November 22, 2009
"2009 is also the first year of global governance"
Hope and Change for the entire planet.
Don't take my word for it. Listen to the new President of the European Union, Herman van Rompuy.
Here is my transcription, complete with relevant emphasis:
It is my firm intention to ensure that our work develops, over a long-term period, a perspective that goes beyond six months and will allow us to be better organized where the major multi-annual dossiers are concerned, such as the financial perspectives in the Lisbon strategy. I also think that going back to our roots in the European Council could help us to discuss from time to time in an informal and open way the big questions of the European project. I'm thinking more specifically of the economic and social agenda and this is a particularly urgent matter because of the environmental and energy challenges we face and aspirations we have for greater security and justice for all our fellow citizens. We're living through exceptionally difficult times. The financial crisis and its dramatic impact on employment and budgets. The climate crisis which threatens our very survival. A period of anxiety, uncertainty and lack of confidence. Yet these problems can be overcome by a joint effort in and between our countries. Two-thousand-and-nine is also the first year of global governance with the establishment of the G20 in the middle of the financial crisis. The climate conference in Copenhagen is another step towards the global management of our planet. Our mission, our presidency, is one of hope supported by acts and by deeds.
Brother tg assures us that the climatologists in the climate cabal "are not evil environmentalists bent on hatching a secret plan to rule the world -- they are scientists, no better or worse than the rest of us." That may be true but it doesn't mean their work is not being used by others to "hatch a secret plan to rule the world."
Al Gore Wishes he Never Invented the Internet
This whole post at Minnesotans for Global Warming is hilarious and biting, but here is the part I find most relevant to prior posts of my own:
The Global Warming Extremists controlled the argument for years by saying, it's only legitimate science if it's published in certain journals and peer reviewed, and if you control the Journals you control the science. But sadly with Al Gore's invention, the anointed few are losing control, much like the medieval church did with the invention of the printing press.
Climategate
Intapundit notes that Climategate makes the WaPo "In a big way."
Cloture
The Associated Press spells it out for those for those who don't understand the arcane procedures of the US Senate:
WASHINGTON – A bruising debate on health care awaits the Senate after Thanksgiving now that the historic legislation has cleared a key hurdle over the opposition of Republicans eager to inflict a punishing defeat on President Barack Obama.
The bill would extend coverage to roughly 31 million who lack it, crack down on insurance company practices that deny or dilute benefits and curtail the growth of spending on medical care nationally.
To be more fair than they, the fourth paragraph quotes Leader McConnell with some decent opposition, but he comes off sounding political now that we have laid down the facts: Democrats want to "pass historic legislation" that "extend[s] coverage to roughly 31 million who lack it," "crack[s] down on insurance company practices that deny or dilute benefits" and "curtail[s] the growth of spending on medical care nationally"
Republicans are "eager to inflict a punishing defeat on President Barack Obama."
"APObama" is in fine form.
As for the "historic legislation" it is so much so that it wasn't even mentioned in an email update from one of my Colorado senators, Mark Udall.
Sent: Saturday, November 11, 2009 7:14 am.
Subject: "Mark's Newsletter Update: Helping Small Businesses Grow, Honoring Our Veterans, Expanding Wilderness in the San Juan Mountains"
Worse than not even mentioning the health care bill he was poised to vote AYE on later the same day, he trumpeted a letter he wrote to the president because he's "looking out for Main Street - not just Wall Street." His arrogant self-deception disgusts me.
November 21, 2009
The "Prestige Press"
Sarah Palin calls them the "Lamestream Media."
Mike Rosen calls them the "Dominant Liberal Establishment Media."
Brother jk calls them <heavenly music>The New York Times.</heavenly music>
Climate change conspirast Michael Mann, of "hockey stick" fame, calls them the "Prestige Press." This excerpt from one of the email thread archives that comprise Climategate definitely is one of the "things that make you go HMMMM."
Andrew Revkin to Michael Mann, Sep 29, 2009, 4:30 pm:
needless to say, seems the 2008 pnas paper showing that without tree rings still solid picture of unusual recent warmth, but McIntyre is getting wide play for his statements
about Yamal data-set selectivity. Has he communicated directly to you on this and/or is there any indication he's seeking journal publication for his deconstruct?
Michael Mann replies, Sep 29, 2009, 5:08 pm:
Hi Andy,
I'm fairly certain Keith is out of contact right now recovering from an operation, and is not in a position to respond to these attacks. However, the preliminary information I have from others familiar with these data is that the attacks are bogus.
It is unclear that this particular series was used in any of our reconstructions (some of the underlying chronologies may be the same, but I'm fairly certain the versions of these data we have used are based on a different composite and standardization method), let alone any of the dozen other reconstructions of Northern Hemisphere mean temperature shown in the most recent IPCC report, which come to the conclusion that recent warming is anomalous in a long-term context.
So, even if there were a problem w/ these data, it wouldn't matter as far as the key conclusions regarding past warmth are concerned. But I don't think there is any problem with these data, rather it appears that McIntyre has greatly distorted the actual information content of these data. It will take folks a few days to get to the bottom of this, in Keith's absence.
if McIntyre had a legitimate point, he would submit a comment to the journal in question. of course, the last time he tried that (w/ our '98 article in Nature), his comment was rejected. For all of the noise and bluster about the Steig et al Antarctic warming, its now nearing a year and nothing has been submitted. So more likely he won't submit for peer-reviewed scrutiny, or if it does get his criticism "published" it will be in the discredited contrarian home journal "Energy and Environment". I'm sure you are aware that McIntyre and his ilk realize they no longer need to get their crap published in legitimate journals. All they have to do is put it up on their blog, and the contrarian noise machine kicks into gear, pretty soon Druge, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and their ilk (in this case, The Telegraph were already on it this morning) are parroting the claims. And based on what? some guy w/ no credentials, dubious connections with the energy industry, and who hasn't submitted his claims to the scrutiny of peer review.
Fortunately, the prestige press doesn't fall for this sort of stuff, right?
mike
Revkin again, Sep 29, 2009, 5:18 pm:
thanks heaps.
tom crowley has sent me a direct challenge to mcintyre to start contributing to the reviewed lit or shut up. i'm going to post that soon. just want to be sure that what is spliced below is from YOU ... a little unclear . ?
I'm copying this to Tim, in hopes that he can shed light on the specific data assertions made over at climateaudit.org.....
I'm going to blog on this as it relates to the value of the peer review process and not on the merits of the mcintyre et al attacks. peer review, for all its imperfections, is where the herky-jerky process of knowledge building happens, would you agree?
One can almost see the "wink, wink" between the lines when Mann says, "...the prestige press doesn't fall for this sort of stuff, RIGHT?"
The two of them certainly appear to be defending the standing of their sycophantic collection of science journals against any dissent - even from other peer-reviewed journals which may happen to be "discredited."
I think you guys are taking this one out of context mates.
Lets start with Revkin. I like Revkin. I am a regular reader of his blog. Lots of people in the climate sphere are not. They make nice with him, because he is a prominent outlet to mainstream America, but most don't like him. Problem is, he talks about skeptics too much. When scare studies have methodological problems, he points them out. He consistently highlights contrarian (and in particular, pro-adaptation) points of view. He has written three dozen posts on why alarmism destroys the environmental movement's credibility.
So the lefties like to bag on him. All the time. Take the blog post this e-mail chain refers to. Dozens in the climate sphere threw up their arms in protestation -- give McIntyre space to defend himself, in the New York Times? Outrageous. We should be ignoring deniers like these, not giving them a bully pulpit! And so on and so forth.
So the criticism of Revkin is more than a tad unfair. McIntyre, for what it is worth, never did take up the challenge. Lets pretend that 'sycophantic collection of science journals' accurately describes the environmental studies press for sake of argument. McIntyre is a statistician. He audits climate scientist's statistics. There is no reason he could not have gone to one of the larger statistics journals (who are not controlled by the climate cabal) and published a piece. That he has not done so hurts his case.
A final note -- I can't see the "wink, wink" you refer to. I simply see a man who is frustrated with the press for paying attention to something he deems dangerous and disingenuous. These are not evil environmentalists bent on hatching a secret plan to rule the world -- they are scientists, no better or worse than the rest of us. What is the name of that film Jk likes? "Not, Evil, Just Wrong", right? I think that title just about covers it.
Thank you for your insights tg. I will confess that I'd never read Revkin and your perspective on his motives is a valuable addition to those of Dr. Ball and Mr. Chesser in my previous post. But let me ask you, is it possible that Revkin "talks about skeptics too much" because he's the climate alarmists' point-man for discrediting skeptics in the blogosphere? I'm not asking you to make a judgement one way or the other, just whether or not it's a possibility.
And thank you for linking to the Revkin post that was referred to in the email thread I posted. I must give Revkin credit for printing McIntyre's response to Dr. Crowley's defensive challenge to 'see if you can reconstruct the data I did in some way you think is better.' In actuality, McIntyre was saying that the data are INSUFFICIENT for ANY such reconstruction. What is the sense of publishing a paper to say this? Can't we just talk about the scientific method without the de-facto censorship of science journal editors and reviewers? If Dr. Crowley has confidence in his work then why doesn't he explain why rather than call Mr. McIntyre "really tiresome?"
The other story being told by Climategate, possibly the bigger story than media bias, is the politicization of the scientific review process. You suggested that McIntyre could easily have made his criticisms more valid by publishing them in a statistics journal "not controlled by the climate cabal" but consider what the climate cabal had to say about statisticians: "While there is undoubtedly scope for statisticians to play a larger role in paleoclimate research, the large investment of time needed to become familiar with the scientific background is likely to deter most statisticians from entering this field." The veiled threat here to statisticians is, 'Go ahead and publish on climate science. We'll just discount your standing on the basis of years in the field.'
The "climate cabal's" hard-fought control over the relevant journals is sufficient that they are able to control what papers are included in IPCC reports:
"I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report," Jones writes. "Kevin and I will keep them out somehow -- even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!"
In closing, Revkin's parting shot was, as colluded with Dr. Mann, to suggest that those who do not operate within the (rigged) peer-review process "are not to be trusted." This single *heavenly music* New York Times */heavenly music* suggestion embodies both of my criticisms at once.
Well played, lads.
I think the "bombshell" of the "Climategate" emails is to underscore what I have bored y'all with for years: the pro-AWG side may not be evil, but they are not participating in the scientific process. You don't have to get a paper published to contradict a paper. Science moves along as gruesomely as the NFL playoffs. If you publish, your work will be attacked fairly and unfairly and you are expected to defend it.
I posted a link last September about this mentality:
Now begins the fun. Warwick Hughes, an Australian scientist, wondered where that +/- came from, so he politely wrote Phil Jones in early 2005, asking for the original data. Jones's response to a fellow scientist attempting to replicate his work was, "We have 25 years or so invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?"
Reread that statement, for it is breathtaking in its anti-scientific thrust. In fact, the entire purpose of replication is to "try and find something wrong." The ultimate objective of science is to do things so well that, indeed, nothing is wrong.
The leaked emails highlight this contempt for Popperian discovery. At the end of the day, whether in the sainted NYT or lowly Australian Sun, I don't think they'll change anybody's mind. They'll feed the deniers' case but the process is too abstract and arcane to dissuade believers.
TG has a point: there is no smoking gun here of Dr. Hockey Stick or the NYT reporter trying to extort or directly kneecap a critic. However, I only see a trace of scientific curiosity. I see two professionals spending most of their time spinning, packaging and smearing by association.
This upholds my main criticism of the 'science' arm of the AGW movement from nearly the very beginning. They long ago shucked science for politics, notoriety, and ideology. I feel vindicated in this at the Royal Danish Society's response to the attempt at - in effect - defenestrating Dr. Lomborg by several hundred Danish scientists, whose terse judgment upholding Dr. Lomborg's status and ideas, essentially said "you all say you have degrees?"
I've spent years in academic review settings, and never seen anything quite like this, nor any scientist so worried about what the press may or may not "fall for." If Dr. Mann were truly confident in his findings, surely he'd have the confidence that that the truth would out, yes?
I'm also quite shocked that Dr. Hockey Stick is still listened to by any institution that regards itself reputable in a scientific sense, as much as if I saw some institute still giving prominence to Drs. Pons or Fleischmann.
I guess that's why they're called "lamestream"
Andrew Revkin of the New York Times reports on environmental issues, "in print and on his blog, Dot Earth." At least, that's what his NYT bio page says. The day after Climategate exploded on the internet, Revkin wrote about it today.
The evidence pointing to a growing human contribution to global warming is so widely accepted that the hacked material is unlikely to erode the overall argument. However, the documents will undoubtedly raise questions about the quality of research on some specific questions and the actions of some scientists.
As one of the leading lamestream media voices, Revkin's seems to be spinning: Yeah, these guys were doing bad science but we're only talking about a handful of scientists. Well we're also only talking about a handful of reporters who tell us that the science is settled, and Revkin is one of them.
It turns out his name appears in the FOIA data dump emails. According to Dr. Tim Ball in the story linked as UPDATE 2 on yesterday's post,
They also had a left wing conduit to the New York Times. The emails between Andy Revkin and the community are very revealing and must place his journalistic integrity in serious jeopardy.
Paul Chesser at American Spectator wasn't so delicate:
Revkin has authored two global warming books and so has a lot to lose himself from this controversy, as his reputation is just as much at stake as the scientists.' Therefore his defense mechanisms are fully engaged. In his blog post yesterday about the revelations, he states that repercussions "continue to unfold" and "there’s much more to explore," but do you really think he can be counted on for follow-up stories about it this week?
For my part I have to ask, is Revkin a reporter, a blogger, or a co-conspirator?
I did chuckle at the 'graph you excerpted -- but that was pretty far down the post and I thought what came before it was pretty damning. Most significant was the jump from anti-DAWG organs and blogs to <heavenly music>The New York Times</heavenly musc>.
Not on the cover of The Nation yet, but it took a couple steps up with this admission.
Really JK,
do you need to ask I have to ask, is Revkin a reporter, a blogger, or a co-conspirator
His comment that "evidence pointing to a growing human contribution to global warming is so widely accepted" clearly points to him being a reporter (such as it is these days)!!
I think I'm right in stating that the majority Vox Populi is now against what Revkin has bought into, and the scientific community will continue to defy quantification.
November 20, 2009
Quote of the Day
@Lileks NEWS: on its first day of operation, the Large Hadron Collider has detected a particle smaller than my interest in the "Twilight" movies.
Oh lucky you not to have a 12 year old daughter. I have been dragged to the theater already...
Heh. Guess I'm safe until a new "Lassie" movie comes out...
Woodward and Bernstein, call your office!
If you own any shares in alternative energy companies I should start dumping them NOW.
That's the lede of today's Daily Telegraph posting by James Delingpole [author of 'Welcome to Obamaland'] entitled, Climategate: the final nail in the coffin of 'Anthropogenic Global Warming'? Delingpole continues:
The conspiracy behind the Anthropogenic Global Warming myth (aka AGW; aka ManBearPig) has been suddenly, brutally and quite deliciously exposed after a hacker broke into the computers at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (aka Hadley CRU) and released 61 megabites of confidential files onto the internet. (Hat tip: Watts Up With That)
His cited source is our friend Anthony Watts at Watts Up With That.
Somewhere in the afterlife, Michael Crighton is enjoying a belly laugh.
UPDATE (11/20): From Climate Depot-
'CRU director admits emails seem to be genuine'
UPDATE 2 (11/21): Canadian Dr. Tim Ball, former climatology professor at University of Winnipeg writes "The Death Blow to Climate Science."
CO2 never was a problem and all the machinations and deceptions exposed by these files prove that it was the greatest deception in history, but nobody is laughing. It is a very sad day for science and especially my chosen area of climate science. As I expected now it is all exposed I find there is no pleasure in “I told you so.”
UPDATE 3 (11/22): WSJ (in the Politics section)
One email from 1999, titled "CENSORED!!!!!" showed one U.S.-based scientist uncomfortable with such tactics. "As for thinking that it is 'Better that nothing appear, than something unacceptable to us' … as though we are the gatekeepers of all that is acceptable in the world of paleoclimatology seems amazingly arrogant. Science moves forward whether we agree with individual articles or not," the email said.
Somebody twittered this an hour ago and I wasn't sure when/whether to pull the trigger. I am giddy with excitement but this had the feel of one of those Druge stories that never really "develops."
Here's hoping -- it would be an awesome blow for freedom!
My brother emailed it at 1:27 this afternoon. Not sure how he got it so quickly. Didja check out the update? Didja? Didja?
I did and thank you for it. The Austrailian Sun has been as tough on the warmies as anybody -- I'm waiting for The Nation to certify it.
...coming the day after Al Gore appears on "30 Rock" as part of NBC's "Green Week" indoctrination programming....it just CAN'T be a coincidence!
WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH YOU PEOPLE??? THE SCIENCE IS SETTLED!!!
Those who would send us back to the caves...
That's my favorite line and it is a footnote to a footnote (I kid you not) in Karl Popper's "The Open Society and its Enemies."
But Dr. P saw the nexus of environmentalism and totalitarianism long before Rachel Carson or Vice President Gore. Brother AC is driven mad by the Freegans -- I am driven mad by the (I don't know, can we call them "darkies?" Better not.)
Karen O'Connor, a Barrington Hills homeowner, is a lawyer who specializes in technology and an organizer of the anti-ordinance group. She thinks that residents would be happy to move toward environmentally friendly and aesthetically pleasing exterior lighting if given the choice. They're just tired of government regulations creeping into every detail of their lives.
But letting people choose for themselves wouldn't win praise from the International Dark-Sky Association, which encourages cities to adopt strict lighting ordinances, and rewards those that do with the designation International Dark-Sky Community. Ms. O'Connor suspects that the desire for praise has made some elected officials more interested in the opinions of dark-sky advocates than in the druthers of the people they represent.
The power utility is running commercials for a candlelight lunch movement. Wrong on so many levels, guys: how about you just make the power and we buy it?
I did go to a mining school in the late 70s: the preferred bumper sticker was "Let the Bastards Freeze in the Dark!"
I'm a "darkie."
The issue isn't outdoor illumination, but glare. Properly designed outdoor luminaires (the lighting engineering term for "light fixture") direct 100% of their light downward to eliminate glare and dramatically reduce urban light pollution. It used to be that the IDSA advocated only the use of such luminaires. I wouldn't be surprised though if someone told me they've "evolved" the way that Greenpeace and GASP have - toward greater and greater infringement.
Should local laws restrict light glare? I think its in the same category as disturbing the peace. If you support regulation of one you should support the other.
And yes, nighttime glare does drive me mad. My outdoor enjoyment is decreased by blazing halide lights that are miles from our farm (but take on characteristics of a searchlight in comparison to the rural darkness.)
Like JG, The Refugee lives in the rural hinterlands. He has a neighbor who lights up his yard with multiple mercury vapor lights that shine into The Refugee's windows and ruin night sky viewing. However, The Refugee has also dealt with Boulder County's onerous light fixture regulations to great expense (actually at a rural church parking lot). He would rather tolerate the irritation of fugitive light than see the fist of government intrustion in his neighborhood.
I will rethink my position vis-a-vis IDSA. A classic "tragedy of the commons" and a classic opportunity for nanny-statism.
But, in deference to my Weld County neighbors, I will no longer conflate the operation with the moronic desire to roll back the advances of the Indistrial Revolution. I'm sure they share rides, but as to a nobler underlying purpose, safe to say I have seen the light (mwahaha).
The true lack of judgement here seems to be the enterprising young WSJ reporter eager to whip up some more anti-regulation frenzy.
On second reading, I meant to say "over-eager."
November 19, 2009
YAY for Karen. Longmont had it's own issue with "free speech" (as long as you didn't spend $100.01 and filled out all the forms BEFORE you actually had knowledge of what you needed to spend to create those yard signs and flyers. )
http://www.timescall.com/News_Story.asp?ID=18781
As of this moment the judge set it aside for the November 2 election and is going to revisit it when time allows.
November 18, 2009
Turn Out the Lights
Hide your Brazillian Rosewood! They've raided Gibson!
An international crackdown on the use of endangered woods from the world's rain forests to make musical instruments bubbled over to Music City on Tuesday with a federal raid on Gibson Guitar 's manufacturing plant, but no arrests.
A Federal raid for f***ing wood! Executive power at its finest!
UPDATE: Rant of the Day: Where were you when wood became a felony? Read it all.
UPDATE II: I wish I could start over and make this post more serious. A good friend of the blog emailed the classical values link to me this morning. This is how liberty ends. Whatever happens to health care, the Feds (the Executive Branch) are now in charge of wood. Anything with wood in it. Anything made of wood. It's all in their purview now.
Because I did not do this post justice, please read the guy who does: www.classicalvalues.com
It's called a freakin' JUNGLE!
Somebody tell the Federales: I've got a router, and I'm not afraid to use it.
And for the record, I think it was darned nice of me to avoid making any obvious jokes about the Feds taking control of wood - but someone ought to warn Bob Dole that they're coming for him next, and that commercial he made is virtually a confession in their eyes...
When Les Pauls are outlawed, only outlaws will have Les Pauls! Well, outlaws and Lynyrd Skynyrd.
My first reaction was that federal regulators "just doing their jobs" is the same excuse that Nazi soldiers used for their willing participation in genocide. My second thought was that going after someone like Gibson first might have been an intentional effort by reasonable people to bring publicity to an unreasonable law.
Ahem: Just a little more of that old fashioned "rule of law."
And if this and more can be hidden in the measly 663 pages of Pelosi's farm bill, imagine the trojans and trap doors in her 2000 page stimulus bill. Not to mention the 2000 page house and senate versions of healthcare, likely to be 4000 when it comes out of reconciliation. (If it gets 60 votes in the senate on Saturday, chances are it can't be stopped after that.)
I guess once again. I'm bad and didn't know it or care. I'm a proud owner of a rosewood guitar. I love it. It's the crown jewel in my guitar collection. The sound is so rich. I'm not willing to give up my right to own a guitar or a gun. One day I'm playing that guitar again. That is my goal.
Shhh! I am sure my lovely bride was speaking hypothetically: If I owned a Brazilian Rosewood guitar and if I owned a gun to shoot the ass off the Fish and Game agent who came to collect it... (will they get FFG Kevlar vests like the ATF?)
Cloward-Piven
While trying to maintain a low profile on a plane yesterday, The Refugee caught the Glenn Beck show on Fox News. Beck showed a clip of Damon Vickers from Nine Points Management and Research on CNBC (I think) saying that the current direction of US debt would lead to a currency crisis that would result in a whole reworking of worldwide currency and a new world order. The Refugee does not do the analysis justice, but it was cogent and chilling.
Beck then interviewed Vickers and discussed Cloward-Piven. Columbia professors Cloward and Piven were two 1960's radicals intent on socializing America. On September 28, 2009, The American Thinker ran a piece on the Cloward-Piven strategy. Here is an excerpt:
The Strategy was first elucidated in the May 2, 1966 issue of The Nation magazine by a pair of radical socialist Columbia University professors, Richard Andrew Cloward and Frances Fox Piven. David Horowitz summarizes it as:
The strategy of forcing political change through orchestrated crisis. The "Cloward-Piven Strategy" seeks to hasten the fall of capitalism by overloading the government bureaucracy with a flood of impossible demands, thus pushing society into crisis and economic collapse.
Cloward and Piven were inspired by radical organizer [and Hillary Clinton mentor] Saul Alinsky:
"Make the enemy live up to their (sic) own book of rules," Alinsky wrote in his 1989 book Rules for Radicals. When pressed to honor every word of every law and statute, every Judeo-Christian moral tenet, and every implicit promise of the liberal social contract, human agencies inevitably fall short. The system's failure to "live up" to its rule book can then be used to discredit it altogether, and to replace the capitalist "rule book" with a socialist one. (Courtesy Discover the Networks.org)
Hopefully, The Refugee is not just falling into a conspiracy theory trap. However, it all adds up very nicely. Worth the read and worth the thought. Scary.
As Rahm Emmanuel famously said, "Never let a crisis go to waste." Obama is a huge Alinsky follower, too. Sign me up for the conspiracy society.
Pretty much the plotline of Hayek's "Road to Serfdom"
The thing that scares me the most is that it could work.
BR: it doesn't have to, all is lost already.
Maybe the Gibson guitar raid is too close to home (shh, don't tell AG Holder, but I've got a few of those...) but I read this as we have no liberty left to defend. Read the update link in my Turn out the lights post. This ain't the road to serfdom, we've arrived.
Bottom Story of the Day
If I can borrow Taranto's riff, here's my "bottom story of the day:" Another Obama nominee runs into tax problems
WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama's choice for a top job with the Treasury Department is having tax problems.
A congressional report says Obama's nominee for undersecretary of the Treasury for international affairs, Lael Brainard, was late in paying real estate taxes in 2005, 2006 and 2007.
The report by the Senate Finance Committee staff also challenges the accuracy of a deduction Brainard claimed for running an office from her home. The challenge led Brainard to reduce the deduction on her 2008 return.
The committee's top Republican is unhappy that the committee staff had to submit 10 sets of questions to Brainard before getting complete information about the discrepancies.
Yawn.
Sure that's not Billions of degrees?
The Oracle of Carthage speaks:
Conan [O'Brien, talk show host]: … to create energy, and it sounds to me like an evil plan by Lex Luthor to defeat Superman. Can you, can you tell me, is this a viable solution, geothermal energy?
Al [bert A. Gore, Jr, 45th Vice President of the United States and Nobel Laureate]: It definitely is, and it's a relatively new one. People think about geothermal energy — when they think about it at all — in terms of the hot water bubbling up in some places, but two kilometers or so down in most places there are these incredibly hot rocks, 'cause the interior of the earth is extremely hot, several million degrees, and the crust of the earth is hot …
John Derbyshire
points out that there is debate (the science, apparently being not settled) whether the Earth's core is 5000 C or 9000C, but it ain't millions Mister Vice President.
Hat-tip: Instapundit
Apparently, anyone who's been one of our elected overlords has a hard time with zeroes and commas.
Perhaps this at least partially explains our financial woes.
The Vice President also translates the IPCC esimation of an 18 inch rise in sea level (dubious) to 18 feet. Don't hire him as a lifeguard.
But the complete ignoramus DOES have a point. Ground source geothermal heat pumps can deliver 5 or 6 times as much heating or cooling energy to your home than the amount of electrical energy that it takes to pump it. And it doesn't take "millions" or even thousands of degrees. A reliable source of 60 F ground will do the trick.
Making fun of a former Vice President, jg, not impugning Gaia's core...
Seriously, the real issue -- and I know we all tire of asking -- is to imagine what would have happened had George W. Bush or Sarah Palin said this?
Just a PSA brother.
As for Gore ... at least he can spell potato. (Come to think of it, are we sure?)
I did some research on this as well. Turns out that the thermal gradient for _extremely favorable_ sites (e.g., Calpine's Geyers) is as much as 120C/km. The Goracle's assertion that "most places" have 'incredibly hot' rocks just a couple of Km down is as true as .... well, just about anything he's said in the public sphere!
I'd no idea Derbyshire was as well versed in this as he appears to be, but I'm not surprised to find more light than heat at NRO. Being in Power & Energy for as many years as I have has made me despairing of anyone that CNN declares an "energy expert" long before reading the first post on TS.
I once interviewed with a company trying to make a go of GT energy: it's pretty much all west of the Miss. R, but well-cited to take advantage of ever-increasing costs in the Golden State (if they ever get free choice again).
Derbyshire's good for a lot of heat and light. He's a serious Amateur Mathematician and I am the proud owner of his book, "Prime Obsession" on the Riemann Hypothesis. He signed it for me at the Boulder Bookstore and I teased him that one of his columns pasted on the wall and he'd be run out of town on a rail.
He used to post a Math problem of the month and it was fun to try those and try to keep sharp (I majored in Math but left school early to pursue a music career).
I lost touch with Derb and a lot of the NRO folk after Lowry took over and they took a populist swing on immigration and social issues. I still have a lot of respect for Derbyshire, Jay Nordlinger, Jonah Goldberg, and a lot of staff. But I dropped my subscription a few years ago and read the online content only when linked. Breaking up is hard to do.
November 17, 2009
Quote of the Day
WASHINGTON—In an effort to combat what organizers are calling "our current epidemic of complete and utter obliviousness," the American Foundation for Paying Attention to Things has declared December "National Awareness Month." -- The Onion
They're paid too much. A penny would be too much.
It is anathema to me that anyone should receive any compensation to have "authority" over me to which I do not give consent.
Good point, jg, the pension plan is completely nuts. The real pension plan, of course, is to become a lobbyist (millunare).
Perry, I can't join you on this. Are you going to disband Congress or just allow only those who do not require remuneration to serve?
Disband Congress, the executive, the judiciary, the whole damn lot of it.
I used to subscribe to Thomas Sowell's idea that we should pay high salaries to attract the best minds, but have term limits to prevent career politicians.
First, why would this work any better? You'd have the top minds leaving the private sector, which would consequently suffer a rotating loss of the best and the brightest. Even not considering that, these top minds don't have perfect knowledge, or the perfect perspective. They wouldn't know enough to run economies or draft regulations to oversee entire industries. Or you'd have the top traders in the world who might know more about derivatives than anyone else, but who don't understand the nature of free markets.
Second, it's immoral to make others "contribute" so much as a penny to fund the machine that forces rule upon them. That means you can form your own government, council, whatever you'd like to call it, allow it jurisdiction over your own life, and pay them what you'd like. It's no one's right to force me along for the ride.
Today, after the Gibson guitar raid, I am tempted to go along with you, Perry, It is damned hard to imagine worse.
But this leads to the "beautiful Libertarian paradise of Somalia" does it not? We need government to perform the functions enumerated in the Constitution. Sad that I need add "-- and nothing else" but I will.
Prosperity is based on rule of law and historically prospers poorly in anarchy.
Careful brother. It's not the "rule of law" that promotes prosperity but the knowledge that your stuff won't be taken from you if you work hard to produce/earn it. We'll all agree that there is good law and bad law. The hallmarks of the former are individual liberty and property rights. If Thomas Jefferson were here today he'd be saying it looks like time to refresh the tree of liberty.
Gee, I'm really enjoying my new life in Baja! I actually feel like I'm free to say what I think about the U.S. government without fear of retribution.
Okay, here's the tenth comment on a quote from The Onion! If I have not mentioned it in a while, I love you all.
Prosperity requires comparative advantage; comparative advantage requires trade. Trade requires a more substantive rule of law than you and Perry are comfortable with. I get kicked out of the libertarian cocktail parties because I extend this to international relations, a'la Deepak Lal.
I can understand lovers of liberty not wanting to "go that far." But "you say you want a Revolution:" your new world order will be assembled by the current political class and polity. I see nothing to recommend them over Mister Madison.
I'm not talking about libertarianism anymore. I'm talking about capitalist anarchy. As my friend Billy Beck once said, paraphrasing, are you really going to compare us to "dirt-scratching savages"? The difference between us and them is our tradition of freedom, and our greater wealth allowing us to defend ourselves.
Which kind of "law" are you talking about: the implicit, self-evident one that you cannot infringe upon the rights of others, or statute law by which people seek to rule others? We have the latter, and that is most certainly rule.
Just like the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath, laws were created for men and not men created for laws. Unfortunately, and Bastiat began his most famous treatise by noting this, laws have been perverted from protecting rights to an instrument of greed. He elsewhere noted that "The state is the great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else."
"The state" just doesn't cut it for me anymore. I've now lived long enough to realize that it exists only because some people refuse to give up their rights -- their property, their sovereignty over their persons -- to others who would rule them. Did you notice my recent post where I said that Madison said the right thing but in the wrong way? "If men were angels, no government would be necessary." The purpose of government is overwhelmingly that criminals, in the guise of "government officials" and rent-seekers, can legitimize their actions. If men would not infringe on each other's rights, they would not need to form a government to get away with stealing others' property through taxes and regulations.
Prosperity requires comparative advantage; comparative advantage requires trade. Trade requires a more substantive rule of law than you and Perry are comfortable with.
Actually, prosperity does not necessarily require it, but it's generally
maximized. So it's better phrased that maximum prosperity comes from free division of labor.
I get kicked out of the libertarian cocktail parties because I extend this to international relations, a'la Deepak Lal.
You're still giving too much credit to the state. I'd even say you're giving far more credit than Lal. Did Arab traders reach the Philippines because of the caliph, or because they were the great explorers of the time? Bandits could be anywhere along the Silk Road, but travelers still braved it without having the protection of "the state."
On the other hand, galleons plundered the New World because Spanish armies and warships were able to back up their evil by force.
When I travel to work, are people not committing crimes against each other because they fear the police? If it happened on Metro-North or the NYC subway system, the police could take several minutes to arrive. Could it be because people, although being fundamentally sinful in their hearts, would still prefer to cooperate, if anything because the guy you attack could be stronger and/or be defended by others?
Oh, and as far as the current political class ruling the new order? The key is to not let them. And that is by the raw threat of meeting force with force.
We share a reverence for Bastiat's "The Law." My takeaway is that just law is "understandable and avoidable" and that American legislation has gone off the rails on both counts. I do not see his advocating a retreat from law.
We've had this conversation before but I don't buy Anarcho-capitalism beyond a paper or game theory.
I do credit the state with providing recourse when another party violates a contract. A judiciary to sue and, yes, some burly men with guns to enforce the settlement. I suppose I could just shoot the quack physician or Bernie Madoff, but I would rather pursue comparative advantage and hire the burly guys.
Those "dirt-scratchers" (we're really not ever getting elected to anything around here, are we?) kept the lights of philosophy and science alive when the West had its Dark Ages. I'd say my precious rule of law raised us up to our lofty perch. Looking at Western history, I don't see a particularly sainted approach to minority rights in our character, the gains were hard-fought and generally required a legal framework.
I'll accept your clarification on prosperity. Sure, you can eat without trade. But you cannot have Internet, cell phones and iPods without contracts. And you cannot have contracts without a judiciary.
I fear the Anarcho-capitalist society ends up in the same place as the radical environmentalist’s: we all tend our little farm and do without the benefits of global trade. I’m trying to keep my iPod and my Brazilian Rosewood Taylor (shh, don’t tell AG Holder…)
We share a reverence for Bastiat's "The Law." My takeaway is that just law is "understandable and avoidable" and that American legislation has gone off the rails on both counts. I do not see his advocating a retreat from law.
But which "law" are you talking about: statute by which some seek to rule the rest, or natural law by which people have the right to band together for justice?
"The law is the organization of the natural right of lawful defense. It is the substitution of a common force for individual forces. And this common force is to do only what the individual forces have a natural and lawful right to do: to protect persons, liberties, and properties; to maintain the right of each, and to cause justice to reign over us all."
Anarchy doesn't mean the absence of natural law, but the absence of statute and its formal embodiment in the state.
I do credit the state with providing recourse when another party violates a contract. A judiciary to sue and, yes, some burly men with guns to enforce the settlement. I suppose I could just shoot the quack physician or Bernie Madoff, but I would rather pursue comparative advantage and hire the burly guys.
And yet the state routinely fails to protect people, because of incompetence or corruption. I have personally been victimized both ways with contracts, and by police who threatened to arrest me for a nonexistent crime.
Remember that you can't have the benefits without the drawbacks, and the drawbacks increasingly outweigh benefits -- whatever little there are. Madoff is a perfect example. The SEC monitors and may indeed catch criminals, but it failed miserably with Madoff even when presented with smoking guns. Markopolos went to the WSJ, which didn't want any part of it for good reason. Taking the allegations public meant risking a defamation suit, in which Madoff could have prevailed by making it too expensive for Markopolos and others to continue.
Dragging Madoff out of his apartment and lynching him from the nearest would have been short-lived satisfaction for his victims. They'd have been brought up on murder charges, merely for dispensing justice. When the state fails to deliver justice, what recourse do people have? Look at all the sex offenders who spend a few years in prison, then are released to commit even worse crimes later on.
Those "dirt-scratchers" (we're really not ever getting elected to anything around here, are we?) kept the lights of philosophy and science alive when the West had its Dark Ages.
Somalians did? That's who I'm talking about. But even shifting to Arabs, mathematics and science have no problem developing in cultures without a tradition of freedom. The Nazis and Russians had many great scientists. Yet for all those contributions, where are they now? Egypt is twenty times older than the United States.
There's a very good reason for it. Arabs' -- or Persians' -- contribution to philosophy, being primarily Islamist, has never been anything like the West's Enlightenment. You have to look to the Turks to find anything remotely like the Western notion of freedom, and they picked it up from Europeans.
I'd say my precious rule of law raised us up to our lofty perch. Looking at Western history, I don't see a particularly sainted approach to minority rights in our character, the gains were hard-fought and generally required a legal framework.
You're again talking about society based on statutes, which means that somebody is "in charge" with the authority to compel people against their will. I'm talking about natural law, which is an instrument for justice, but justice does not require law to exist.
So which do you think is more attainable: capitalist anarchy where everyone cooperates, or the perfect state that dispenses justice without flaws? Having been a victim of the state, having been threatened by its enforcers and magistrates, I'd rather deal with criminals myself.
I'll accept your clarification on prosperity. Sure, you can eat without trade. But you cannot have Internet, cell phones and iPods without contracts. And you cannot have contracts without a judiciary.A judiciary is one way to enforce the contract, but not the only way. How does the judiciary, or any, enforce its decisions? By force, and force can be employed by private individuals. If someone made a deal with me, I'd rather trust my cousins Carlos and Francisco to enforce it than a town's pocket judge.
How did the judiciary protect me, or Suzette Kelo, or Jessica Lunsford? In one, the judge was bought. In the second, the judges had no respect for property rights. In the third, the judge was stupid to let a criminal out of prison.
I fear the Anarcho-capitalist society ends up in the same place as the radical environmentalist’s: we all tend our little farm and do without the benefits of global trade. I’m trying to keep my iPod and my Brazilian Rosewood Taylor (shh, don’t tell AG Holder…)
Why would it reduce trade to local extents? There's no reason for it. I think this is part of your giving too much credit to the state for protecting us.
And even if it somehow did, unimpeded human freedom could easily rebuild the trade patterns and make them even better. No more tariffs, currency manipulations (the real problem is ours, not China's) or faux agreements. Wouldn't you rather have the freedom to start over and create a new world, without paying up to Don Barack and his consiglieres?
I've been thinking hard about this for a year and a half, maybe longer. Ask yourself: for what possible reason should others have any authority over you?
A 19th Century Sean Penn?
History doesn't repeat, but it rhymes. (I attribute that to Mister Twain, but the lineage is murky.)
Scrivener links to a post that compares the "dismal science" economists to their contemporary poets: who stood for human rights, freedom and equality? Who stood for slavery? Let's say the poets don't come out well.
It was [Thomas] Carlyle who christened economics [social science] as the "dismal science", in contrast with the “gay science” of poetry. The context is shocking:
Truly, my philanthropic friends, Exeter Hall philanthropy is wonderful; and the social science -- not a "gay science", but a rueful -- which finds the secret of this universe in "supply and demand", and reduces the duty of human governors to that of letting men alone, is also wonderful.
Not a "gay science", I should say, like some we have heard of; no, a dreary, desolate and, indeed, quite abject and distressing one; what we might call, by way of eminence, the dismal science.
These two, Exeter Hall philanthropy and the Dismal Science, led by any sacred cause of black emancipation, or the like, to fall in love and make a wedding of it -- will give birth to progenies and prodigies: dark extensive moon-calves, unnameable abortions, wide-coiled monstrosities, such as the world has not seen hitherto!...
Carlyle is arguing here for the reintroduction of slavery in the West Indian colonies.
There have been (way too many) great examples in our time, but the top of the charts for me goes to Carole King, who sat in front of Fidel Castro with an acoustic guitar and sang "You've Got a Friend."
Heh
IBD:
Hat-tip: Scrivener
But They'll Rock at Healthcare, Part XCIII
Third call today from the Nebraska Correctional Facilities Victims Notification Unit. Notifying me of an upcoming parole hearing for some guy I never heard of. (I got a new landline installed for work, the previous owner of this number gets a lot of calls from debt collectors.)
To stop the calls, all I have to do is enter the four-digit PIN number I registered with. Of course, I did not register and do not have a PIN. I have learned that they are serious about calling back.
They do leave a number to call but nobody answers.
UPDATE: It gets better. I have now called five numbers and finally found the right office. They can't turn it off because I don't have the PIN. They have to be certain that I am not the criminal turning it off to keep bad testimony from my parole hearing. I told young Justin that I'm certain it is easier to get out of jail than to stop these calls.
Just imagine when you start receiving calls from the Federal Correctional Facilities Residents Notification Unit, telling you to surrender on such-and-such a date for not having sufficient health care, or else they'll come get you.
With apologies to Cheech & Chong: "Enter zee PIN number, Old Man!!!"
Professor Belichick Loses a Close One
(Or, as one ThreeSources friend calls him "Darth Hoodie.")
Coach Belichick admits to being a fan of David Romer's paper. Christopher Price discusses the possible impact in a column, "When It Comes To Fourth Down, Belichick Is Anything But Conventional"
“I think I understand some of the points that were made in there, and I think he has some valid points,” the coach said during training camp in 2002. “There’s sometimes an emotional aspect, and momentum, if you will to those decisions, but I’m not sure how to calculate that.
“I understand the points that he’s made. I don’t understand all the mathematical equations [of] how he got to those points, but I think that some of those are legitimate points and you just have to evaluate the situation to your team, the team you’re playing,” he added. “I see where a lot of that’s coming from.”
I'll not abandon it because of last Sunday night's game. The Pats came pretty close to making the first down and I have no reason to believe that they could have stopped Peyton Manning had he started 17 yards deep in his own end zone.
Hat-tip: New Englander N Gregory Mankiw. who reminds "Some strategies that fail ex post might be optimal ex ante. Randomness is a fact of life, even if Patriots' fans do not fully appreciate it."
UPDATE: Searching for a link for the Advanced NFL Stats site, I found, mirabile non dictu, an interesting post on the Belichick call.
Mankiw is correct. Ex ante, the numbers favored going for it. What people are missing is that there are two aspects to the play: (1) the decision to go for it, and (2) the execution of the play. Critics also neglect to mention that on the replay Faulk appears to have been very close to the first down. However, New England was out of timeouts and thus could not challenge the play.
For an economic analysis on the fourth down decision, see David Romer's paper in the JPE:
http://elsa.berkeley.edu/~dromer/papers/JPE_April06.pdf
Thanks for the backup, EE. I was turned onto this by James Surowecki's "The Wisdom of Crowds." Since then, I have found no love for those ideas anywhere. (Well, except for advancednflstats.com.)
I feel like VP Gore at an oil extraction convention. Most curious is that statistics and probability seem to have a very small hold in football when they are holy gospel in baseball.
So, EE, how about you and I buy the Rams (they'll never find any compromising writings of mine on the Internet...) and attempt a Diamondbacks deal where we manage based on math. Who's in?
Perfect Description of Democracy!
AP:
WASHINGTON – When it comes to paying for a health care overhaul, Americans see just one way to go: Tax the rich.
That finding from a new Associated Press poll will be welcome news for House Democrats, who proposed doing just that in their sweeping remake of the U.S. medical system, which passed earlier this month and would extend coverage to millions of uninsured Americans.
UPDATE: JammieWearingFool suggests that other results from the poll are not quite so encouraging (to the collectivists).
Bleeping hell, the poll is pure horse excrement. JWF had some excellent points with what the MSM left out. Let me point out the BS in what they did:
conducted by Stanford University with the nonpartisan Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
Right there, you know it has no objectivity. The RWJF are "nonpartisan" socialists who advocate single-payer health care.
The poll tested views on an even more punitive taxation scheme that was under consideration earlier, when the tax would have hit people making more than $250,000 a year. Even at that level the poll showed majority support, with 57 percent in favor and 36 percent opposed.
In other words,
43% (flatly opposed and those "unsure") still didn't support that tax, which means a large minority still didn't believe in taxing a small percentage (
For example, 77 percent said the cost of health care in the United States was higher than it should be, and 74 percent favored the broad goal of reducing the amount of money paid by patients and their insurers. But 49 percent said any changes made by the government probably would cause them to pay more for health care. Thirty-two percent said it wouldn't change what they pay, and just 12 percent said they would end up paying less.For example, 77 percent said the cost of health care in the United States was higher than it should be, and 74 percent favored the broad goal of reducing the amount of money paid by patients and their insurers. But 49 percent said any changes made by the government probably would cause them to pay more for health care. Thirty-two percent said it wouldn't change what they pay, and just 12 percent said they would end up paying less.
The 23% who don't think health costs are higher than they should be are well-insured by their employers (government workers, current/former union labor). They're also the 26% of reducing costs, because they have no need to concern themselves.
Half of the polled think they'll pay more for health care. This means that of the minority who want to "soak the rich," at least 8% think they'll pay more even with soaking the rich.
The 44% who think they'll pay the same or less are clearly those who want others to pay for it, whether through tax hikes on "the rich" or because they already have government-supported plans. They don't need to care if total costs go up, only what they're paying.
Forty-eight percent in the poll were opposed to new taxes on insurance companies, and 42 percent were in support. Fifty-one percent opposed raising taxes on drug and device makers, while 41 percent supported that approach.
But 72 percent of people polled said insurance companies made too much profit, compared with 23 percent who said they made about the right amount of profit. And 74 percent said drug companies made too much profit, versus 21 percent who said they made about the right amount of profit.In other words, 30% of the polled think insurers make "too much profit" but understand it's a bad idea to tax someone who's providing a service you need. And 33% of the polled think drug makers make "too much profit" but don't want them taxed, either.
People who told pollsters they generally supported Congress' health care overhaul plan were also more receptive to new taxes to pay for it. Taxing health care companies, drug companies and equipment manufacturers eked out majority support from that group.
Even if this had hard numbers for "eked out majority support," this is all statistically meaningless. You can't quantify "generally support" when asking someone a question.
Nicely played, Perry. Superb analysis.
Oh, I forgot that the blockquote tag doesn't span across paragraphs. So above should read like this:
But 72 percent of people polled said insurance companies made too much profit, compared with 23 percent who said they made about the right amount of profit. And 74 percent said drug companies made too much profit, versus 21 percent who said they made about the right amount of profit.
In other words, 30% of the polled think insurers make "too much profit" but understand it's a bad idea to tax someone who's providing a service you need. And 33% of the polled think drug makers make "too much profit" but don't want them taxed, either.
Perry: perhaps that poll should have two questions, like this:
"Q: Do you think health insurance companies make too much profit, not enough profit, or about the right amount of profit?"
"A: Definitely, way too much profit."
"Q: What was the health insurance industry's average profit margin last year?"
"A: Ummmmm... I dunno, but it was way too much."
Answer: 2.2 percent. Less than the government garnered from the health insurance companies.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091025/ap_on_go_co/us_fact_check_health_insurance
I remember that. Calvin Woodward has written some "fact checks" that poke holes in Republicans' claims, but more than a couple about Democrats' too. Clearly he must be sent to a re-education camp!
November 16, 2009
More Crowded Under the Bus
Lloyd Grove at The Daily Beast tallies the body count:
In his readiness to discard underlings who are no longer useful to him, or otherwise have passed their sell-by dates, Barack Obama is no different from his predecessors. But he’s arguably more unsentimental than most about the unpleasant necessity of throwing friends and allies under the bus.
• Steve Clemons: The Assassination of Greg CraigAs Jacob Weisberg wrote recently in Slate, “Obama has a healthy disdain for the overrated virtue of political loyalty… If you're useful, you can hang around with him. If you start to look like a liability, enjoy your time with the wolves
Discussion point: Most, if not all ThreeSources would list over-loyalty as a President George W Bush vice. He kept some folks inside that should have been "defenestrated." So, is President Obama's coldness a positive? I hate to get a reputation as a big Obama booster, but I am thinking it might be.
I am reading Ray Morris's "Fraud of the Century." It's 1876 and Governor Tilden and the Democrats are competitive after 16 years because of Grant's failure to clean house. Grant, like Harding, didn't profit from corruption but both reputations were destroyed. Perhaps extreme loyalty is a vice and ruthlessness a virtue. "Sorry Michelle, but your poll numbers are down..."
It could be worse. You could be writing about Michael Scott - in which case that whole "bus" metaphor would become pretty ominous.
It's the Chicago way.
Had GWB had provided some adult supervision over the worst of the Republican Congress's excesses, the Republicans might not be in the current minority fix. However, he did not want to rock his own parties boat.
It's a personality flaw that serves a politician well, just as the converse of GWB's loyalty being a liability. That being said, two quick points: among the people Obama has thrown under the bus are his grandmother and his spiritual advisor of 20 years "who was like an Uncle" to him, not to mention any number of foreign countries we used to number as our allies so that he could placate his far left base. GWB may have been loyal to a fault, but that also included his country. You can make a strong case that Obama's lack of loyalty also extends to his country.
Secondly, I see no adult supervision from Obama over Pelosi-fest 2009 in the House.
I have to agree with lm (you've commented enough times, you're two letters now) on the countries/allies. Staff and cabinet chiefs should be expendable, but countries whose troops have stood beside ours in Iraq and Afghanistan should not be abandoned.
Billions, Trillions, and a cure for frigidity
I was drawn to this story on a legal settlement with state governments over supposedly misleading advertising by Vonage, the internet phone provider. Not because I'm a Vonage customer, but because the supposed settlement fine was 3 billion dollars. Hmm, thought I. What's their market cap anyway? Oops - Reuters got it wrong. Was supposed to be million. I guess all those stories about government spending have got the Reuters newsroom desensitized to the size of a BILLION DOLLARS.
But the foray onto the Reuters site wasn't completely without reward. I happened across this anti-frigidity pill developed in Germany and on track for the U.S. market in three years or so.
"By modulating the neurotransmitter system, flibanserin may help to restore a balance between inhibitory and excitatory factors leading to a healthy sexual response," said Elaine Jolly, a Canadian gynaecologist and medical researcher who helped oversee the trials.
(...)
During the half-year course of once-daily flibanserin in the trials, the number of satisfying sexual events -- which did not necessarily involve orgasm -- rose to an average 4.5 per month from 2.8 in the North American arm of the trial, the study shows.
In the control group on placebo the rate rose to 3.7.
Women on the drug also reported a higher level of sexual desire and less distress from sexual dysfunction than those on placebo.
The drug's side effects were described as mild to moderate and included dizziness, nausea, sleepiness and insomnia.
So it makes women more interested in having sex and falling asleep afterwards. Men of the world rejoice!
(And before anyone slams me for calling it "frigidity" I'll link to the clinical description.)
Maybe it's my background, but I was trying to imagine the clinical trials...
...and how does one sign up?
Doesn't it bode well for all of us that we've not had occasion to learn about the clinical trials?
EC10
Free Harvard Economics lesson from the guy what wrote the book:
Let's review some basic principles of supply and demand: If a government policy increases the demand for a service, the price of that service tends to rise. If the government prevents prices from rising, shortages develop. The quantity provided is then determined by supply and not demand. In the presence of such excess demand, the result could be a two-tier market structure. Consumers who can somehow pay more than the government-mandated price will be able to purchase the service, while those paying the controlled price may be unable to find a willing supplier.
Follow the link to see Professor Mankiw apply the lesson to a current WaPo story.
Or the third tier: the good becomes readily available for those who are politically connected. Welcome to the Soviet Union.
Wonder how long we'll have to stand in line for bread that isn't there.
Quote of the Day
Yeah, it's early but this be good:
All Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has to do is avoid signing a TARP renewal by its statutory expiration date on December 31. Judging by the reader comments on our Web site, we'd guess that millions would happily leave out cookies and milk for the jolly Washingtonian who shows up with a sack full of nothing for auto makers. -- WSJ Ed Page
Must Be Monday
Okay, I'm a little grumpy. I frittered away a whole day yesterday watching football. That’s not so bad but my teams lost every game. (Dear Keystone State Brothers and Sisters: my first day as a Iggles fan did not go so well.)
To get away from football woes, I turned to the WSJ Editorial Page. You know, to cheer me up. As it happens, that didn't work. Hard to think that the health care bill could actually be worse than I thought, but it is. In addition to the nationalization of 16% of GDP, there is a little bombshell of arrogation of power to the Executive branch
As envisioned by the Senate Finance Committee, the commission—all 15 members appointed by the President—would have to meet certain budget targets each year. Starting in 2015, Medicare could not grow more rapidly on a per capita basis than by a measure of inflation. After 2019, it could only grow at the same rate as GDP, plus one percentage point.
The theory is to let technocrats set Medicare payments free from political pressure, as with the military base closing commissions. But that process presented recommendations to Congress for an up-or-down vote. Here, the commission's decisions would go into effect automatically if Congress couldn't agree within six months on different cuts that met the same target. The board's decisions would not be subject to ordinary notice-and-comment rule-making, or even judicial review.
Clearly, the President's powers are not comprehensive enough (Gene Healy, call your office!) we need to give the Executive 15 picks (Advise and Consent? I am guessing not) who will make life-or-death decisions for providers and patients.
At the risk of flippancy, Senator Baucus, I can think of another way to keep political influence out of these decisions rather than a base-closing panel: HOW ABOUT WE DON'T LET GOVERNMENT TAKE OVER THEM TO BEGIN WITH???
And, while my beloved Broncs likely deserved the loss, we sure got a few tough calls from the officials, did we not?
But why NOT let a "politically detached" commission pull the levers of this money distribution mechanism. After all, they can't do any worse that the evil rich who want all the poor to just die anyway.
That was the basic sentiment of a hockey teammate who bristled at my quip that Obamacare would be like the plotline of 'Logan's Run' (where everyone is killed off once they hit the age of 30.) When I asked him if he should be required to build free cabinetry for everyone who showed up and asked for it he said, "Well it's not like having new cabinets is a matter of life and death." He said he has family members on welfare and after I suggested his criteria included farmers in the "work-for-free" category he left the room muttering about how "the poor are ruining this country... they should all just die anyway." I didn't even get to ask if he was willing to take care of my relatives if I took care of his.
Tragic.
Oh yes, and remember that we Donkey fans can always fall back on the preseason mantra "this is a rebuilding year." Poor Iggles fans can only wonder why they're passing for 400+ yards per game and still losing.
