Author Archive: Stephen Green
September 10, 2019
ANALYSIS: TRUE. No Bueno, Beto: Americans Won’t Comply With Your Gun Ban.
THE COBRA EFFECT: Lessons in Unintended Consequences.
In colonial India, Delhi suffered a proliferation of cobras, which was a problem very clearly in need of a solution given the sorts of things that cobras bring, like death. To cut the number of cobras slithering through the city, the local government placed a bounty on them. This seemed like a perfectly reasonable solution. The bounty was generous enough that many people took up cobra hunting, which led exactly to the desired outcome: The cobra population decreased. And that’s where things get interesting.
As the cobra population fell and it became harder to find cobras in the wild, people became rather entrepreneurial. They started raising cobras in their homes, which they would then kill to collect the bounty as before. This led to a new problem: Local authorities realized that there were very few cobras evident in the city, but they nonetheless were still paying the bounty to the same degree as before.
City officials did a reasonable thing: They canceled the bounty. In response, the people raising cobras in their homes also did a reasonable thing: They released all of their now-valueless cobras back into the streets. Who wants a house full of cobras?
In the end, Delhi had a bigger cobra problem after the bounty ended than it had before it began.
More often than not, “policy” is a dirty word.
PRAGER: The Equation That Explains Evil. “Good Intentions (GI) minus Wisdom (W) leads to Evil (E).”
There are other equations that result in (E), but this one is clearly the most pernicious.
THAT’S ENTERTAINMENT? Director Rian Johnson Brings ‘Knives Out’ Against Trump Voters. “If word doesn’t get out in a big way before Knives Out is released, a lot of viewers are going to be more than a little angry at having been made the butt of Johnson’s joke twice: For two hours on the screen, and for ten or twelve bucks at the box office.”
CAVEAT VENDITOR: Why Hornady Stopped Selling Ammunition to Walmart 12 Years Ago.
In my previous life, I worked for a company that lived and died by Walmart. And like many companies, Walmart treated them poorly. And, as we were going through these things with Walmart, I decided that if I was ever in a situation where I didn’t have to do business with them, I would not. And when I got to Hornady, we were doing some business with them, it wasn’t a lot, but they started to become difficult to work with again. I was in a situation where I made the decision for our company to walk away and everybody in the company supported my decision. And we have not looked back.
Much more at the link.
I HOPE THIS ISN’T TRUE BUT IT PROBABLY IS: Prosperity Breeds Idiots.
At the start of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s novel In the First Circle, a Soviet diplomat on home leave in Moscow tries to make an anonymous call to the U.S. embassy. His purpose: warning the Americans of a Soviet theft of atomic secrets. But he gets a dull-witted, indifferent embassy staffer on the line, and the call goes nowhere. Or almost nowhere. The call is monitored by Soviet security. Arrested and imprisoned at the end of the novel, the diplomat’s final thought about Americans is that “prosperity breeds idiots.”
Solzhenitsyn’s diplomat channels views that were clearly held by the author himself. Comfort and safety, enjoyed too long in the West, invite complacency—and complacency leads to stupidity. As a gulag survivor, Solzhenitsyn had a barely disguised disgust for Western elites with little experience of political murder and repression. Nor could he abide the legion of fools who seemed fascinated, from a secure and prosperous distance, with socialist thought.
Read the whole thing.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Trump Rallies the American Riff Raff and All Is Well. “Talk to any serious Democratic operative (rough call, I know) and they will tell you that Barack Obama was all about Barack Obama and cared little for anyone else. President Trump didn’t really have to be in North Carolina for a rally, but the Republican party needed him there.”
BONKERS: A 1% Growth Limit Across The Front Range Could Be Up For Vote On Your 2020 Ballot.
The state Title Board, which determines how measures appear on ballots, approved Golden resident Daniel Hayes’ Initiative 122, an updated version of a measure he introduced earlier this summer. It would limit the number of residential building permits local governments could issue from Weld County in the north through the Denver metro to El Paso County in the south.
Hayes’ initiative would cap them to just a 1 percent rise every year. The measure, which would be a state law, couldn’t be repealed or adjusted until 2023. The new version of his measure includes an additional .15 percentage point allotment for affordable and senior housing.
“I think it’ll make it more popular,” Hayes said.
Opponents have a week to file a request for a rehearing with the Title Board. Hayes said he expects that will happen, and is girding for petitions to the state Supreme Court challenging the measure’s compliance with the single-subject rule and the sovereignty of home-rule cities.
“It’s just delay tactics,” he said.
Hayes argues the Front Range is growing too fast, and putting too much pressure on public schools and public water and transportation infrastructure. His measure is similar to Lakewood’s Question 200, which voters passed in July.
Let’s just call this what it really is: The Existing Homeowners Value Protection Act.
Then there’s the conceit that there is some “correct” rate of growth, and that government is competent to manage it without unintended consequences, which would be funny if it weren’t so destructive.
Prediction: If passed, Denver’s already crazy real-estate market will get even crazier, and we’ll end up with a totally unexpected housing crisis.
THE BEST DEFENSE… Trump’s New Math: Inside the Plan to Flip Blue States in 2020.
Trump’s campaign is betting it can win in New Mexico. Flush with cash, the campaign is planning to announce a state director and additional ground staff there in the coming weeks, a campaign official tells TIME. Internal campaign data has convinced Trump’s political advisors they can energize a slice of the state’s Hispanic voters to vote for Trump in 2020 by emphasizing Trump’s handling of the economy, border security and his trade confrontation with China. According to U.S. Census data, 49.1 percent of New Mexico’s residents identify themselves as Hispanic or Latino.
The move is part of a series of bets Trump is making to win states that went for Clinton in 2016. Trump’s son-in-law and senior White House advisor Jared Kushner says that voter data has convinced the reelection effort to fund robust field operations in a much larger number of states than in 2016. “I can see us very aggressively playing in 18 swing states,” Jared Kushner tells TIME, adding that in his view, the 2016 Trump campaign “seriously played” in about 11 swing states.
More like this, please.
IT’S ALMOST AS THOUGH THEY’RE THE KIND OF PEOPLE YOU SHOULDN’T MAKE DEALS WITH: Iran had secret nuclear weapons development site in Abadeh. “Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday that Iran had been developing nuclear weapons at a secret site near the city of Abadeh, but that Tehran destroyed the facility after learning it had been exposed.”
PRIVACY: A proposed Denver law would ban police from using facial recognition technology.
Connor Swatling doesn’t want Big Brother watching you.
The Denver resident has introduced a ballot measure banning the Denver Police Department and every other city entity from using facial recognition technology for law enforcement purposes.
DPD does not currently use the technology, department spokesperson Sonny Jackson said. He added that the department does not use local or national databases that use the tech. Denver Police does operate more than 250 “HALO” cameras, but Jackson said those don’t have facial recognition capabilities.
Swatling’s initiated ordinance will need to receive more than 8,000 valid signatures to have the question appear before voters for the 2020 election.
He’s already launched a website for his campaign: 5280not1984.com.
The site is still under construction, but if you’re a Denver resident, it might be worth looking into.
September 9, 2019
REPUBLICANS POUNCE! (PREVIEW EDITION): Focus on Biden health underscores future Trump attacks.
MILE WIDE AND AN INCH DEEP: Dem Pollster Calls Joe Biden’s 2020 Lead ‘Deceptive.’
PLEASE STARE AT ME SO I CAN TELL YOU NOT TO STARE AT ME: Open Letter to the Gender-Confused Dude in the Beard and Lipstick: My Kid Is Going to Stare.
THE GOOD LIFE: Oh To Be a Democrat in New Jersey. “NAACP President Jeffrey Dye had a record of threatening his brother with a knife, getting caught with six bags of crack cocaine, assaulting police officers on two separate occasions, so of course he was appointed to work for the New Jersey Department of Labor & Workforce Development.”
YOU’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BLOG: Democratic Presidential Clown Car Update for September 9, 2019. “Democrats want to ban cheeseburgers, Biden’s eye fills with blood, the third debates loom, and Williamson is shocked to find out that leftist activists are mean liars.”
DARK MONEY IS ONLY BAD WHEN REPUBLICANS SPEND IT: Soros Fuels Dark Money Judicial Group That Fights Kavanaugh, Trump Nominations.