high 90s, were also higher. Wines made from organically grown grapes averaged one point higher than their conventionally produced counterparts.

While the higher Wine Spectator scores still prevailed when producers slapped eco-labels on their bottles, the financial rewards for going to the trouble of making certified wine evaporated. The “made from organically grown grapes” label not only wiped out the price premium for using certified grapes but actually drove prices 7 percent below those for conventionally produced wines, the researchers found.

[. . .]

“Organic wine earned its bad reputation in the ’70s and ’80s,” Grant said. “Considered ‘hippie wine,’ it tended to turn to vinegar more quickly than non-organic wine. This negative association still lingers.”

Even today, the absence of sulfites reduces the shelf-life of organic wines, making them less stable, the researchers said.

I’m afraid my experience of “organic” wine is similar: the ones I’ve tried haven’t been very good, mostly due to rapid aging (the wine was already well past its best when others from the same region/same vintage were still improving). I certainly don’t pay extra if I notice an “organic” label, and I’m likely to avoid such a wine in favour of a non-organic option where possible.

QotD: Early America

Filed under: Britain, France, History, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:30

Early America enjoyed, perhaps, a little more participatory local democracy than Britain, and had a slightly broader electorate and already the highest standard of living in the world. But the revolution so rapturously mythologized by Jefferson, Thomas Paine, Patrick Henry and others, was really, as Washington, Franklin, Hamilton, Madison and Adams did not forget, a somewhat grubby contest over taxes.

In one of the greatest feats of statesmanship of all history, the Americans, and especially Benjamin Franklin, persuaded the British to expel the French from North America, and then persuaded the French to provide the margin of victory in evicting the British themselves. This precocious manipulation of the world’s two greatest powers by a group of colonists showed astounding finesse and precocity, made more piquant and ironic by the fact that their rebellion was against paying the colonies’ share of the cost of removing the French, and the French were recruited to save the Americans their proportionate share of the cost of their own eviction.

All countries swaddle themselves in myths, and the Americans aren’t more self-indulgent than others; only more successful and operating on the grand scale of a country that in two long lifetimes grew to possess completely unprecedented power and influence in the world.

Even without the great pre-eminence of America, the founders of the country possessed a presentational skill that vastly exceeded the procession of demagogues and lunatics that sent and followed each other to the guillotine in the French Revolution. And they were certainly more persuasive and sophisticated than the British spokesmen for constitutional monarchy.

But their unintended legacy of this gift for theatricality is the endless hyperbole and hucksterism of American materialism and individuality.

Conrad Black, “Send in the clowns”, National Post, 2010-03-09

This is why Fark.com has a special “Florida” tag

Filed under: Media, USA — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:57

The headline really does say it all:

Shows with gay characters could lose Florida tax credits

Florida lawmakers are considering a “family friendly” bill that would deny tax credits to films and television shows with gay characters in favor of those promoting traditional values.

The proposal, which has fueled a heated controversy for its discriminatory nature, would increase current tax credits from 2 to 5% of production costs for shows considered “family friendly.”

I’m not in favour of tax credits for TV and movie production in any case, but if your government is going to be providing them, they should at least be available to all legal forms of entertainment. Discrimination in this way is ridiculous — and I’d be astounded if it was actually constitutional.

If persuasion doesn’t work, raise the taxes

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Food, Law, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 07:12

New York City is moving ahead in their war on junk food, with a new proposal to add a significant tax to the sales of carbonated pop:

[Mayor Michael Bloomberg] described the soda tax — equivalent to an extra eight pence on a can — as “a fix that just makes sense”, saving lives and cutting rising health care costs.

“An extra 12 cents on a can of soda would raise nearly $1 billion (£663 million), allowing us to keep community health services open and teachers in the classroom,” he said on his weekly radio programme on Sunday.

“And, at the same time, it would help us fight a major problem plaguing our children: obesity.”

David Paterson, the mayor of New York state, has already proposed a soda tax but it was dropped last year following a public outcry.

H/T to Chris Greaves for the link, who said “Let’s see now, prohibition didn’t work, so let’s try something different!”

Of course, the proposed tax would be very popular in some areas: all the retailers outside NYC who would be able to reap significant additional sales to New Yorkers who didn’t want to pay the sin tax.

March 5, 2010

Government wages and benefits outpace private sector

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Economics, Government, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 12:59

Once upon a time (and this is becoming long enough in the past to qualify as legend), government work was less well-paid than equivalent work in the private sector. The advantage of taking the lower-paid government job was job security: government workers had a “job for life” and a nice pension at the end of it. Private sector workers got more in the weekly pay, but generally had worse pensions and more uncertainty for long-term employment.

During the last generation or so, this basic trade-off has been lost. Government workers now get better paid than their private sector counterparts, still get practically guaranteed lifetime employment, and not-just-nice-but-very-nice pensions. No wonder governments have become the employer of choice. Katherine Mangu-Ward has the gory details:

There are two million civilian federal workers. 1.1 million of them have direct private sector equivalents. And they are laughing their asses off at those private sector suckers, who are doing similar jobs for less pay — often a lot less.

“Accountants, nurses, chemists, surveyors, cooks, clerks and janitors are among the wide range of jobs that get paid more on average in the federal government than in the private sector,” according to a USA Today report. In jobs where there are private equivalents, the feds are earning $7,645 more on average than their private counterparts.

[. . .]

Note that the figures above are salaries and don’t include the value of benefits, which averaged $40,785 per federal employee in 2008 vs. $9,882 per private worker.

March 4, 2010

Don’t plan on riding those new high speed trains any time soon

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

I’m a train fan, always have been. I’d love to see new rail lines developed, but only where they make economic sense. Most of the proposed HSR lines don’t even come close, and as they point out in the video, they don’t deliver on the other claimed benefits either. I’ve posted about High Speed Railways a few times before.

The jokes just write themselves

Filed under: Law, Politics, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 08:59

By way of Kathy Shaidle’s blog, a court case that was custom-designed for certain political campaigns:

A 45-year-old woman, charged with ending a domestic dispute by killing her 26-year-old husband of five days, is a registered lobbyist for a group fighting domestic violence.

Arelisha Bridges was ordered held without bond in the Fulton County Jail. She is scheduled for a preliminary hearing later this month on charges of felony murder, murder, aggravated assault and possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony.

Officials said Bridges claimed she was unemployed. But records show she is a lobbyist for an organization called the National Declaration for Domestic Violence Order; its Web site says the group is pushing legislation to create a database of those convicted of sex crimes or domestic abuse.

And remember, guns don’t kill people: lobbyists for anti-domestic violence groups do.

Shooting the messenger over extra taxes

Filed under: Economics, Government, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 07:32

An article in the Chicago Tribune talks about the latest “extra” to appear on restaurant bills in San Francisco: the “health” charge. This is how many restaurants in the city are handling the latest tax increase — making it explicit on the bill — but the Tribune writer appears to feel the restaurant owners should “eat” the new tax as “part of doing business”. Implied in this is that the restaurants shouldn’t raise prices either.

So, let’s all blame those evil restaurant owners, shall we?

The rationale for this one is to cover the employers’ mandatory contribution to the City’s “Healthy San Francisco” health-coverage system. The charge actually is levied on employers, but at least some restaurants are adding a few dollars or percentage points to each customer’s bill to cover this charge.

The restaurants’ excuse for assessing this charge separately is to let customers know how much they’re paying for employees’ health coverage. That’s the same excuse hotels use when they add “resort” or “housekeeping” fees to unsuspecting guests’ room bills. It’s the same excuse airlines would use to exclude fuel surcharges from their advertised fares if the Department of Transportation would allow them. And it’s sheer nonsense. Employees’ health insurance is no less of a cost of doing business than rent, property taxes, food costs, security services and all the other inputs businesses require to operate. To single out health care for a separate surcharge is unwarranted.

What’s missing here is the distinction between mandatory fees or taxes which various levels of government impose, and extra charges for things which logically should be intrinsic to the basic price. I agree that adding a “housekeeping” item to a hotel bill is wrong, but calling out a new tax that has to be paid is correct. Hidden taxes (in which category the Tribune writer misleadingly includes the San Francisco “health” charge) are the ones that don’t get itemized for you on your bill . . . that’s the “hidden” part.

Hidden taxes are far worse than itemized entries, because when prices rise due to changes in the tax rate, they naturally blame the seller (who doesn’t benefit from the raised price) and not the government which raised the tax rate underlying the price increase.

Canadian air travel now to be subject to US oversight

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Cancon, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 07:11

I’d always suspected that the close co-operation between Canadian and US officials meant that even theoretically domestic flights might be scrutinized by the other country, but now it’s official policy:

Starting in December, passengers on Canadian airlines flying to, from or even over the United States without ever landing there, will only be allowed to board the aircraft once the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has determined they are not terrorists.

Secure Flight, the newest weapon in the U.S. war on terrorism, gives the United States unprecedented power about who can board planes that fly over U.S. airspace — even if the flights originate and land in Canada.

The program, which is set to take effect globally in December 2010, was created as part of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act, adopted by U.S. Congress in 2004.

Parliament never adopted or even discussed the Secure Flight program — even though Secure Flight transfers the authority of screening passengers, and their personal information, from domestic airlines to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

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