Greedy Umbrellas

I have to run very quickly to the airport, but I just wanted to say how angry I am about the growing sizes of umbrellas.

There I am, walking Manhattan's streets in pouring, freezing rain, only to be bumped on all sides by these absolutely huge umbrellas that may as well be mobile igloos. You've seen them -- they're wide enough for three people and they sort of loop down and they have layers, because God forbid anybody get even the slightest wet these days.

Now, this sort of behavior may be fine in the suburbs or, you know, places that have space, but in New York City? Further evidence of the decline of our civilization, really.

Happy holidays!

European Muslims Under The Microscope

This month, I saw two positive reviews of Christopher Caldwell's Reflections on the Revolution in Europe, which offers a rather inflammatory take on the implications of Muslim immigration in the Old World. Since I'd rather read reviews than books, I was happy to come across Laila Lalami's fleshed-out examination of the work, which withers under her empirical criticism. An example:

Caldwell also suggests that Muslims are far more likely to commit violence against women. Under the heading "Virginity and violence," he writes that "there were forty-five [honor killings] in Germany alone in the first half of the decade." Since the argument here is that Muslims are more inclined to commit homicides against women in the context of "some trespass against sexual propriety," it would have been helpful if Caldwell had included, for the sake of contrast, the number of ethnic German women killed in incidents of domestic violence, as well as numbers for an entirely distinct and recent immigrant group, such as Eastern Europeans...

The label "honor killing" makes violence against women and girls sound like an exotic import rather than the pernicious and all-too-frequent reality that it is. Caldwell doesn't mention that domestic violence has been treated as a criminal problem in Europe thanks to the work of European feminists in the 1960s and '70s, and that now European Muslim feminists are working to create a similar zero-tolerance level about honor killings. Encouragingly, a recent Gallup study found that Muslims in Paris, Berlin and London disapproved of honor killings and crimes of passion about as much as the general French, German and British populations.

The full thing is worth a read.

Kill the Bill!

No, I’m not talking about the health insurance industry giveaway care reform bill. I’m referring to the PATRIOT Act Sunset Extension Act of 2009, a bill that seeks to extend the Bush administration’s PATRIOT Act.

The following is a summary from a section of the bill, which has, by the way, passed a Senate Committee vote:

Section 3 -

Amends FISA to revise requirements for applications for access to business records in counterterrorism investigations to require an applicant to present a statement of facts and circumstances relied upon to justify the applicant's belief that the records sought are relevant to an investigation. Repeals the presumption in favor of the government that an application for records is relevant to an investigation. Imposes similar requirements for access to circulation records or patron lists of a library and for orders for pen registers and trap and trace devices (devices for recording incoming and outgoing telephone numbers). Defines and requires "minimization procedures" for minimizing the retention and dissemination of information obtained from such records and devices [emphasis mine].

That the presumption was ever in favor of an accuser -- the government in this case -- seems antithetical to what I know about Constitutional rights. After all, isn’t our legal system predicated on the notion that we’re innocent until proven guilty?

So this bill places more restrictions on how the federal government can secretly search you. I’m left scratching my head: is that a good thing? Is it a step in the right direction?

Communist spy in the State Department sentenced to life

This is pretty incredible:

A State Department employee (and part-time professor at Johns Hopkins SAIS program) plead guilty to spying for Cuba for the last 30 years. I think this story actually broke a while ago, but I'm linking to this article just because it's interesting to get more of the details (such as his traveling to Cuba for dinner with Fidel, and his constant preparations to sail his yacht to Cuba if he was found out).

Very Tom Clancy-ish story. (Whatever happened to hanging traitors, btw?)

Looking at the cost of Obamacare (via the latest CBO report).

Deficit-reducing it is not:

Reid 2.0: It’s Still a Budget Buster [James C. Capretta]


The Obama White House and its congressional allies have tried all year to push their various bills through to passage by truncating the time between introduction and a decisive vote to the bare minimum. They figure the only way to get something passed is to minimize public review and scrutiny of whatever their latest idea is to engineer American health care from Washington, D.C.

To date, that tactic hasn’t worked out so well. In July, House Democrats tried to unveil a bill on the 14th for a planned vote on the 31st. A firestorm erupted, however, pushing back the vote into November. In the Senate, meanwhile, a series of self-imposed deadlines have been missed as Democratic pronouncements of inevitability have bumped up against the reality of steadfast and growing public opposition.

Nonetheless, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is running the same play again today, and very possibly with different results. He unveiled the latest version of his reform legislation this morning, filled to the brim with outrageous payoffs to buy the votes of holdout Senators. Virtually no one else has seen the bill before today, much less had a chance to give it the scrutiny it deserves. And certainly the public has not had a chance to weigh in. No matter. Senator Reid has simultaneously set in motion the procedures necessary to force a vote on his new health-care plan in a matter of hours, not weeks.

And yet, despite the unprecedented effort to short-circuit public review and input, it is likely that this latest version of the Reid plan will be just as unpopular as the previous one, and for many of the same basic reasons.

According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the amended Reid plan would reduce the federal budget deficit by $132 billion over the period 2010 to 2019, but that is a mirage.

For starters, as CBO notes, the bill presumes that Medicare fees for physician services will get cut by more than 20 percent in 2011, and then stay at the reduced level indefinitely. There is strong bipartisan opposition to such cuts. Fixing that problem alone will cost more than $200 billion over a decade, pushing the Reid plan from the black and into a deep red.

Then there are the numerous budget gimmicks and implausible spending reductions. The plan’s taxes and spending cuts kick in right away, while the entitlement expansion doesn’t start in earnest until 2014, and even then the real spending doesn’t begin until 2015. According to CBO, from 2010 to 2014, the bill would cut the federal budget deficit by $124 billion. From that point on, it’s essentially deficit neutral — but that’s only because of unrealistic assumptions about tax and Medicare savings provisions. By 2019, the entitlement expansions to cover more people with insurance will cost nearly $200 billion per year, and grow every year thereafter at a rate of 8 percent. CBO says that, on paper, the tax increases and Medicare cuts will more than keep up, but, in reality, they won’t. The so-called tax on high cost insurance plans applies to policies with premiums exceeding certain thresholds (for instance, $23,000 for family coverage). But those thresholds would be indexed at rates that are less than health-care inflation — forever. And so, over time, more and more plans, and their enrollees, would bump up against it until virtually the entire U.S. population is enrolled in insurance that is considered “high cost.”

Similarly, the Medicare cuts assume that hospitals, nursing homes, home health agencies and others can survive with a permanent annual cut in their payment rates for presumed productivity gains. Medicare’s chief actuary has already signaled that this reduction could push one in five hospitals into insolvency, thus forcing them out of the Medicare program.

What’s more, the benefit promises are sure to expand well beyond what CBO has assumed. There are 127 million people living in households with incomes between 100 and 400 percent of the federal poverty line, but CBO assumes that only 18 million of them will get the new subsidized insurance under the Reid plan by 2015 because of rules that make most workers ineligible for assistance. But, if enacted, employers would find ways to push more workers into subsidized arrangements, and Congress would loosen the rules to make more people eligible. Costs would grow much faster than CBO currently projects. In addition, the Reid plan continues to include a new entitlement program for long-term care that every actuary who has looked at it says is a financial disaster waiting to happen. If passed, it would only be a matter of time before another federal bailout would be necessary.

It is now plain as day that the Reid plan has evolved into nothing more than a massive entitlement expansion, which subsidizes more people into an unreformed system with soaring costs. Several Senate Democrats claim to be strong fiscal conservatives. Their votes on the Reid legislation will provide conclusive evidence whether that’s true or not.

Krauthammer reflects on his 25 year career...

Thought this was an enjoyable read.

Moving Terrorists from Gitmo to...Illinois?

Think they'll publicly announce this policy? Or just hope no one notices?

Who wants to take bets that after they are moved, before too long we'll find that legal maneuvering, claims of unlawful imprisonment and supposed deprivation of rights will all lead to the release of some of the immates into the United States?

Democrats Health Care plans and the upcoming 'Death Spiral'?

You may have seen this report for the Office of the Actuary of the Health and Human Services Department states, but I hadn't seen it mentioned on any of the big networks...

A new report from government economic analysts at the Health and Human Services Department found that the nation's $2.5 trillion annual health care tab won't shrink under the Democratic blueprint that senators are debating. Instead, it would grow somewhat more rapidly than if Congress does nothing.

More troubling was the report's assessment that the Democrats' plan to squeeze Medicare for $493 billion over 10 years in savings relies on specific policy changes that "may be unrealistic" and could lead to cuts in services. The Medicare savings are expected to cover about half the nearly $1 trillion, 10-year cost of expanding coverage to the uninsured.

In still more bad news, the report starkly warned that a new long-term care insurance plan included in the legislation could "face a significant risk of failure" because it would attract people in poor health, leading to higher and higher premiums, and eventually triggering an "insurance death spiral."

(Via the AP)

Branding Jewish Goods in Britain?

What to make of this?

Some commentators suggest that this is akin to the German practices of labeling Jews and "Jewish" stores. I'm not sure one need not draw direct parallels to the later stages of what the "Jude" stars of Nazi Germany represented. But if I'm not mistaken, in Germany those too started out as a mechanism for the public to identify Jews and Jewish goods so they could choose to not do business with them on the grounds that they did not agree with purported Jewish political/societal practices. In other words, there are similarities, but at this point it's not quite the same thing. (So far?)

All in all, this strikes me as really misguided by the British and something of a disturbing idea for a supposedly classically liberal nation to suggest as policy (being as how it's based on ethnic grounds and not on national definitions). But I'd be interested to see if there are Britons who would choose to expand this practice to all Jewish goods from Israel if they find that their action doesn't result in enough of an impact. (Besides the strains of radical muslims in Britain, I mean).

The real implications of federal spending

I wasn't planning on my weekly linking to Mark Steyn's piece, as more than usual it's one that is probably only appealing to those already of his mindset (in this case, about the vapidity of Obama's rhetoric). That said, I did enjoy it as I'm wont to do when reading Mr. Steyn.

But I wanted to post this exerpt, which I think is excellent. Please forgive my repetitiveness in doing so.

"America has its Herman van Rumpoys, too. Harry Reid is really the Harry van Reidpoy of Congress. Very few people know who he is or what he does. But, while Obama continues on his stately progress from one 4,000-word dirge to the next, Reid’s beavering away advancing the cause of van Rumpoy–scale statism. The news this week that the well-connected Democrat pollster, Mark Penn, received $6 million of “stimulus” money to “preserve” three jobs in his public-relations firm to work on a promotional campaign for the switch from analog to digital TV is a perfect snapshot of Big Government. In the great sucking maw of the federal treasury, $6 million isn’t even a rounding error. But it comes from real people — from you and anybody you know who still makes the mistake of working for a living; and, if it had been left in your pockets, you’d have spent it in the real world, at a local business or in expanding your own, and maybe some way down the road it would have created some genuine jobs. Instead, it got funneled to a Democrat pitchman to preserve three non-jobs on a phony quasi-governmental PR campaign. Big Government does that every minute of the day. When Mom’n’Pop Cola of Dead Skunk Junction gets gobbled up by Coke, there are economies of scale. When real economic activity gets annexed by state and then federal government, there are no economies of scale. In fact, the very concept of “scale” disappears, so that tossing 6 million bucks away to “preserve” three already-existing positions isn’t even worth complaining about.


At his jobs summit, Obama seemed, rhetorically, to show some understanding of this. But that’s where his speechifying has outlived its welcome. When it’s tough and realistic (we need to be fiscally responsible; there are times when you have to go to war in your national interest; etc.), it bears no relation to any of the legislation. And, when it’s vapid and utopian, it looks absurd next to Harry Reid, Barney Frank & Co’s sleazy opportunism. For those of us who oppose the shriveling of liberty in both Washington and Copenhagen, a windy drone who won’t sit down keeps the spotlight on the racket. Once more from the top, Barack!"

Because I know how much Berchmans treasures it...

Here's Mark Steyn's latest criticism of President Obama's foreign policy...or lack thereof. I enjoyed it.

The Political Spectrum Scrambled In Europe

I highly recommend Ian Buruma's piece in the latest New Yorker about Dutch attitudes and debates about Muslim immigration. A curious trans-Atlantic political alliance has forged itself, as conservatives in America find common ground with many Dutch liberals who worry that incoming immigrants may not tolerate the host country's tolerant attitudes toward homosexuals, prostitution, pornography and drug use. Here's a provocative paragraph:

"This fear is why forty per cent of Dutch voters are said to agree with the views of Geert Wilders, the right-wing provocateur with dyed blond hair, whose Freedom Party defines itself largely by its antagonism to Islam. He would like to ban the Koran, stop Muslim immigration, force women in Muslim head scarves to pay an extra tax (for "pollution of the public space"), and expect Dutch Muslims with criminal records. As he said in a speech sponsored by the Hudson Institute, 'There is a tremendous danger looming, and it is very difficult to be optimistic. We might be in the ifnal stages of the Islamization of Europe. This not only is a clear and present danger to the future of Europe itself, it is a threat to America and the sheer survival of the West."

I disagree about the threat, as well as with all of Wilders' solutions. But I'm extremely interested to see the political spectrum scrambled here and there. I think Dinesh D'Souza wrote a book -- widely panned on release -- that argued American conservatives would find much common ground with many observant Muslims, who typically believe in the same "family values" they profess. So far, he's the only person on the Right I've seen who notes that if there is a clash going on -- God, I hate Samuel Huntington! -- it's between the secular and the religious, not between Islam and the West. Many right-wing commentators prefer instead to dismiss Islam itself as another Fifth Column, disguised and protected by a conspiracy of "political correctness" that dare not offend. (This all while they fervently subscribe to Gen. Stanley McChrystal's Afghanistan strategy that requires us to win over millions of, um, Muslims.)

Stanley Fish -- once D'Souza's sparring parter in a series of illuminating debates -- has made similar noises as D'Souza does from the left. His argument is complicated, and I doubt I can do it justice, but it goes like this: liberalism -- the classical one, with a big L -- doesn't exist as the neutral philosophy it hopes to be. Instead, a series of ideological assumptions underline all its tenets. Yes, you have the right to exercise religion, but not if that means you want to study prayer in public schools, or -- in Wilders' case -- if you want to wear a head scarf in public. What we're seeing with these debates -- can Muslims emigrate to Netherlands without having to watch government-sponsored training seminars showing male couples kiss? -- is the return of Religion Wars. All this in a country that along ago shoved faith off the boat.

But I think we all miss an opportunity when we latch onto religion as the major 'problem' to be addressed. There are plenty of Catholics in this country, for instance, who support a woman's right to choose and still revere the Holy Trinity. Some would say that they were not true Catholics at all (Fish included), but I think most people live somewhere in this gray area, forever negotiating tradition with modern life and personal and cultural forces.

I think that's the case with many Muslims. There's a great moment in the New Yorker piece where one Dutch artist complains that the whole immigration debate has forced religion to the fore, subsuming other parts of her identity (namely, her profession):

Funda Mujde, an actress, cabaret artist, and columnist for a popular Dutch tabloid, was born in Turkey in 1961, and came to Amsterdam as a child. She told me how she was treated in her adopted country: "First, I was a foreigner, an alien. Then, after 9/11, I was suddenly a Muslim. I used to be known as a Turkish cabaret artist. After the row over the Dutch cartoons, I became 'that Muslim cabaret artist.'"

So, it seems to me like most sides in this debate have things the wrong way. Conservatives should look a largely religious observant demographic as a potential boon and ally. Liberals should re-frame the debate away from religion and instead focus on issues of unemployment and forge wide alliances that address concerns that may be more important to Muslims than their religion.

My two cents, anyway.

Why the CRU is misinforming about the "Harry" Readme...

Berchmans posted below (in comments) the response by CRU to the "HARRY_Readme.txt" file that I referenced earlier:

HARRY_read_me.txt. This is a 4 year-long work log of Ian (Harry) Harris who was working to upgrade the documentation, metadata and databases associated with the legacy CRU TS 2.1 product, which is not the same as the HadCRUT data (see Mitchell and Jones, 2003 for details). The CSU TS 3.0 is available now (via ClimateExplorer for instance), and so presumably the database problems got fixed. Anyone who has ever worked on constructing a database from dozens of individual, sometimes contradictory and inconsistently formatted datasets will share his evident frustration with how tedious that can be.

In other words, they are suggesting two things: One that CRU TS 2.1 is not connected to later data. And two, that CSU TS 3.0 has fixed the problems of earlier data sets. These claims are not supported by an examination of the emails and files that were discoved, it seems to me.

See here for example, which is from  the 15,000 or so lines in the Harry_read_me text:

"So, you release a dataset that people have been clamouring for, and the buggers only start


using it! And finding problems. For instance:





Hi Tim (good start! -ed)



I realise you are likely to be very busy at the moment, but we have come across something in

the CRU TS 3.0 data set which I hope you can help out with.



We have been looking at the monthly precipitation totals over southern Africa (Angola, to be

precise), and have found some rather large differences between precipitation as specified in

the TS 2.1 data set, and the new TS 3.0 version. Specifically, April 1967 for the cell 12.75

south, 16.25 east, the monthly total in the TS 2.1 data set is 251mm, whereas in TS 3.0 it is

476mm. The anomaly does not only appear in this cell, but also in a number of neighbouring

cells. This is quite a large difference, and the new TS 3.0 value doesn't entirely tie in

with what we might have expected from the station-based precip data we have for this area.

Would it be possible for you could have a quick look into this issue?



Many thanks,



Daniel.



--------------------------------------------------------

Dr Daniel Kingston

Post Doctoral Research Associate

Department of Geography

University College London

Gower Street

London

WC1E 6BT

UK

Email d.kingston@ucl.ac.uk

Tel. +44 (0)20 7679 0510





Well, it's a good question! And it took over two weeks to answer. I wrote angola.m, which

pretty much established that three local stations had been augmented for 3.0, and that

April 1967 was anomalously wet. Lots of non-reporting stations (ie too few years to form

normals) also had high values. As part of this, I also wrote angola3.m, which added two

rather interesting plots: the climatology, and the output from the Fortran gridder I'd just

completed. This raised a couple of points of interest:



1. The 2.10 output doesn't look like the climatology, despite there being no stations in

the area. It ought to have simply relaxed to the clim, instead it's wetter.



2. The gridder output is lower than 3.0, and much lower than the stations!



I asked Tim and Phil about 1., they couldn't give a definitive opinion. As for 2., their

guesses were correct, I needed to mod the distance weighting. As usual, see gridder.sandpit

for the full info.

To my reading, this suggests a couple of things: 1) Clearly they hadn't corrected the problems in CRU TS 3.0 either. And secondly, if 2.10 wasn't connected to 3.0, why would they examine 2.10 for clarification on the data included in 3.0?

It's worth noting as well that the HARRY_read_me.txt file was still being edited/added to after CRU 3.0 was released. Why? Because (to use the words of the code expert I linked to earlier):

They keep trying to match the results that came from v2.10 because it was made public with v3.0. The only problem with that is the catalog of errors that have been found in the 2.10 code, the databases, etc.




So now they're going back and doing **** to make it look right....

Rather than acknowledge that 3.0 had issues, they decided it was better to try and erase the problems in version 2.10 so that the provenance of 3.0 couldn't be questioned.

China's influence on academia...

As you guys probably know, China is one of my major interest areas. As such, I enjoyed this short essay on Chinese attempts to influence American academics.

Linked inside the article is the latest report from the US Economic and Security Review Commission (a bipartisan commission of experts who monitor all things China). Broken down by topic, it highlights trends in Chinese activity and its implications for American interests.

Howard Dean discusses modern Democrat philosophy

Howard Dean on capitalism vs. socialism, the "permanent campaign," and more.

(via Drudge)

More on the Scientific Method...

Here's an excellent essay by a MIT professor on ways to improve federally funded scientific studies.

"Secrecy in Science is a Corrosive Force."

To clarify my position...

In light of my previous posts about the CRU and global warming, I should note that I'm not implying that I believe that the scandal is dispositive one way or the other about the existence of global warming. It isn't.

I aim to suggest instead that the state of science surrounding the issue has serious issues stemming in part from its intersection with politics and ideology, as well as individual failings of scientists who should have been upholding an objective scientific method but weren't for various reasons (be it desire for funding, acceptance, a narrative, whathaveyou).

I find much to agree with in mathematician John Derbyshire's column today about science.

(You may remember Derbyshire from his writing both at National Review and The Secular Right blog).

More from the hacked CRU emails...

This is pretty incredible. (For greater detail, I strongly recommend going here.)

Perhaps related, and equally ridiculous, is that the CRU apparently no longer even has their original raw data for independent experts to check. They threw it all out when they moved buildings in the 1980s and only kept their edited/modified data...Which if the above is an indication of how they work, isn't really surprising.

But it's ok. Because we're all set to impose trillions of dollars worth of damage to the global economies to fix a problem whose existence is based to a non-insignificant degree on the "scientific" work of people at the CRU that disproportionately shaped IPCC reports used by government and issue activists to convince the world of the problem...

So why would we need anything other than their word that their conclusions are based on actual...you know...science.

Obama once again shows his weakness...

I saw on the news that President Obama pardoned two turkeys today as part of a Presidential Thanksgiving tradition.

It seems to me that this once again illustrates the unavoidable weakness and fear of strength that has burrowed to the heart of his squishy liberal soul and will doom America to third-world status in no time.

The pardon ceremony today was a missed opportunity in which a true leader would have summarily executed the birds, thus sending a strong message to the rest of Turkey-dom who wish ill of our great and honorable country.


(If there was a font for facetiousness, it would be on display here. :))

HAPPY THANKSGIVING to each of you. May it be a day of relaxation and contentedness with loved ones. And full of sweet, sweet turkey.

The Death of Intellectual Protestantism...[edited]

In playing catch-up on my reading, I came across this John Derbyshire piece over at The Secular Right that outlines what he views as the death of intellectual conservatism Protestantism in the last century. [Whoops! That must have been a Freudian slip! -e] It had never occurred to me to even think about, but after reading it I find his case to be pretty persuasive.

(As an added bonus, he links to the wiki-page of a fascinating modern catholic intellectual with whom I was not familiar but am now glad to be.)

[edited for accidental word substitution 10:21PSD]

Americans and foreign language...

Apropos of nothing, I came across this old Jay Nordlinger column about Americans and language and wanted to pass it along. I thought it was well done. (Nordlinger, the culture and music guru at National Review, is an extremely erudite fellow, yet I've always admired how he keeps his roots to an "everyman" wordview. I've even had the chance to exchange emails with him a couple of times. Very nice guy.

But without further ado....here's the column.

A Global Warming Scandal?

You no doubt have heard the news about someone hacking into the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit (CRU) network and downloading thousands of emails and documents (some 157mb worth of data, which is a lot of emails) from some of the leading Global Warming-theory scientists from around the world.

Despite some protestations that the emails are being taken out of context (one can read the emails here and make up their own mind), the emails seem to suggest concerted efforts by some leading GW scientists from around the world to collude and knowingly manipulate their data to hide contrary evidence to the GW theory (including to manipulate distinct and contrary reports so that they appear to offer agreeing conclusion), collusion to destroy evidence, collusion to silence voices that disagree with their theories by coordinating the blackballing of scientific journals and altering peer-review processes to prevent dissenting voices from being heard, and more (In addition to comments about the death of a critic being a positive thing and statements of desire to do violence against another critic).

Below are some helpful primers and descriptions on the whole affair (the WSJ had a nice central location for everything, hence my multiple links to it). Particularly given the technical nature of some of the email discussions, the primers are helpful in explaining just why their apparent activity was so outrageous:

• "Global Warming With the Lid Off" in the WSJ
• James Taranto on the affair (printed in the WSJ)
• British Critic James Delingpole makes a more vociferous attack in the Daily Telegraph
• And Delingpole offers here a more straightforward argument for "Why it matters."
• A selection of the some of the emails in the WSJ

It'll be interesting to see if this makes any headway in the media. Some reports have appeared in the mainstream media, though somewhat couched it seemed to me, to minimize the significance (Here is mostly straightforward NYTimes article, and a minimizing Washington Post article). While I'd like to sound open-minded and say that it probably just sounds bad but really isn't, in reading some of the emails and commentary from knowledgable scientists about what exactly these scientists were doing, I don't think there's anyway to justify this sort of willful manipulation of data. It's pretty damning.

As I find more commentaries on the scandal, I'll post them.

The Spectator on US-British relations...

Thought this was an interesting article from across the pond on a perceived withering of the "special relationship" between the US and Britain.

More importantly...

I give you the best television shows of the 2000s.

From what I know, it does a pretty good job, though I haven't seen a number of them.

On the decision to bring KSM and Co. to trial in civilian courts...

What are everyone's thoughts?

While I'm not surprised that the Obama administration would think it's a good idea (they've been promising to do it since the election), I'm pretty disgusted with it. (That they decided to do the typical Friday announcement thing to bury the story is particularly galling, given how significant the issue is however one feels about it).

Because I know you wished to see it, here's NRO's take.

The First Pacific President...

Apropos of nothing, but I thought this was amusing. If only from an factual accuracy of presidential rhetoric:

Via The Corner:

"America's first Pacific president" [John J. Pitney Jr.]


“As America's first Pacific president,” said President Obama in Tokyo, “I promise you that this Pacific nation will strengthen and sustain our leadership in this vitally important part of the world.”

It is true that the president was born in Hawaii (sorry, birthers), lived from ages six to ten in Indonesia, and attended a Honolulu prep school. But he is not our first Pacific president. Richard Nixon was born in California in 1913, and spent much more of his life in the Pacific region than the current president has. Moreover, while Barack Obama made his career in Chicago and Springfield, Ronald Reagan made his in Los Angeles and Sacramento.

And the incumbent is hardly the first chief executive to have lived in another Pacific Rim country. William Howard Taft was governor-general of the Philippines. Dwight Eisenhower had military postings in the Philippines and the Panama Canal Zone. Herbert Hoover worked as a mining engineer in Australia and China; he even learned to speak Mandarin. Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Bush 41 all served in the Pacific during the Second World War. What they did as adults was perhaps more consequential than what Obama did as a child.

— John J. Pitney Jr. is the Roy P. Crocker Professor of American Politics at Claremont McKenna College.

The Fiscal Hawk Argument

I'm very sympathetic to those who think the federal budget deficit has gotten out of hand, and that serious steps need to be taken to address it lest all civilization falls apart and our children (think of the children!) turn into vicious mongrels.

But I'm also very suspicious of those who oppose certain policies -- say, the current House health care reform bill -- citing the deficit, only to turn around and vote for other costly programs (like, say, military interventions in other countries). Sen. Max Baucus danced this little pirouette earlier in the year, when he voiced concerns about the cost of health care reform, but then later blackballed any effort that would reduce federal farm subsidies, a truly absurd entitlement program crying for adjustment. If the deficit were the overriding concern, then those awful subsidies should have fallen by the wayside alongside Medicaid expansions and what not.

In an earlier discussion, we talked about the meaning of "begging the question," which doesn't mean "to raise a question," but to badly answer one (e.g.: "Why is this thing beautiful?" Answer: "Because it is pretty.").

There's something to that in the fiscal-deficit-argument. Instead of addressing specific political concerns with expenditures or programs, they simply answer that the containing the deficit matters more. At the same time, they don't say what they would cut to bring things in order (because that would actually force them to make choices).

Now, there are some who truly think the deficit matters more than anything else, but none of them lives in Washington, D.C. On the Republican side, supporting tax cuts outweighed any deficit qualms; on the Democratic side, stimulus and government programs count for more than silly issues with a long-term rise in interest rates.

You'd think they keep the deficits going if only because they provide a valuable political excuse to squirm their way out of standing for something.

Climate Change Scientist

I thought this New Republic interview with climate expert Stephen Schneider should be read by denier and skeptic alike. It's a great discussion about the scientific method, the definition of risk (probability times consequence) and how we come to know what we know. Excerpts below:

For example, we don't understand to this day why smoking causes cancer, so we still retain an element of skepticism. But the data associating smokers with cancer is so statistically overwhelming that you would have to be a fool or a liar to deny it. It’s exactly the same in climate science. There’s an overwhelming preponderance of evidence that it’s warming, that the last thirty to forty years have been mostly due to human activities, that it’s raining more in higher latitudes, that there are more droughts and flooding, that ice is melting rapidly.

Then there is what’s going to happen to precipitation in Kansas. We don’t know. So the deniers come along and say, "We don’t know the precipitation in Kansas. These models are no damn good. It isn’t proved." That’s like saying "There are thirty-five tobacco studies; thirty-three of them show a dramatic statistical significance between smoking and cancer; two of them are equivocal. But until those two are resolved, it isn’t proved. Let’s not regulate cigarettes."

[...]

When I’m asked, "What is the probability that the Greenland ice sheet will melt if temperatures rise X degrees?," I speak in percentages. My very good friend and colleague Jim Hansen says, "One degree." I don’t think Jim knows that. I don’t think I know that. The problem is too complicated for us to know that, so I frame it as a risk management problem: One degree? 25 percent chance. Two degrees? 60 percent chance. Three degrees? 90 percent chance. Is that the truth? Of course not. That’s as honest as I can be based on my subjective reading of the evidence. However, just so you don’t think I’m an optimist relative to Jim, I also think there’s a 5 percent chance that it’s already too late.

What To Make Of Joe Lieberman?

We should probably start talking more about health care, seeing as how a bill may or may not pass in time to land under our Christmas trees this year. For the record, there's much I like in the House bill -- especially allowing people to be covered under their parents' plan until they're 26! -- but I was always most enamored with Sen. Ron Wyden's plan. (David Leonhardt made the best pitch for that reform, pronounced dead on arrival in Congress, here.) I'm not entirely convinced the House bill will reduce premiums and where it offers some financial assistance, it does so only by appropriating private costs with federal subsidies. Not very promising.

And, of course, I'm disappointed with the abortion compromise. I'm mature enough to admit, however, that the amendment more or less confirmed the conservative critique that allowing for more government regulation could also lead to less consumer choice. Here's a fine example: the government says private insurers who receive any federal subsidies cannot cover abortions, even for women who would not rely on those subsidies to pay their premiums. Sigh.

Then again, is it entirely hypocritical to argue, on the one hand, that certain government interventions can help, while others may not? Unlike conservatives, who have a certain core of first principles to follow, liberals are allowed at least some pragmatic wiggle room. (Look at me rationalize!)

But I wanted to end this post with some thoughts on Joe Lieberman, and his latest antics about the public option. I don't begrudge the man for saying what he believes or even his position (I'm no big fan of that plank of reform, even if I think Republicans have overstated its potential power). No, I'm mad because Lieberman always wants to appear as if he's taking independent, courageous stances, when, in fact, he's just as sniveling a politician as the rest of them. One minute, he comes off away from the Democrats; the next, he chums up to them so he can keep whatever precious committee leadership positions he has.

The harsh truth is that Lieberman is, more or less, a conservative. He may not always have been, but in the last few years, he's switched sides ideologically. He should drop this "above it all" holier-than-thou aura and change his party registration.

Emerson on Conservatism...

It had been a while since I had read "On Nature" or any other works by Ralph Waldo Emerson. But I happened across Emerson's 1842 lecture at a Masonic Temple and enjoyed it so much that I want to pass it along.

In the lecture, he weighs the battle between conservatism (in the old time sense) and innovation, from both the individual and societal perspective. I'm not one to use the term loosely, but it is brilliantly done with insights into both sides of the argument.

It's lengthy, difficult reading. But it's worth the time and energy.

Speaking of Mark Steyn...

I also found this post below to be amusing:

Think Globally, Cull Locally [Mark Steyn]


The anti-western anti-human totalitarianism of the environmental movement grows ever more explicit. I'm very sad to see my old friend Alex Renton reduced to peddling this sort of self-loathing claptrap:

The worst thing that you or I can do for the planet is to have children. If they behave as the average person in the rich world does now, they will emit some 11 tonnes of CO² every year of their lives. In their turn, they are likely to have more carbon-emitting children who will make an even bigger mess...

In 2050, 95% of the extra population will be poor and the poorer you are, the less carbon you emit. By today's standards, a cull of Australians or Americans would be at least 60 times as productive as one of Bangladeshis... As Rachel Baird, who works on climate change for Christian Aid, says: "Often in the countries where the birth rate is highest, emissions are so low that they are not even measurable. Look at Burkina Faso." So why ask them to pay in unborn children for our profligacy..?

But how do you reduce population in countries where women's rights are already achieved and birth-control methods are freely available? Could children perhaps become part of an adult's personal carbon allowance? Could you offer rewards: have one child only and you may fly to Florida once a year?

After all, based on current emissions and life expectancy, one less British child would permit some 30 women in sub-Saharan Africa to have a baby and still leave the planet a cleaner place.

Speaking of genetic predispositions, Alex's dad was a Tory minister under Mrs Thatcher - whereas Alex would appear to be more comfortable with Soviet-style restrictions on freedom of movement: Agree to abort your kid and the state will get you a special exit visa for two weeks in Florida.

Even if you overlook the control-freak totalitarianism, the argument is drivel. Much of "the rich world", including three-fourths of the G7 (Germany, Italy, Japan), is already in net population decline. And in those parts that aren't, such as the United Kingdom, population growth is driven almost entirely by mass immigration: Those Bangladeshis with their admirably low emissions move to Yorkshire and before you know it develop a carbon footprint as big as your guilt-ridden liberal environmentalist's. Thanks to immigration, Britain's population is set to swell by 15 per cent., with attendant emissions increases. So why not call not just for compulsory sterilization but an end to immigration, too? Keep all those Bangladeshis in Bangladesh, where they can't destroy the planet. Ah, but that would all get a bit complicated for Guardian readers, wouldn't it?

Alex will get his way. Much of "the rich world" has essentially opted for voluntary extinction. The notion that the planet will be a much cleaner place left to the tender mercies of the Chinese pollutoburo, the new caliphate, and the exploding megalopolises of coastal Africa might strike many as somewhat fanciful. But no doubt the last three Guardian-reading liberal environmentalists extant will still reckon it's all our fault.

10/25 04:19 PM

For the conspiratorially inclined...

Perhaps to be filed under "Huh...." (To be read with tongue slightly in cheek):

Nuclear Fallout [Mark Steyn]

Strange developments at the Iranian nuke talks:

A British nuclear expert has fallen to his death from the 17th floor of the United Nations offices in Vienna.

The 47-year-old man died after falling more than 120ft to the bottom of a stairwell. He has not been named.

He worked for the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, an international agency charged with uncovering illicit nuclear tests.

A UN spokesman in the Austrian capital said there were no "suspicious circumstances" surrounding the man's death...

Four months ago another UN worker also believed to be British fell from a similar height in the same building, it has been reported.

Hmm. I'd advise Mohammed El Baradei's surviving colleagues to take the elevator, but then again the aunt of Kofi Annan's discredited sidekick Benon Sevan fell to her death accidentally stepping into an empty elevator shaft shortly before she was due to be questioned about the Oil-for-Food scandal. If you work at the UN, get a gig on the ground floor.

Coincidence, presumably. Though I suppose one never knows. Link here.

With Apologies to Tyler Cowen

Scott Sumner, the smartest libertarian on the planet, takes up Matt Yglesias' challenge and offers his own multi-pronged market-based solution to reverse global warming. He proposes a temperature tax that prices all the negative externalities which contribute greatly to the Earth's warming.

Sumner's idea stipulates that if an activity like driving to work is the biggest factor in rising global temperatures, then that activity would be taxed accordingly. The flipside to this tax are subsidies given toward cutting-edge technologies which contribute to the cooling of the Earth. Companies that create technologies that reverse the warming trend would recieve subsidies in proportion to their contribution.

In a word, geoengineering.

A sample:

[A]s a good utilitarian I am going to use this blog platform to push two issues over the next few years. ... [M]y second obsession will be a global tax/subsidy scheme based on the impact of various activities on global temperatures. Not all activities, the gain isn’t worth the effort, but those activities that have a significant impact on the climate.

Speaking of Anita Dunn...

Here she is on the White House Media strategy of "controlling" the media (see video).

I don't find this particularly surprising or scandalous, but it's interesting.

On the permissibility of using Mao as an example...

By now, I assume you have heard about White House Communications Director Anita Dunn's speech in front of some school children in which she used Mao as an example for ignoring outside detractors and  "fighting your own war" to a successful conclusion on your terms.

Here's an excerpt of her quote:

“The third lesson and tip actually comes from two of my favorite political philosophers, Mao Tse-Tung and Mother Teresa. Not often coupled with each other, but the two people that I turn to most to basically deliver a simple point, which is: You’re going to make choices. . . . But here’s the deal: These are your choices; they are no one else’s. In 1947, when Mao Tse-Tung was being challenged within his own party on his own plan to basically take China over, Chiang Kai-Shek and the nationalist Chinese held the cities, they had the army. . . . They had everything on their side. And people said ‘How can you win . . . ? How can you do this against all of the odds against you?’ And Mao Tse-Tung says, ‘You fight your war and I’ll fight mine . . . ’ You don’t have to accept the definition of how to do things. . . . You fight your war, you let them fight theirs. Everybody has their own path.”

As far as the logic of her point goes (ie Mao certainly didn't listen to all the people who said he couldn't achieve), obviously her point stands.

Even so, it is a bit shocking to me that a senior White House figure would list a mass-murdering sociopath like Mao as "one of her favorite political philsophers." And whether or not her statement makes logical sense, it seems to me in poor taste to use a mass-murderer as one of two examples of people who more or less lived their dream on their own terms.

Mark Steyn captures better than I thoughts on these two ideas. You can read his recent column on it here.

Open and Massive Bigotry

It is difficult for me to describe how angry it makes me that society simply shrugs at the Rush Limbaugh/NFL affair.

That parasitic pieces of refuse like Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, and others can simply utilize fabricated quotations and bald face lies to impose their own intolerance and bigotry by making slanderous statements about a fellow citizen is an outrage; and it is an outrage that should stir to action not merely conservatives, but all people who believe in American democracy.

Quite simply none of the accusations made against Limbaugh can be defended with evidence. As someone who has listened to Limbaugh for as long as I can remember, I know the reason for this is because Limbaugh is simply not a racist. Anyone listening to him for any period of time talk about race would be well aware of that fact.

In the end, pond-scum like Sharpton know this of course. And the issue never was really "race" or "racism." It's about a greater argument: whether conservativism and conservatisms should be tolerated in American society. It's about the power of determining what thoughts are "permissible" in society. It's about oppression, intolerance, and bigotry. The issue is not about Limbaugh as a person; it's an attack on conservatives as free-thinking people. And in the macro sense, it's about all Americans who believe in freedom of thought.

I am tired of the perpetual protests and threats of boycotts against anyone who offends the sensibilities of the majority (or the organized minority); we are not a society dominated by a mob mentality. And I'm tired of the media letting (or seeking out) these high-priced extortionist destroy people's reputations and lives. And I'm tired of it being socially acceptible to malign conservatives as "bigots" and "racists" without needing the burdon of evidence; all of it occurring while those in a position to uphold and defend the ideas of a freedom of thought stand on the sidelines while a large number of people are slandered and abused.

I don't know of any public issue that has angered me personally more than this affair. I view it as an attack on me, and all people like me (defined in the only meaningful sense: in what one believes). I will be watching carefully to see how my liberal friends, and indeed all peoples who believe in protection of freedom of thought, will move to defend those who are being denied their rights.

Note: Edited for omitted words 12:06pm PST

Controlling Costs in a Universal Health Care System

Matt Yglesias of Think Progress is a strong proponent of a universal health care system. In this blog post, he examines what portions of current U.S. health care spending is attributable to different segments like administration, research and development, and drugs. Contrary to prevailing wisdom, he finds that insurance-related waste stemming from administrative costs in private insurance schemes comprises about 14% of overall waste, a much smaller figure than previously reported.

According to Yglesias, the biggest portion of waste in our system, what is called "excess spending," is devoted to “outpatient care.” A snippet:

We pay doctors more than other people do, our doctors order more tests than other doctors do, our tests are more expensive than other people’s tests, and we have many more relatively expensive specialists and relatively few relatively cheap GPs. And we have nothing to show for it.

The prospects for changing this, however, don’t look great to me. People don’t like insurance companies. Taking them on is popular. And nevertheless we see how difficult it is to really hurt their interests. Now imagine taking on the doctor lobby.

So how does a universal health care system cut up to 21% excess spending in outpatient care? Moreover, can this system reduce excess spending generally, like on administrative costs? Proponents of a universal health care system often point to Europe for the answers, which has found a way to increase coverage while minimizing costs.

On Megan McArdle’s blog, Asymmetrical Information, she tells us that the debate surrounding the important particulars of a U.S. universal health care system -- increasing coverage while minimizing costs -- runs afoul of both theory and experience. She says that cross-country comparisons are inappropriate and do little good in figuring how to curb costs here in this country. There is an ineluctable chasm between the U.S. and Europe; political structures and cultural mores are worlds apart. In a word, we’re just so much different than Europe. And here are a few reasons she says why:

· More wage inequality means doctors need to make more
· The American political system is especially easy to lobby

…

· American attitudes toward government: when told they can't have something they want, Americans do not say, oh, okay. They go on the news and call their congressman.
· Federalist and non-parliamentary democracy: in most other systems, the head of the government tells the government what to do. In our system, you need 220 congressmen and 50-60 senators. There's no way to implement the sort of technocratic change that reformers envision; the politicians will keep sticking their fingers in the pie.

Cross-country experiences may not be that informative. So what about theory? Can a national universal health care model draw important inferences from experiments done here in the U.S., at the state level, in what The Economist calls “fifty laboratories, one magic formula.” Are there state-level models proponents can look to? Is there a magic formula the federal government can adopt in order to increase coverage while also curbing costs?

Luckily, there's a lot that can be learned from Massachusetts' state-level universal health care model, which tries to insure all its citizens. Their experiment may be the best model we have to inform the theory that a universal health care system can both increase coverage and reduce costs. The question then becomes, does their mini-experiment include that magic formula?

Sadly, no.

Wendy Button, a former health care speech writer for Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and Barack Obama, now lives in Massachusetts, and tells us that she cannot afford health insurance there. When moving from Washington, D.C. to Massachusetts, Button quickly realized that since adopting universal health care coverage, insurance premiums in Massachusetts have outpaced U.S. national averages. She is a self-employed writer who earns enough money to make her ineligible for Massachusetts care but not enough to afford to buy her own insurance.

The Commonwealth’s model of universal health care promised to do much of what the current federal universal health care bills being debated also promise. Massachusetts' mini-experiment has failed in at least one important respect: for self-employed people like Button, private insurance premiums have risen so fast that health care is simply unaffordable.

Here are some excerpts describing her distressing predicament:

While the state has the lowest rate of uninsured, a report by the Commonwealth Fund states that Massachusetts has the highest premiums in the country. ... The mandate means that some people who can't afford insurance are now being slapped with a fine they also can't afford. There is no “public option” in the way the president describes it, no inter-state competition, no pool for small businesses and self-employed individuals like me to buy into groups that negotiate cheaper rates.

...

What makes this a double blow is that my experience contradicts so much of what I wrote for political leaders over the last decade. That's a terrible feeling, too. I typed line after line that said everything Massachusetts did would make health insurance more affordable. If I had a dollar for every time I typed, “universal coverage will lower premiums,” I could pay for my own health care at Massachusetts's rates.

Both theory and evidence suggest that a government-run health insurance plan cannot increase coverage while curbing costs. Yglesias tells us that much of excess spending -- the much-maligned "waste" we often hear of -- stems mostly from choices American doctors and patients make in the delivery of health care. Whether it's a private insurance scheme or a state-level universal scheme, Americans simply demand much more health care, both in quantity and in price. McArdle says that looking toward Europe is a fool's errand, since the political and cultural structures are vastly different. And Button's story serves as a warning that in fact, the U.S. has a mini-model of universal health care that has failed to do what it set out to do.

So in what has to be the most important question posed in our health care debate, McArdle asks universal health care proponents:

[W]hy do you think that we can control costs, given that we couldn't at the state level? Massachusetts is a very liberal state, a very rich state, and it started out with a relatively low proportion of its citizenry uninsured. Proponents of reform often say it has to be done at a national level because states can't borrow money in downturns, but this doesn't explain why the spending side is headed through the roof. Why are you gazing past the cost control problems at home towards people who don't even speak the same language we do, much less share a political culture?

The Afghanistan Debate

I don't know nearly enough to have a firm opinion on what to do with Afghanistan, but I liked Frank Rich's column in the Times today (and it echoes our discussion of "victory" in the age of insurgencies):

If you listen carefully to McCain and his neocon echo chamber, you’ll notice certain tics. President Obama better make his decision by tomorrow, or Armageddon (if not mushroom clouds) will arrive. We must “win” in Afghanistan — but victory is left vaguely defined. That’s because we will never build a functioning state in a country where there has never been one. Nor can we score a victory against the world’s dispersed, stateless terrorists by getting bogged down in a hellish landscape that contains few of them.

Most tellingly, perhaps, those clamoring for an escalation in Afghanistan avoid mentioning the name of the country’s president, Hamid Karzai, or the fraud-filled August election that conclusively delegitimized his government. To do so would require explaining why America should place its troops in alliance with a corrupt partner knee-deep in the narcotics trade. As long as Karzai and the election are airbrushed out of history, it can be disingenuously argued that nothing has changed on the ground since Obama’s inauguration and that he has no right to revise his earlier judgment that Afghanistan is a “war of necessity.”

Those demanding more combat troops for Afghanistan also avoid defining the real costs. The Congressional Research Service estimates that the war was running $2.6 billion a month in Pentagon expenses alone even before Obama added 20,000 troops this year. Surely fiscal conservatives like McCain and Graham who rant about deficits being “generational theft” have an obligation to explain what the added bill will be on an Afghanistan escalation and where the additional money will come from. But that would require them to use the dread words “sacrifice” and “higher taxes” when they want us to believe that this war, like Iraq, would be cost-free.

Gustavo Takes the Stage

Twenty-eight year-old Venezuelan conductor Gustavo Dudamel made his debut as music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic at Walt Disney Concert Hall Thursday night. The premiere was met with all the fanfare, glamour and expectation befitting a king.

NPR was on hand to broadcast the event. The WSJ, NYT, and LA Times offer effusive praise. Some samples:

The result was a blaring crowd-pleaser to be sure, but in Mr. Dudamel's hands this well-known symphony, which he led without a score, became something more: a fresh and supple work. Textures were disarmingly transparent in the first movement. And if the conductor's pacing was measured (per the tempo markings), tension never flagged.

...

The payoff predictably came in the finale, which the conductor layered precisely, gradually increasing tension until what began intensely turned heaven storming. Yes, pushing the taunting brasses this way undercut their warmth, but the consequent thrill handily compensated

...

Mr. Dudamel, gyrating on the podium and in control at every moment, drew a cranked-up yet subtly colored performance of this challenging score from his eager players. He seemed so confident dispatching this metrically fractured work that I was drawn into the music, confident that a pro was on the podium.

...

Oct. 8, 2009, is not the date of a revolution in music. The day marks not even the dawn of a new era. What the Gustavo Dudamel gala Thursday night at Walt Disney Concert Hall did mean for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, however, was an embrace of a new generation and cultural point of view, which is no small thing.

What's even more astounding than the level of intensity, the youth and the charisma Dudamel brings to this post is the reaction he elicits from the Los Angeles public. Many who were there that night revealed that they've never before been to a classical music concert; his new admirers readily admitted that they came only to see him.

By all accounts, it was a night to remember.

RE: That Nobel Prize

Berchmans hits the nail right on the head. He suggests that the Norwegian Nobel Committee may have selected President Obama for its 2009 Nobel Peace Prize in an effort to guide the president's thinking (and moral suasion) on the American wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

It's a bold political move, one that will resonate for a long time.

Yet one has to question whether the committee is risking losing credibility by conferring this prize to a sitting American president, particularly one who is commanding the efforts of these two wars. His choices concerning the American military presence in Afghanistan may indeed run counter to the spirit of the prize.

In accepting the prize, Obama's response was both graceful and shrewd. Here's a key example:

And even as we strive to seek a world in which conflicts are resolved peacefully and prosperity is widely shared, we have to confront the world as we know it today.

I am the commander in chief of a country that's responsible for ending a war and working in another theater to confront a ruthless adversary that directly threatens the American people and our allies.

That Nobel Prize

Really bizarre, no? No doubt, President Obama can point to some diplomatic initiatives that may warrant the committee's praise, but his record is just not prize-worthy.

Two possibilities: a) the world has a sudden shortage of actual peacemakers, which I sorely doubt or b) the Norwegian committee hopes to preempt any further invasions or military action (against North Korea or Iran or wherever else) by laying the peace prize on Obama's conscience.

RE: Fulfilling Supply-side Economics

I also read David Leonhardt's piece in the NYT but thought it only decent. The bits surrounding Bruce Bartlett's "conversion" are illuminating. To be sure, Bartlett is a fascinating character; he is one of those few people that seems to care more about seeking the truth than about being right.

Some other parts of Leonhardt's piece however, left me nonplussed. Berchmans highlights one of those passages that left me scratching my head. For one, why does Leonhardt focus only on federal taxes in his effort to debunk a tenet of supply-side economics? He must realize that if the total tax burden were taken into account -- including state and local taxes -- his story rings hollow. In fact, according to a 2007 Heritage Foundation study, the total tax burden has risen steadily since the end of WWII.

So when he says that planned entitlement spending by the Obama administration must be paid for by raising federal taxes, "and history suggests that’s O.K.," he's wrong. History does not suggest a lick about our current situation.

And notice the little rhetorical device Leonhardt employs at the end of Berchmans' excerpt. He has us believe that "a century ago, federal taxes equaled just a few percent of G.D.P. The country wasn’t better off than it is today." Well, what does that even mean? How do we go about trying to disprove a vague notion like, "better off?" Cross-century comparisons do us very little good.

Leonhardt marshals some compelling evidence -- Bartlett's supposed conversion, federal tax rates in line with historical norms, we're somehow "better off" -- to create his narrative that higher tax rates are needed. Yet like all tall tales, a lot of the facts get left behind.

Two Vietnam Books For Afghanistan Debate

The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times have both noted the two Vietnam books that are all the rage in Washington these days as the Afghanistan debate heats up:

The two books -- "Lessons in Disaster," on Mr. Obama's nightstand, and "A Better War" on the shelves of military gurus -- have become a framework for the debate over what will be one of the most important decisions of Mr. Obama's presidency.

On Tuesday, in a White House meeting that went well over its allotted hour, Mr. Obama discussed the war with 31 members of Congress. Republican leaders, and some Democrats, pressed him to quickly accept the judgment of his commanders and send as many as 40,000 additional troops to Afghanistan. But some Democrats asked if the war was winnable.

In Washington, books are flying off shelves. None of the major bookstores near the White House have the recently released paperback edition of "Lessons in Disaster" in stock, and one major shop in the Georgetown area, Barnes & Noble, said all its remaining copies were being held for buyers.

The impact of all the book-reading on the Afghanistan decision isn't clear. The administration's review of its Afghan strategy is expected to last until the end of this month, and views are likely to evolve. "A Better War" shaped the debate over the 2007 troop surge in Iraq: Military commanders and top Pentagon civilians pushed the book ardently on surge skeptics, winning important converts.

Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.), long an advocate of the narrative detailed in "A Better War," warned that while Vietnam may appear to have some parallels to Afghanistan, the better comparison is Iraq, where many of the same commanders now managing the Afghan war learned the value of surging more troops into a battle zone. "Vietnam fell to a conventional invasion of the North Vietnamese military," Mr. McCain said. "The closest parallel to Afghanistan today is Iraq, the strategies that succeeded and the generals that succeeded."

"Lessons in Disaster" entered West Wing circulation after Deputy National Security Adviser Tom Donilon, one of the top foreign-policy voices in the White House, gave it to White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel after reading it himself.

Fulfilling Supply-side Economics

David Leonhardt has an excellent column on Bruce Bartlett's argument that Republicans have taken their opposition to taxes too far:

His conservatism starts with the idea that high taxes are no longer the problem, even if complaining about them still makes for good politics. This year, federal taxes are on pace to equal just 15 percent of gross domestic product. It is the lowest share since 1950.

As the economy recovers, taxes will naturally return to about 18 percent of G.D.P., and Mr. Obama’s proposed rate increase on the affluent would take the level closer to 20 percent. But some basic arithmetic — the Medicare budget, projected to soar in coming decades — suggests taxes need to rise further, and history suggests that’s O.K.

For one thing, past tax increases have not choked off economic growth. The 1980s boom didn’t immediately follow the 1981 Reagan tax cut; it followed his 1982 tax increase to reduce the deficit. The 1990s boom followed the 1993 Clinton tax increase. Tax rates matter, but they’re nowhere near the main force affecting growth.

And taxes are supposed to rise as a country grows richer. This is Wagner’s Law, named for the 19th-century economist Adolf Wagner, who coined it. As societies become more affluent, people demand more services that governments tend to provide, like health care, education and a strong military. A century ago, federal taxes equaled just a few percent of G.D.P. The country wasn’t better off than it is today.

The Day Finance Almost Died

Absolutely riveting. Andrew Ross Sorkin's piece in the November issue of Vanity Fair is a must read.

U.S. Sept non-farm payrolls plunge 263,000

The story of rising overall unemployment is clearly gaining a lot of attention. However, what's not been gaining much attention is another more pernicious story: that of rising unemployment among teen-aged workers.

An editorial in yesterday's Wall Street Journal argues that the increasing U.S. minimum wage has disproportionally hurt younger and lower-skilled workers. The teen unemployment rate now stands at 25.9%, its highest level since World War II. In Massachusetts alone, during the same period the minimum wage increased 88%, teen employment fell by a third.

What's more, the editors argue that there's something more sinister at play. Minimum wage hikes consistently gain the support of Congressional Democrats and their union allies. They say that they're needed to ostensibly help bolster the wages of the working poor. But of all full-time workers (those working a 40-hour or more work week), only 1.1% earn the minimum wage.

The editors say that when the "overwhelming" body of scientific evidence stands athwart the machinations of one of the Obama's administration's biggest lobbies, this evidence is cast by the wayside. Here's a sample:

Congress and the Obama Administration simply ignore the economic consensus that has long linked higher minimum wages with higher unemployment. Two years ago Mr. Neumark and William Wascher, a Federal Reserve economist, reviewed more than 100 academic studies on the impact of the minimum wage. They found "overwhelming" evidence that the least skilled and the young suffer a loss of employment when the minimum wage is increased. Whatever happened to President Obama's pledge to follow the science? Democrats prefer to cite a few outlier studies known to be methodologically flawed.

Is the minimum wage really only "helping" union wages, while damaging the earning potential of a generation of U.S. workers as the editors say? Stanford University economist John Taylor says that there's an economics lesson in here:

Re: Victory in Iraq

Sorry I've been away for so long, but I wanted to make two points about Esquire's point declaring victory in Iraq:

First, President Obama probably avoided using the word 'victory' because he learned a thing or two from President Bush's "Mission Accomplished" fiasco. No doubt the surge produced a fair amount of success (as did other parts of the "Sunni Awakening" strategy), but things are still far from settled in Iraq as the string of explosions this year proved. Besides, the victory discourse may not fit in the counter-insurgency context, as opposed to the Second World War that conservatives seem to re-fight in every conflict.

Secondly, I don't think counting the number of times a word occurs in a speech should count as political analysis. I don't know when it became en vogue, but "word clouds" rarely persuade me of anything. (This is just a general pet-peeve, not a crack at you, Esquire.)

What Multiplier Effect?

Robert Barro and Charles Redlick say that the Keynesians have it all wrong. Fiscal stimulus does not work; even in times of crisis, an increase in government spending does not increase GDP by the same amount. In fact, the authors say, there is evidence that tax cuts often work better than fiscal stimulus.

The existing empirical evidence on the response of real gross domestic product to added government spending and tax changes is thin. In ongoing research, we use long-term U.S. macroeconomic data to contribute to the evidence. The results mostly favor tax rate reductions over increases in government spending as a means to increase GDP.

More on Universal Health Care

John F. Cogan, R. Glenn Hubbard and Daniel Kessler try to debunk two of President Obama's most compelling -- and oft-repeated -- claims about a universal health insurance plan. Namely, Obama's plan claims that it will benefit everyone who already has health insurance and will not add to the burgeoning federal deficit.

The mandates will lead to large increases in the cost of health insurance for everyone. Research studies have shown that as people become insured, especially under a health plan that offers broad coverage and low copayments, they consume more health-care services. The best estimates indicate that each newly insured person will approximately double his or her health spending. ...

The entitlement-based subsidy, combined with the proposed Medicaid expansion, would add between $700 billon and $1.2 trillion to federal spending over the next decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The new entitlements would come on top of existing federal health-care entitlements that the government has been neither able to control nor finance.

Who Says the Individual Health Care Mandate is a Tax?

Are mandated health benefits also a tax? President Obama says no.

[F]or us to say that you've got to take a responsibility to get health insurance is absolutely not a tax increase. What it's saying is, is that we're not going to have other people carrying your burdens for you anymore than the fact that right now everybody in America, just about, has to get auto insurance. Nobody considers that a tax increase. People say to themselves, that is a fair way to make sure that if you hit my car, that I'm not covering all the costs. ...

[Y]ou can't just make up that language and decide that that's called a tax increase. ...

My critics say everything is a tax increase.

However, Larry Summers, Director of the National Economic Council, says that a mandate is a tax.

Judgments about specific policy proposals must depend on the particulars, but I find that there are important differences in the efficiency and distributional consequences of standard public provision and mandated benefit programs. Essentially, mandated benefits are like public progams financed by benefit taxes. This make them more efficient but less equitable than standard public programs.

Michael F. Cannon of the Cato Institute also says that an individual health mandate is a tax. He digs a little deeper and finds others who agree with him. Many of his sources currently serve for the Obama adminstration.

Cannon concludes by asking the following questions: "if an individual mandate is not a tax, why exempt anybody? If an employer mandate isn’t a tax, why exempt small businesses?"

Links for Sunday, Septmeber 27th

1. Is your bank underwater?

2. From the Austrian School to the Saltwater perspective: 100 best blogs for the economics student.

3. Did regulation cause the financial crisis?

4. Or is banker's pay to blame?

5. How far are you from a Big Mac? (linked to via Marginal Revolution.)

Update: Banker's pay is certainly not to blame, says this other essay.

Qaddafi's Rambling Speech at the U.N.

Some of the more delicious portions of Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi's speech to the U.N. General Assembly contain the following:

He also suggested that those who caused “mass murder” in Iraq be tried; defended the right of the Taliban to establish an Islamic emirate; wondered whether swine flu was cooked up in a laboratory as a weapon; and demanded a thorough investigation of the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King... .

And he repeated his longstanding proposal that Israel and the Palestinian territories be combined into one state called Isratine.

Update: A reader over at Paul Krugman's blog , commenting on another rambling speech, says the following:

Why, back in the day, the norm for speeches in the Russian Politburo was 5-6 hours. No wonder Communism fell.

Iran's second nuclear facility...

We've all heard, I assume, that the cat's out of the bag about Iran's second nuclear facility (Iran announced it to the IAEA after becoming aware that the it was no longer secret, with the US having known about it for a year).

Beyond all the other discussion of it, I thought this tidbit from NBC's First Read was interesting:

*** We’ve known about this for a year: Per NBC’s Andrea Mitchell, officials say it was U.S. intelligence that learned of the secret plant more than a year ago -- before President Obama's election; Israel also knew about it, too. They most likely would not have gone public if Iran had not discovered that the U.S. was onto them and had it not notified the U.N.'s international inspection agency on Monday. By the way, Mitchell adds, the site is 30 kilometers outside of Qum, Iran’s holy city. That means that any military strike would be very difficult politically, because it would around[sic] huge reaction throughout the Muslim world. Also today, watch for Russian and Chinese reaction. Yes, they were notified of our intelligence this week, but their reaction is unknown.

From my perspective, if it becomes necessary to use military strikes to eliminate the Iranian threat (which I think it will be), I don't think it's even a question that the threat outweighs the risk of inflaming Muslim animus (as if we haven't already).

And of course, if Iran really cared about the sanctity of Qum, they wouldn't have placed an obvious military target right next door. In a rational world, the responsibility for any damage to Qum would fall on the party that uses it as a shield.

On the other hand, they may assume a lack of will on the part of the West to risk an attack, and consider it likely that its location is a protection. On this point, their perspective is pretty understandable if recent examples of Western resolve are considered.

E's Quote of the Day

"How, before the eyes of the world, could we justify meeting without tackling them?" Sarkozy scolded Thursday, referring to Iran and North Korea. "We live in the real world, not a virtual world. And the real world expects us to take decisions."

-- French Prime Minister Nicholas Sarkozy, on the omission of Iran and North Korea from the language of yesterday's anti-Proliferation resolution by the UN Security Council.

New blog on the blog-roll

I came across a new blog called Secular Right, which I found was interesting. With a special affinity for David Hume, the blog mission states:

We believe that conservative principles and policies need not be grounded in a specific set of supernatural claims. Rather, conservatism serves the ends of “Human Flourishing,” what the Greeks termed Eudaimonia. Secular conservatism takes the empirical world for what it is, and accepts that the making of it the best that it can be is only possible through our faculties of reason.

Contributors: John Derbyshire, Andrew Stuttaford, Heather Mac Donald, Razib Khan, and Walter Olson.

You can find it on the blog-roll, or by clicking here.

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Btw, I also added Michael Yon's website to the blog-roll list. The site is an essential read to gain insights into the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Yon has been imbedded in with Allied troops longer than any other reporter.