IN THE MAIL: From Roy M. Griffis, By the Hands of Men: The Old World.
Archive for 2012
January 18, 2012
INSTAVISION: I talk with Mark Levin about his new book, Ameritopia: The Unmaking Of America. Plus, a brief appearance by Belinda Carlisle. (Bumped).
INCONVENIENT TRUTH: “The distribution of income in the U.S. is basically the same as it was a quarter-century ago—and the middle class has gained ground over the last decade.”
Sorry, doesn’t fit the narrative.
TIM CARNEY: The False Frame of Regulation vs. Inequality.
If I said turnovers were a bigger problem for the Packers last week than dropped passes, I’m not saying the Packers should have dropped more passes, but by Sargent’s logic I am. Unless, of course, you take a postulate that deregulation yields inequality and regulation yields equality.
That naive-liberal postulate is false, and I suspect many of those polled don’t share it. I think when people say the economy is rigged for the rich, they are pointing, at least in part, at things like bailouts, subsidies, and other murky advantages gained by lobbying and cronyism. I notice that while the Post didn’t give it as an option, still 5 percent said that overregulation and inequality were equally bad.
Off the top of my head I can think of a few overregulations that unfairly favor the wealthy: crackdowns on food trucks in favor of restaurants, regulations blocking people from selling home-baked goods, online gaming regulation favoring big casinos, regulations keeping women from doing hair-braiding for money, and a bunch more. If you expand the notion of “regulation” slightly to include mandates, a skewed tax code, and wealth transfers, there’s plenty of evidence that our inequality stems in part from too much — not too little — government.
Yes, but don’t expect the political class to admit that.
HMM: Obama’s Jobs Council Calls For Expanded Drilling. “The report does not specifically mention the Keystone XL oil pipeline, but it endorses moving forward quickly with projects that ‘deliver electricity and fuel,’ including pipelines.” Well, that’s what to do if you want jobs, all right.
AT AMAZON, get organized in 2012.
THE HILL: Obama’s recess appointments might not hold up in court. “Some legal experts, including those who have sided with President Obama on other constitutional issues, think there is a good chance the courts could overturn his recent recess appointments.”
WELL THIS IS CHEERFUL: World Bank In Doomsday Economic Warning. “The world economy could have its worst year since the Great Depression, the World Bank has warned. Even if the European crisis gets no worse, the world is headed for another year of weak growth, says the prestigious bank. And if Europe goes down, it takes the world with it: the Bank expects a shock as bad or worse as the 2008-2009 downturn.”
Related: Morgan Stanley Quantifies The Probability Of A Global “Muddle Through”: 37%.
I THINK WE’RE GOING TO FIND OUT: What Would New York Look Like With A Smaller Financial Sector?
I think you can credit the financial industry for New York’s revival. Oh, one can point to all the vibrant creative arts and their near-cousins in advertising and publishing; one can sing paeans to the city’s energy, its tremendous diversity, its nearly unmatched food culture. But let those of us who lived there in the 1970s and the 1980s also recall that it was violent, crime ridden, and oh yes, depopulating. (Between 1950 and 1980 the city lost more than 10% of its population). Its infrastructure was decaying, particularly the subway, and no one who had alternatives rode the subways after rush hour. In the early 1970s, the city flirted with bankruptcy; after the 1977 blackout, it endured widespread looting that bordered on riots.
What turned this around was not the creative class, who were still flocking to rent-controlled apartments in the safer parts of town. No, what made the difference was money. Money bought peace among the city’s various interest groups, repaired infrastructure that had been neglected for decades, and paid for more police. It created jobs in construction and services and almost everything else you can imagine. And where did that money come from? Deregulation, and a 17-year bull market that inflated Wall Street salaries, and tax revenues right along with them. Without the financial renaissance, these days New York might well look a lot more like Detroit or St. Louis.
So it’s interesting to contemplate what it will look like, if the financial industry gets shrunk down to the size that many are hoping. The last time that happened, in the 1930s-1960s, New York had a lot of other businesses: shipping, manufacturing, and for that matter, being the corporate headquarters for so many national businesses. That’s pretty much ended. New York is now a specialist city: creative industries, finance, and tourism.
Well, they’re not going out of their way to make the tourists feel welcome, either.
ON THE OBAMA’S-CRITICS-ARE-DUMB FRONT, CONOR FRIEDERSDORF MAKES THE RUBBLE BOUNCE. “I submit that had Palin or Cheney or Rumsfeld or Rice or Jeb Bush or John Bolton or Rudy Giuliani or Mitt Romney proposed doing even half of those things in 2008, you’d have declared them unfit for the presidency and expressed alarm at the prospect of America doubling down on the excesses of the post-September 11 era. You’d have championed an alternative candidate who avowed that America doesn’t have to choose between our values and our safety. Yet President Obama has done all of the aforementioned things.”
AN EMAIL FROM READER RICHARD DOYLE: “It’s not 6 am yet and I already miss Wikipedia. How did my life come to this?” Yep. Wikipedia has gone black, with a notice and a how-to-contact-your Congressman page. Amazon is carrying an anti-SOPA message. Google has blacked out its logo. It’s a big deal.
UPDATE: Fark, too! “While SOPA might be ‘almost dead,’ it’s not quite all the way there, and under various drafts of both SOPA/PIPA, Fark could have its DNS assignment (the thing that turns an IP address, like 10.0.0.1, into words like Fark.com) revoked without notice simply for linking to content that could come under foreign copyright claims. This means, even if it is actual news in and of itself, if we link to it, we can be shut down.”
ORBITAL DEBRIS UPDATE: US joins effort to draw up space ‘code of conduct’.
The United States pledged Tuesday to join an EU-led effort to develop a space “code of conduct” that would set out rules for orbiting spacecraft and for mitigating the growing problem of debris.
“The long-term sustainability of our space environment is at serious risk from space debris and irresponsible actors,” said a statement from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
“In response to these challenges, the United States has decided to join with the European Union and other nations to develop an International Code of Conduct for Outer Space Activities.”
Such a code should “help maintain the long-term sustainability, safety, stability, and security of space by establishing guidelines for the responsible use of space,” Clinton added, noting that work on the code was just beginning.
The proposal was put forth to the Conference on Disarmament by the European Union in 2009 just days after a disused Russian military satellite and a US communications satellite owned by the Iridium company collided.
A draft code on civilian and military use, which includes pledges on the integrity of orbiting space objects, had been previously approved by EU ministers in late 2008.
Here’s a piece that Rob Merges and I wrote for The Environmental Law Reporter last year. And here’s something I wrote in Popular Mechanics on space weaponry.
TODAY ONLY: Farscape, The Complete Series, on sale.
JOHN HINDERAKER: The Food Stamp President. “As happens so often with White House statements, Carney’s characterization had no basis in fact. We wrote about the metastasizing food stamp program in Food Stamp Nation. That is right: federal spending on food stamps has doubled since George W. Bush left office. In large part, this is due to fraud–another emblem of the Obama administration.”
REP. LAMAR SMITH (R-HOLLYWOOD): Unbowed by protests, Lamar Smith to move ahead on piracy bill. He’s an honest politician: He stays bought.
UPDATE: Speaking of SOPA Phonies: Chris Dodd’s paid SOPA crusading. “It’s behavior like Chris Dodd’s that makes it rational not only to be cynical about our political culture, but outright jaded. What makes Dodd’s shilling for this censorship law so galling is that, during the 2008 presidential campaign, he postured as the candidate who would devote himself first and foremost to defending core Constitutional freedoms and civil liberties. When Dodd led the 2007 fight against warrantless surveillance and amnesty for lawbreaking telecoms as part of the FISA debate, I, along with several other blogs, helped raise close to $250,000 in a few days from small donors for his flagging presidential campaign. . . . Apparently, the person Chris Dodd scorned back then as someone ‘wanting to be president of a trade association’ was . . . Chris Dodd, who is now President of Hollywood’s trade association.” Hey, Rube!
A more serious point: You can scorn bought-and-paid-for shills for Big Media like Lamar Smith and Chris Dodd. But the real problem isn’t their lack of morals, but an oversized government that inevitably lures people with loose morals. When government has the opportunity to make or break industries, industries will find people to lobby it to make their industry, and break their competitors’. The solution is to return the government to its — much, much smaller — intended constitutional scope.
JAMES TARANTO: Why They Stood and Cheered: Gingrich confronts the left’s insidious theory of racial supremacy. “Next to the election of a black president, we’d say that Gingrich’s standing O was the most compelling dramatization of racial progress so far this century. Which isn’t to say that racism has been completely eradicated. It lives on in the minds of liberals who see Bull Connor when they look at Ozzie Nelson.”
Bull Connor was a Democrat, by the way.
HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): 33% Say U.S. Economy Getting Better These Days, 46% Say Worse. “The index is three points below the level measured a year ago.”
January 17, 2012
TEN YEARS AGO ON INSTAPUNDIT: “Andrew Sullivan has spent the last few days exploring the New York Times’ use of honorifics like ‘Dr.’ for black professors, but not white ones.”
Plus, Richard Posner on the decline of public intellectuals.
And, Appalachian Law School shooting stopped by a student with a handgun. “Very interesting. Believe it or not, some law professors on the list are actually suggesting that it would be a good idea if people with handgun carry licenses carried guns at school.” And Eugene Volokh on heroism at Appalachian Law.
AT AMAZON, Top Deals In Electronics.
DUDE, WHERE’S MY LIFEBOAT? In the Italian cruise-ship disaster, another death knell for the age of chivalry. Well, that was just a bunch of dead-white-male stuff anyway. But, you know, you can’t expect chivalrous behavior from men if you don’t expect its counterpart from women.
GLIMMERS OF CIVILIZATION IN THE LAND OF BARBARIANS: Support grows for Marine who brought gun to ESB. “Support is growing for former Marine Ryan Jerome, who was busted trying to check his Indiana-registered handgun at the Empire State Building in September. Jerome, 28, of West Bend, is threatened with a criminal record for gun possession and a possible mandatory minimum prison sentence of 3 1/2 years. A letter-writing campaign launched by Jerome’s fellow Marines and urging the charges be dismissed — described in the New York Post — has snowballed via the website leatherneck.com thanks to the publicity, said organizer and Marine veteran Davis Bruce, a Boston-based lawyer.”
Mayor Bloomberg and his ilk like to go on about “common-sense gun laws.” Where’s the common sense in this approach? A massive mandatory minimum sentence for mere malum prohibitum? Barbaric.
Plus, Ed Driscoll piles on.