IN THE MAIL: From Walter Erickson, Almost Paradise
Archive for 2010
November 21, 2010
IF YOU MISSED IT YESTERDAY ON SIRIUS/XM SATELLITE RADIO, the latest PJM Political is now online.
ANALYST: TSA methods ‘will kill more Americans on highway.’
As the nation readies for one of the busiest traveling holidays, Steven Horwitz, a professor of economics at St. Lawrence University, told The Hill that the probable spike in road travel, caused by adverse feelings towards the Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) new screening procedures, could also lead to more car-related deaths.
“Driving is much more dangerous than flying, as you are far more likely to be killed in an automobile accident mile-for-mile than you are in an airplane,” said Horwitz. “The result will be that the new TSA procedures will kill more Americans on the highway.”
This seems plausible to me. Of course, a few thousand extra highway deaths don’t produce the national trauma of a 9/11, and that’s a reasonable thing to factor in somehow.
UPDATE: Moe Lane: “It’s the qualitative difference between ‘tragedy’ and ‘atrocity,’ Glenn.”
BRIAN DOHERTY: What Can Rand Paul Do? The Tea Party libertarian will likely prove a more effective figurehead than senator. Well, we’ll see, won’t we?
UPDATE: Some pushback in the comments.
ONLY CHILDREN tend to be happier.
ROKU BOX TEST DRIVE: Okay, I finally hooked up my Roku Box (this older model, not one of the released-just-after-I-bought it newer models) and it was as simple and pleasant to use as advertised. Watched a couple of shows from Amazon on Demand last night (An episode of Grey’s Anatomy and This Is Spinal Tap — found the latter much more believable) and the picture was perfect. I kind of wish I’d bought the newer model now, but I’m not sure why as the one I bought works perfectly. Glad I don’t own stock in video-rental stores.
UPDATE: Reader Steve Schubart writes: “Glad you are enjoying your Roku player. We use ours for Netflix, Pandora, and Amazon Video primarily, but new stations are being added all of the time. Hulu Plus just became available for a subscription as well. Beyond video rental, glad I do not own any cable TV stock.” Indeed.
And Jim Treacher writes: “I’ve been watching Hulu on my Roku. I like it so much, I don’t mind that I can’t talk about it without sounding like I’m making baby noises.”
CLAIM: Inflation much worse than CPI shows. “While the Fed may prefer to look at core inflation, the rest of us live in a world where we buy food and consume energy. And for those in the lower part of the income spectrum, the rising cost of food and energy is disproportionately high.” Well, I just bought the turkey and 2 legs of lamb I’ll be cooking for Thanksgiving, and the total cost was about 30 bucks higher than last year. And I paid a buck more a bottle for the same wine I bought last year, too.
UPDATE: Reader James Hicks writes:
Anyone who shops knows that prices are going up and feels it already. The WSJ quoted an analyst Fri. as estimated commodity expense inflation running from 2% at Heinz to 12.9% at Sara Lee. The CPI relies disproportionately on housing, which distorts the inflation picture. Housing is not liquid so, despite the collapse in prices, my housing costs are marginally greater as added insurance and taxes are added to the fixed payment. Utility and cable costs are greater. Tuition for college for my children has increased. Food prices are jumping alarmingly for staples. Because the CPI is flat we will not get a COLA this year. Yes, if I cut the kids loose and walked away from my mortgage I could lower my housing costs and have a flat overall inflation rate. I am troubled by the moral hazard of people being forced into that by the Fed.
They seem to merely add the collapsed housing prices to commodity prices and see no inflation. Look at it this way: when Colorado housing prices collapsed (I believe in the 90’s) to the point you could buy a condo for $5K, the Fed’s methodology would have led you to believe that if food prices spiked 20% Colorado would have been in a deflationary environment and increasing food and energy costs would prevent further deflation. They would have been wrong. It would have created more defaults, devastated those on fixed incomes and slowed the recovery.
Yes, unfortunately it’s hard to play the inflationary and deflationary sectors off against one another. Overall, though, it seems like what reader Matthew Hennessy said a while back: “Inflation in food prices is explained by deleveraging: stuff you NEED to have that’s paid for in cash goes UP in price (inflation), while stuff you WANT to have that’s paid for with borrowed money goes DOWN in price (deflation).”
ALAN SIMPSON LOOKS FORWARD TO a debt-limit bloodbath.
CAR LUST: Remembering The 1977 Chevy Nova Concours. For much of the time I was practicing law in Washington, I drove a 1976 Nova sedan with the straight-six engine. It was reliable, drove fairly well, hauled a lot, and was good for chasing away women more interested in “checks appeal” than in me. . . .
PHILIP LONGMAN: Global Aging: A gray tsunami is sweeping the planet — and not just in the places you expect. How did the world get so old, so fast? “Ehrlich’s predicted holocaust, which assumed that the 1960s global baby boom would continue until the world faced mass famine, didn’t happen. Instead, the global growth rate dropped from 2 percent in the mid-1960s to roughly half that today, with many countries no longer producing enough babies to avoid falling populations. Having too many people on the planet is no longer demographers’ chief worry; now, having too few is.”
I’ve had some thoughts on how to address this.
GERARD VAN DER LEUN: “A BUMPER CROP OF SORE LOSERS.”
CHRIS CHRISTIE shows how it’s done.
They don’t go through the exercise of putting themselves in the place of someone who thinks differently from the way they do. But how would it feel to be intelligent, informed, and well-meaning and to think what conservatives think? Isn’t that the right way for an intelligent, informed, and well-meaning person to understand other people? If you short circuit that process and go right to the assumption that people who don’t agree with you are stupid, how do you maintain the belief that you are, in fact, intelligent, informed, and well-meaning?
What is liberal about this attitude toward other people? You wallow in self-love, and what is it you love yourself for? For wanting to shower benefits on people… that you have nothing but contempt for.
A lot of this seems to be compensation for high-school unpopularity or something.
UPDATE: Reader Drew Kelley emails: “They don’t seem to be getting any more popular after all this compensation, do they?” Er, no.
FROM KEN ANDERSON MORE ON THE INDIAN MICROFINANCE COLLAPSE:
One can pile up important similarities, but one that is perhaps less noticed is something that, as someone who works out in the gym in Fannie Mae’s basement, I heard a lot over the past dozen years: a tendency to play a self-deceptive bait and switch between doing good and doing well. I.e., the many conversations with Fannie Mae senior staff who, when things were going well, thought (what they thought of as) their mixed social-profit model must be great, and as things weren’t going so well, took comfort in the idea that they were doing good and this was merely a cost of doing “good” business. Something like that seems to have been present here — which hardly surprises me because I confess to having been tempted to it many times, working in or advising organizations with similarly mixed motives.
The invitation to self-deception is high, in other words. Bertolt Brecht wrote a play — famous in its day, and one of his writings that deserves to live on — The Good Person of Szechuan, in which a young woman of tender and generous heart inherits a tiny shop, but discovers that she cannot keep it afloat because she cannot say no to all the need around her. So she goes on a journey and then her cousin comes to run the shop — ruthlessly and with an iron hand to make it profitable again. And so it goes several times round. Brecht thought of this as a condemnation of capitalism; it is perhaps rather more instructive of the virtues of not mixing motives.
Read the whole thing.
Remember, when you hear about how important it is that the next Republican nominee for President have “gravitas,” the following have been designed by people with gravitas:
* The TSA’s scanning and groping system.
* Obamacare.
* Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the mortgage bubble.
* Our tax code.
* Our federal and state budget deficits.
* Our immigration system.
* (feel free to add more in the comments)We need gravitas, because gravitas has worked so well so far.
Ouch.
CREDENTIALED, NOT EDUCATED: Kathleen Parker needs a refresher course in American history.
November 20, 2010
OH, THIS IS JUST WORKING OUT SO WELL: TSA pat-down leaves traveler covered in urine: ‘I was absolutely humiliated,’ said bladder cancer survivor. “Every time I tried to tell them about my medical condition, they said they didn’t need to know about that.” Apparently, they did.
See, the problem with this whole thing is that people don’t respect the TSA, because it’s an idiotic organization. And with reason, apparently.
HOLLY BECK IS trying to help out a boy in Nicaragua.
A BOB ETHERIDGE /PHIL HARE / BARON HILL ELEGY: Video Killed The Congressional Star. “Army Of Davids 3, People Who Forgot Who They Work For 0.”
UP TO 70% OFF on Tools and Home Improvement gear.
VOLKSWAGEN LOOKS AT alternative car models.
It was to be the perfect end to a perfect day. Hillary and Jason Martin had just gotten married. They arrived at Bakersfield’s swank Padre Hotel — the bride in her wedding dress, the groom in Marine Corps dress blues.
They were 18 and in love.
They were 18 and out of luck.
The two were old enough to marry. Jason Martin, on leave after completing boot camp, was old enough to join the Marines. The Padre Hotel’s age policy, however, required them to be at least 21 to get a room.
They were nicer at the Doubletree.
“DOESN’T EXACTLY HAVE A DAZZLING PERSONALITY.” Maybe I should put that blurb up top . . . .
UPDATE: C.J. Burch emails: “Yeah, put it right next to ‘lacks fire.’” Heh. My favorite is still this one.
JOHN HINDERAKER: Obama’s Foreign Policy Triumph: Missile Defense! They told me if I voted for John McCain . . . .