JONAH GOLDBERG: The True Secret Of The NRA’s Success.
Archive for 2017
October 8, 2017
PUERTO RICO BEFORE THE HURRICANE: Trouble on Welfare Island: Overbearing government and the welfare state are hurting the United States’ poorest citizens.
Puerto Rico has been a United States territory for more than a century, and its people have been citizens since 1917. They do not vote in national elections or pay federal income taxes, but those are not the biggest differences between Puerto Rican residents and their fellow American citizens. The island is distinguished by its poverty and joblessness, which are far worse than in any of the 50 states. The territory’s economy, moreover, has fallen further behind the national one over the past three decades. Bad government—not just locally, but also federally—is largely to blame. Yet most Americans are oblivious to the Caribbean island’s problems.
The place did earn a rare and brief mention in some mainland newspapers earlier this month. Its government had hit a borrowing limit and partly shut down for a couple of weeks, putting 95,000 civil servants out of work. Then leaders in San Juan—the commonwealth’s capital—agreed on a budget deal that let the government borrow more and resume paying people. The drama ended, and life there reverted to its depressing former state. . . .
Many things have gone wrong. Most important, however, is that the United States government assumed too big a role in the Puerto Rican economy, and its largesse enabled the commonwealth’s government to do the same. Through hubris, clumsiness and sheer size, these governments knocked Puerto Rico off the promising path that it was following, and the island’s economy is now lost in a thicket of bad incentives. Two federal intrusions stand out: an oversized welfare state, and misguided rules on business investment.
Federal transfer payments to Puerto Rico rose sharply in the 1970s. Some programmes have been modified since then, but transfers still make up more than 20% of the island’s personal income. These federal handouts reflect the sensibilities of a wealthy country. So by Puerto Rican economic standards, they are huge. And the more a man or woman earns through paid work, the more they decrease.
Puerto Ricans are eligible for federal disability payments, for example, through Social Security. Ms Enchautegui and Mr Freeman point out that, in the territory, federal disability allowances are much higher than the United States average as a share of wages and pension income. Unsurprisingly, therefore, one in six working-age men in Puerto Rico are claiming disability benefits.
Many families do not view the federal handouts as temporary. Neither does Raúl Vega, who owns a consumer-finance outfit in Aguadilla. His firm treats the benefits as income when deciding whether to lend people money for new televisions.
Sad. They need more of those transgressive bourgeois values. But then, so does the rest of America.
October 7, 2017
AT AMAZON, Save on High-Speed HDMI Cables.
IT DOESN’T MATTER WHETHER PEOPLE ARE BUYING IT, IT’S ALL THEY HAVE TO SELL: The anti-Trump late-night comedy lineup keeps plummeting.
SO WE’VE HAD IT FOR A WHILE, AND THE INSTA-WIFE IS IN AGREEMENT that the MantelMount is one of our better purchases. It’s much more comfortable to watch the TV at eye level, and when you’re done it just swings back up.
FASTER, PLEASE: Zika vaccine shows promise in early human trial.
CLAUDIA ROSETT: The Kerfuffle Before The Storm. “That mysterious locution produced a spate of stories speculating sardonically on what the president meant. We’re now hearing a similar round of mockery. But this was no late-night typo in a tweet, and while offended members of the media default to derision, it’s worth considering that the president quite likely sent a useful message to an audience that extends way beyond the White House press corps.”
Yes, Austin Bay made a similar point. But as that scholar Ben Rhodes informed us, the political press is made up of 27 year olds who literally know nothing.
THAT’S GOOD, THOUGH SOMEWHAT HARD TO BELIEVE: No drop in flu vaccinations since nasal spray withdrawn, CDC says.
DOVE APOLOGIZES FOR RACIST FACEBOOK AD: “The ad, showing a black woman becoming white after using the brand’s lotion, was heavily criticized after it was posted on Facebook.” See, they should have done it the other way around, so as not to be racist. Which would have made more sense anyway since, actually, the black woman has better skin.
FROM THE LATE MICHAEL KELLY, Ted Kennedy on the Rocks:
Of odd and reckless behavior, there are many examples, including Kennedy’s photographed 1982 nude promenade on the public sands of Palm Beach, reportedly in the presence of several old ladies. The columnist Taki, chronicler of Europe’s idle rich, still calls Kennedy “a boorish and uncivilized philistine” because of an incident in the mid-Seventies. At the time, Taki was a UPI reporter in Athens and a well-known playboy. One day, he got a call from Kennedy’s staffers, who asked him to “round up two dates, American girls preferably,” for the senator and his nephew Joe during their brief visit to the Greek capital. Taki says he showed up at the Hotel Grande Bretagne, where the Kennedys were staying, with his girlfriend and dates for the Kennedys. “Teddy was…pretty much drunk,” says Taki. “In fact, he was really out of it.” Taki says he and the others left the senator and his date, a proper young Connecticut woman who was “very, very impressed with the Kennedys,” at the hotel while they went nightclubbing. Back home later than night, Taki was awakened by Kennedy’s hysterical date. Taki says the drink-befuddled young woman became frightened when she “saw Ted Kennedy coming naked at her,” and adds, “that would scare me too, and I would like to say I am a pretty brave man.”
To be fair, Harvey Weinstein, to be best of our knowledge, never killed a woman with his car, so he’s got that going for him, at least.
The whole thing is a great read, a 9,000-word GQ column from 1990 written by the last great Atlantic editor.
IMPORTANT NEWS FROM THE WORLD OF NUTRITION:
THE CHINESE TAKEOVER OF NORTH KOREA: This is a speculative scenario written by a former Economist editor, Bill Emmott. Project Syndicate published it about a month ago. It’s not too different from a couple of other “China intervenes” scenarios I’ve read in the last 15 years. But it’s a good read. The goal of China’s military intervention isn’t combat, but convincing the North Korean military to help remove the Kim regime.
Whereas a nuclear exchange with the US would mean devastation, submission to China would promise survival, and presumably a degree of continued autonomy. For all except those closest to Kim, the choice would not be a difficult one.
China’s strategic gains from a successful military intervention would include not only control of what happens on the Korean Peninsula, where it presumably would be able to establish military bases, but also regional gratitude for having prevented a catastrophic war.
More:
Could it work? We can’t know the answer for sure, and any military intervention carries great risks. The Chinese armed forces are now well equipped, but lack comparable battlefield experience. Their inferior opponents have leaders who might be prepared to use nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction, if they did not simply accept Chinese terms and surrender.
What we can say with near certainty is that a Chinese land and sea invasion, rather than an American one, would stand a better chance of avoiding Kim’s likely response: an artillery attack on the South Korean capital, Seoul, which lies just a few dozen miles south of the demilitarized zone.
In June StrategyPage.com published an analysis of China’s relationships with North Korea and South Korea. You’ll have to scroll down to the Korea section of the update to read that a united Korea “is something China is willing to go to war over to prevent, or at least make some serious moves in that direction.” The Project Syndicate scenario maintains the division of Korea.
Today the Voice of America published an article discussing the China intervention scenario and the comments President Trump made at the White House last Thursday. Following a visit to the White House by top U.S. military leaders, President Trump said the White House event was (quoting VOA) “the calm before the storm.’ When reporters asked the president to elaborate on “the storm,” he simply said: “you’ll find out.'”
Today President Trump fired two tweets at North Korea:
“Presidents and their administrations have been talking to North Korea for 25 years, agreements made and massive amounts of money paid……”
“…hasn’t worked, agreements violated before the ink was dry, makings fools of U.S. negotiators. Sorry, but only one thing will work!”
The Donald is messing with Rocket Man. Trump is giving the Kim regime a relentless dose of its own threat-theater bombast, an information warfare tactic it is not used to dealing with. It isn’t all theater. The U.S. and its allies back the verbal and tweet theatrics with shows of powerful and credible military force. Of course Trump appalls mainstream media, but so what. The tactic forces the Kim regime to recognize the game has changed. Does it mean war is imminent? Stay tuned.
HAPPILY, I’M HEALTHIER THAN MY DAD AND GRANDDADS WERE AT MY AGE: Middle-age Americans in 2017 are less healthy than prior generations: Study.
As Americans in their 50s move toward retirement age, many are in worse overall health than their peers in prior generations, researchers warn.
“We found that younger cohorts are facing more burdensome health issues, even as they have to wait until an older age to retire, so they will have to do so in poorer health,” said study author Robert Schoeni. He’s an economist and demographer at the University of Michigan.
Americans born in 1960 or later must wait until age 67 to collect their full Social Security benefit. People born before that were able to collect sooner.
Schoeni and his colleagues analyzed data collected over decades by the U.S. National Institute on Aging and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
They found that a higher percentage of Americans now in their 50s rated their own health as just fair or poor, compared with what older Americans said about their own health at a similar age.
Also, middle-aged Americans today say they suffer from a higher rate of memory and thinking problems, versus prior generations of 50-year-olds.
But I suspect that these self-reports are driven as much by expectations as by actual change. Prior generations expected to feel worse as they got older, and also expected people not to complain about it too much. Note that people’s actual physical abilities didn’t get worse.
STRONG, INDEPENDENT WOMEN: “I walked in and I saw Harvey, and I said, ‘Hello, Harvey,’ and I dropped my pants down.”
Has Jimmy Kimmel said anything?
THESE ARE THE CRAZY YEARS: Dr. Seuss museum to replace mural after complaints of racism.
YOU KNOW, YOU’D THINK A CITY THAT’S BASICALLY UNDERWATER WOULD DO A BETTER JOB ON ITS DRAINAGE: Nate aims at New Orleans amid worries about drainage system. “It was one of two flash floods this past summer that led to revelations about personnel and equipment problems at the New Orleans Sewerage and Water Board, the agency that runs the pumping system that drains the city. Some pumps weren’t working. Some turbines that provide power to the pumps were down. There weren’t enough people on hand to man the system.”
A NICE REPORT ON the National Space Council’s first meeting. I’m feeling cautiously optimistic.
AT AMAZON, 50% off Bowling Balls & Equipment.
WASN’T THERE ONE OF THESE IN THE MOVIE STRIPES? A “Tactical Urban Vehicle.”
I DIDN’T LIKE THIS THE LAST TIME, AND I’M NOT EXCITED ABOUT THE REMAKE: Hurricane Nate Strengthening Hours Away From Gulf Coast LandfalI; Storm Surge, Destructive Winds, Flooding Rain Ahead. A Cat 2 at most, they say, but still an awful lot of rain and surge. I’m less than thriled with the path that shows it passing over Knoxville, where we don’t really need the rain.