Coyote Blog

A reader sent me a link to what was a pretty interesting story on housing programs and crime in the most recent issue of the Atlantic.  In short, federal housing policy over the last 20-30 years has been to blow up central housing projects (fans of the Wire on HBO will have a good idea of this type of place) that tended to concentrate poverty in a few neighborhoods in favor of voucher programs that would spread the very poor around.  The idea was to get the poor into middle class neighborhoods, with the hope that middle class schools, support networks, and values might be infused in the poor.

Some now seem to be worried that exactly the opposite is happening.  As the article relates, city centers are being revitalized by sending the poor and associated criminal elements outwards.  But in turn, certain here-to-fore quiet suburbs are seeing crime spikes, and these crime waves seem to line up well with where the housing vouchers are being used.

A couple of thoughts:

• [insert libertarian rant on government playing god with poor people's lives, drug prohibition, government schools, etc.]
• The people of Houston would not be at all surprised by this, and might call it the Katrina effect.  It may well be that the dispersion of poor families will eventually result in reductions in total crime (say in the next generation or two), but hardened criminals of today don't stop being criminals just because they move to new neighborhoods -- certainly Houston has found this having inherited many criminals from New Orleans.
• I still think that if we are going to give out subsidized housing, that this in the long-run is a better approach.  The authors of the article seem to fear that the poor, having been dispersed, lost their support networks.  But it strikes me that it was this same network that reinforced all the worst cultural aspects of the old projects, and long-term I think fewer new criminals and poorly motivated kids will exist in the next generation if we can break some of this critical mass up. 
• The article is an interesting example of how new attitudes about race can get in the way of discussion as much as the old ones.  Stories about increasing crime in the suburbs after an influx of black poor is just too similar to the old integration fears held by whites in the 1960s and 1970s. 

It is interesting that with home prices and gasoline prices going in opposite directions, the media can declare both trends to be disasters for Americans.  Via Scrappleface:

The U.S. housing crisis reached fever pitch this month, with potential foreclosures up 48 percent compared with May 2007.

The devastation of receiving foreclosure notices has now swept
through a full 2/10ths of one percent of American homes. About 1/10th
of one percent of owners may lose their homes. For some of those
people, it's actually their primary residence in jeopardy, rather than
a second home, rental property or vacation condo.

 

To add insult to misery, mortgage rates skyrocketed this month to
6.32 percent, a shocking figure a full third of what it was during the
Carter administration.

As a result of the flood of homes on the market, real estate agent
commissions have dipped precariously, and home buyers increasingly
wrestle with the guilt of paying bargain prices for excellent
properties.

Market analysts say home prices could plummet as much as another 10
percent by the end of 2009, leaving first-time home buyers to face the
specter of owning a more spacious residence. The additional square
footage inequitably boosts the burden of cleaning, heating and air
conditioning.

Here in the west, one can be rewarded as an environmentalist for keeping one's home landscaping natural, rather than trying to create a golf-course-like lawn.  In Canton, Ohio, you may be going to jail (via a reader):

CANTON City Council has unanimously approved
toughening the city's high-grass and weeds law, making it possible for
repeat violators to get jail time.

Council passed the legislation Monday night by a vote of 12-0. The amended law will take effect in 30 days.
...

The revised law makes a second high-grass violation a
fourth-degree misdemeanor, which carries a fine of up to $250 and up to
30 days in jail. Existing law makes the first violation a minor
misdemeanor, with a fine of up to $150 but no jail time. Violators
initially are mailed a notice and given five days to mow the grass.
...

City officials say they are targeting the most egregious
violators of the high-grass law, which applies to grass and weeds
higher than 8 inches.

I am a bit late to this, having just gotten back in town, but this is extraordinarily good news:

In a stunning blow to the Bush Administration in its
war-on-terrorism policies, the Supreme Court ruled Thursday that
foreign nationals held at Guantanamo Bay have a right to pursue habeas
challenges to their detention. The Court, dividing 5-4, ruled that
Congress had not validly taken away habeas rights.  If Congress wishes
to suspend habeas, it must do so only as the Constitution allows "” when
the country faces rebellion or invasion.

The Court stressed that it was not ruling that the detainees are
entitled to be released "” that is, entitled to have writs issued to end
their confinement. That issue, it said, is left to the District Court
judges who will be hearing the challenges. The Court also said that "we
do not address whether the President has authority to detain"
individuals during the war on terrorism, and hold them at the U.S.
Naval base in Cuba; that, too, it said, is to be considered first by
the District judges.

The Court also declared that detainees do not have to go through the
special civilian court review process that Congress created in 2005,
since that is not an adequate substitute for habeas rights.

During the17th and 18th century, as various western countries began to reign in autarchs, habeas corpus rights were high on their list of protections they demanded.  There is just too much potential for abuse to allow the Executive Branch to hold people (of any nationality) indefinitely without any kind of judicial due process.  I refuse to discuss the detentions in the context of their effectiveness in fighting terrorism just as I refuse to discuss immigration in terms of who will pick the lettuce.  If there are valid and legal reasons for these guys to be in detention, then the President must allow the judicial branch to confirm them or the legislative branch to amend them.

Update:  Powerline writes:

Justice Scalia characterizes the decision this way:

Today, for the first time in our Nation's history, the
Court confers a constitutional right to habeas corpus on alien enemies
detained abroad by our military forces in the course of an ongoing war.

It strikes me as odd to confer such a right, but then I haven't read Justice Kennedy's opinion yet.

I don't have enough law background to know if this is truly unprecedented in this way, but what it if is?  One could easily argue that the nature of the "enemy" here, being that they don't have the courtesy to wear uniforms that indicate their combatant status and which side they are on, is fairly unprecedented as well.  As is the President's claim that he has unilateral power to declare that there is a war at all, who this war is against, and who is or is not a combatant.  I know from past posts on this topic that many of my readers disagree with me, but I think it is perfectly fine for the Supreme Court, encountering this new situation, sides with the individual over the government.

Update #2, via the Onion 9/11 issue:

Bush is acting with the full support of Congress, which on Sept. 14
authorized him to use any necessary force against the undetermined
attackers. According to House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL), the
congressional move enables the president to declare war, "to the extent
that war can realistically be declared on, like, maybe three or four
Egyptian guys, an Algerian, and this other guy who kind of looks
Lebanese but could be Syrian. Or whoever else it might have been.
Because it might not have been them."...

U.S. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), one of Congress' decorated war
veterans, tried to steel the nation for the possibility of a long and
confusing conflict.

"America faces a long road ahead," McCain said. "We do not yet know
the nature of 21st-century warfare. We do not yet know how to fight
this sort of fight. And I'll be damned if one of us has an inkling who
we will be fighting against. With any luck, they've got uniforms of
some sort."...

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said the war against terrorism will be different from any previous model of modern warfare.

"We were lucky enough at Pearl Harbor to be the victim of a craven
sneak attack from an aggressor with the decency to attack military
targets, use their own damn planes, and clearly mark those planes with
their national insignia so that we knew who they were," Rumsfeld said.
"Since the 21st-century breed of coward is not affording us any such
luxury, we are forced to fritter away time searching hither and yon for
him in the manner of a global easter-egg hunt."

After digging a First Amendment hole for itself in the Plame affair, the New York Times seems to still be hell-bent on narrowing the very First Amendment protections that probably kept its employees out of jail in the early 70's.  Specifically, the Times frets that the US is out of step with Europe in having a much broader view of freedom of speech:

Six years later, a state court judge in New York dismissed
a libel case brought by several Puerto Rican groups against a business
executive who had called food stamps "basically a Puerto Rican
program." The First Amendment, Justice Eve M. Preminger wrote, does not
allow even false statements about racial or ethnic groups to be
suppressed or punished just because they may increase "the general
level of prejudice."

Some prominent legal scholars say the United States should reconsider its position on hate speech.

"It
is not clear to me that the Europeans are mistaken," Jeremy Waldron, a
legal philosopher, wrote in The New York Review of Books last month,
"when they say that a liberal democracy must take affirmative
responsibility for protecting the atmosphere of mutual respect against
certain forms of vicious attack."

In the 1970's, members of my family worked in the oil industry, and we received numerous death threats of varying believability, and several of our friends received letter bombs or had family members kidnapped.  Many of these attacks and threats were directly traceable to certain media shows that featured editorial attacks on the oil industry.  So is the Times suggesting that the media should hold off on its criticism of the oil industry because this criticism created an atmosphere of hate in which these attacks were conducted?

No freaking way, because these calls to limit criticism and "hate speech" always have an ideological filter.  There is never a suggestion that the speech bans be even-handed.  Criticism of African Americans is outlawed, but exactly parallel language about white folks is A-OK.  Criticising Islam is out, but Christianity is a fine target.  Death threats against Haitian activists must be avoided at all costs, but death threats against corporate executives are no reflection on free speech or the media.  The article is quite explicit that by their definition, hate speech only applies to "minorities," which you can translate to mean "groups the political class has decided to protect."  You may be assured that members of the political class will find a way to get themselves included in this definition, so they can be free of criticism,

Kudos to Harvey Silvergate, who even makes the exact same point I have made about Hitler a number of times:

"Free speech matters because it works," Mr. Silverglate continued.
Scrutiny and debate are more effective ways of combating hate speech
than censorship, he said, and all the more so in the post-Sept. 11 era.

"The world didn't suffer because too many people read "˜Mein Kampf,' " Mr. Silverglate said. "Sending Hitler on a speaking tour of the United States would have been quite a good idea."

I will add that I am also happy to be out of step with Europe in terms of any number of other policies, including American libel law, or laws that make it ever so much easier to start a business, and European tolerance for a cozy business-political elite that, whatever their party, focuses on keeping their elite wealthy and powerful.

After digging a First Amendment hole for itself in the Plame affair, the New York Times seems to still be hell-bent on narrowing the very First Amendment protections that probably kept its employees out of jail in the early 70's.  Specifically, the Times frets that the US is out of step with Europe in having a much broader view of freedom of speech:

Six years later, a state court judge in New York dismissed
a libel case brought by several Puerto Rican groups against a business
executive who had called food stamps "basically a Puerto Rican
program." The First Amendment, Justice Eve M. Preminger wrote, does not
allow even false statements about racial or ethnic groups to be
suppressed or punished just because they may increase "the general
level of prejudice."

Some prominent legal scholars say the United States should reconsider its position on hate speech.

"It
is not clear to me that the Europeans are mistaken," Jeremy Waldron, a
legal philosopher, wrote in The New York Review of Books last month,
"when they say that a liberal democracy must take affirmative
responsibility for protecting the atmosphere of mutual respect against
certain forms of vicious attack."

In the 1970's, members of my family worked in the oil industry, and we received numerous death threats of varying believability, and several of our friends received letter bombs or had family members kidnapped.  Many of these attacks and threats were directly traceable to certain media shows that featured editorial attacks on the oil industry.  So is the Times suggesting that the media should hold off on its criticism of the oil industry because this criticism created an atmosphere of hate in which these attacks were conducted?

No freaking way, because these calls to limit criticism and "hate speech" always have an ideological filter.  There is never a suggestion that the speech bans be even-handed.  Criticism of African Americans is outlawed, but exactly parallel language about white folks is A-OK.  Criticising Islam is out, but Christianity is a fine target.  Death threats against Haitian activists must be avoided at all costs, but death threats against corporate executives are no reflection on free speech or the media.  The article is quite explicit that by their definition, hate speech only applies to "minorities," which you can translate to mean "groups the political class has decided to protect."  You may be assured that members of the political class will find a way to get themselves included in this definition, so they can be free of criticism,

Kudos to Harvey Silvergate, who even makes the exact same point I have made about Hitler a number of times:

"Free speech matters because it works," Mr. Silverglate continued.
Scrutiny and debate are more effective ways of combating hate speech
than censorship, he said, and all the more so in the post-Sept. 11 era.

"The world didn't suffer because too many people read "˜Mein Kampf,' " Mr. Silverglate said. "Sending Hitler on a speaking tour of the United States would have been quite a good idea."

I will add that I am also happy to be out of step with Europe in terms of any number of other policies, including American libel law, or laws that make it ever so much easier to start a business, and European tolerance for a cozy business-political elite that, whatever their party, focuses on keeping their elite wealthy and powerful.

After this post on incentives, where I observed that perhaps 99% of all government policy failed on incentives issues, I thought about going a whole week and discussing every story in the context of failed or mismatched incentives.  Then I thought about all the time I had spent building up my readership only to chase everyone away in just one week, so I will defer that idea.

BUT, can anyone tell me what incentives these people have to go work and support themselves?

What are people who receive FEMA assistance doing to help
themselves? That's the question NBC 15's Andrea Ramey asked those who
have been staying for free in hotel rooms after they moved out of FEMA
supplied travel trailers. What she found out is there are some who are
doing very little.

The scorching heat puts many at the Quality Inn poolside, but for
Gwenester Malone, she chooses to beat the heat by setting her
thermostat to sixty degrees. Malone's room for the past three months,
along with three meals daily, have all been paid for by taxpayers.

"Do you work?" asked NBC 15's Andrea Ramey.

"No. I'm not working right now," said Malone.

Malone says she can't drive and it's too hot outside to find work
within walking distance. "Since the storm, I haven't had any energy or
pep to go get a job, but when push comes to shove, I will," said Malone.

Just a few blocks away, Kelley Christian also stays at a hotel for
free. She says she's not taking advantage of her situation, but admits
it's easy to do. "It's too easy. You know, once you're there, you don't
have to pay rent," said Christian. "I kept putting it off and putting
it off and now, I'm tired of putting it off."

The list of topics banned from criticism is increasing in Canada.  First it was Islam, and then it was homosexuality.  Now, it is making activist professors at public universities immune from criticism.  By order of the Canadian government:

That Mr. Boissoin and The Concerned Christian Coalition Inc. shall
cease publishing in newspapers, by email, on the radio, in public
speeches, or on the internet, in future, disparaging remarks about gays
and homosexuals. Further, they shall not and are prohibited from making
disparaging remarks in the future about Dr. Lund or Dr. Lund's
witnesses relating to their involvement in this complaint. Further, all
disparaging remarks versus homosexuals are directed to be removed from
current web sites and publications of Mr. Boissoin and The Concerned
Christian Coalition Inc.

That fact that I vociferously disagree with Mr. Boissoin (I am in fact thrilled, for example, that gays will be able to marry soon in California), I whole-heartedly support his right to publicly voice his opinions, even if it makes some people feel bad.  Dr. Lund, as I understand it, as a professor at a state university, is a government employee, and a vociferous one at that.  All limitations on speech are bad, but this decision has crossed that critical line of protecting government employees from criticism, what we would think as the absolute solid heart of the First Amendment (while simultaneously restricting religious beliefs, just for extra credit).

I have always wondered how people could describe European countries as more egalitarian than the US.  Yeah, I know the income distribution tends to be flatter, but that is almost entirely because the rich are richer in the US rather than the poor being poorer.  But pure income distribution has always seemed like a terrible way to make comparisons.  My perception has always been that class lines in Europe are much harder than they are in the US.  The elites in Europe have made a sort of arrangement in which they pay off the masses with an income floor and low work expectations in turn for making sure that none of the masses can in turn challenge their elite status or join their ranks.  The government protects large corporations form competition, foreign or domestic.  The government protects existing laborers against new entrants into the labor market.  The government makes it virtually impossible for the average guy to start a business.  The result is a lower and middle class who won't or can't aspire to breaking out of their class.  Elites are protected, and no one seems to care very much when political elites enrich themselves through public office and then entrench themselves and their families in the power system.  This, presumably, is why the American political class thinks so much of the European model.

Bryan Caplan writes via Marginal Revolution:

In the U.S., we have low gas taxes, low car taxes, few tolls, strict zoning that leads developers to provide lots of free parking, low speed limits, lots of traffic enforcement, and lots of congestion.

In Europe (France and Germany specifically), they have high gas
taxes, high car taxes, lots of tolls, almost no free parking, high
speed limits (often none at all), little traffic enforcement, and very
little congestion. (The only real traffic jam I endured in Europe was
trying to get into Paris during rush hour. I was delayed about 30
minutes total).

If you had to pick one of these two systems, which would you prefer?
Or to make the question a little cleaner, if there were two otherwise
identical countries, but one had the U.S. system and the other had the
Euro system, where would you decide to live?

Much as it pains me to admit, I would choose to live in the country
with the Euro system. If you're at least upper-middle class, the
convenience is worth the price. Yes, this is another secret way that
Europe is better for the rich, and the U.S. for everyone else.

By now, this story has been linked all over, but it is still hilarious.  The folks who want to run the US healthcare system and the US energy industry have found that they are not competent enough to manage even the Senate cafeteria:

Year after year, decade upon decade, the U.S. Senate's network of
restaurants has lost staggering amounts of money -- more than $18
million since 1993, according to one report, and an estimated $2
million this year alone, according to another.

The financial condition of the world's most exclusive dining hall and its affiliated Capitol Hill
restaurants, cafeterias and coffee shops has become so dire that,
without a $250,000 subsidy from taxpayers, the Senate won't make
payroll next month....

In a masterful bit of understatement, Feinstein blamed "noticeably
subpar" food and service. Foot traffic bears that out. Come lunchtime,
many Senate staffers trudge across the Capitol and down into the
basement cafeteria on the House side [where food service is provided privately]. On Wednesdays, the lines can be
30 or 40 people long.

This is not a new issue - it has been a festering sore that the Senate has been unable to manage for decades.  And we're talking about a single freaking cafeteria here.  More from Alex Tabarrok

I have noticed that my readership is skewing a little old, so to capture that critical males 18-24 demographic, I will, as a public service, provide this critical information that colleges seldom provide in trying to choose a major.  HT TJIC

Frequent readers will know that I have little love for our self-aggrandizing, civil rights violating Sheriff Joe Arpaio.  A recent Arizona Republic article wrote:

A veteran Republican lawmaker wants to know why a high-level chief for
the Maricopa County Sheriff has made recent trips to China.

Because China is Sheriff Joe's role model!  It's telling that our sheriff sends his deputies on fact-finding missions to Latin American countries and China to learn new policing techniques.  Also, the article gets into some of the increasingly weird dealings in the Sheriff Joe's infatuation with facial recognition software.

Kevin Drum titles a post on providing government incentives for high MPG cars "Ending the Addiction,"  by which I presume he means addiction to gasoline.   I really struggle with the point of view on life that describes consumer affinity for enormously value-producing technologies to be an "addiction."  One could equally well refer to our preference for good health or prosperity to be an "addiction," particularly when fossil fuels have played such a central role in fueling the industrial revolution and the prosperity which it has brought.  With the current jump in oil prices tied so closely to growing wealth in China, never has the tie between fossil fuel use and prosperity been more obvious.

Drum advocates for what he calls a "progressive" proposal:

For cars, the most effective thing would be a "feebate": In the
showroom, less-efficient models would have a corresponding fee, while
the more-efficient ones would get a rebate paid for by the fees. That
way when choosing what model you want you would pay attention to fuel
savings over its whole life, not just the first year or two. It turns
out that the automakers can actually make more money this way because
they will want to get their cars from the fee zone into the rebate zone
by putting in more technology. The technology has a higher profit
margin than the rest of the vehicle.

I will say that this is probably less bad than other "progressive" proposals I have heard, but the logic here is based on consumer ineptness.  Higher gas prices, which drive higher lifecycle costs, are presumably providing exactly this incentive without any government program.  The problem, it seems, is that progressives don't think very much of the common people they wish to defend.  Just as the justification for Social Security is that the average person can't be trusted to make good decisions about their retirement savings so we elites will do it for them, this seems to be the logic here, but even more patronizing.   Here is the best bit which really demonstrates the point I am making:

Here's a further suggestion: require stickers to list the estimated cost of fuel consumption over a five year period.

Basically this calculation is total estimated miles per year divided by mpg times estimated gas prices times five. A simple piece of math with four numbers that can be completed on a calculator in 10 seconds or by hand in less than 30 seconds.  Mr. Drum, a big supporter of our current monopoly government school system, apparently does not think that people educated in this system can do this math for themselves.  Could it be clearer that "progressivism" is really about disdain for the common man and a belief that elites should make even the smallest decisions for them?

OK, here is my question:  Do the folks in this article understand incentives and simply ignore them, or are they truly ignorant?

In a move that would make zero a grade of the past, the Chapel
Hill-Carrboro school district is considering making 61 the lowest grade
for a failing assignment.

The goal would be to assure that a single
test-day disaster doesn't ruin a semester. Some teachers, students and
parents say the change would coddle failing students....

Homework would not count for more than 20 percent of the quarterly
grade, according to the proposal. Other proposed revisions include
giving students more time to make up incomplete assignments while
offering more support strategies, making it easier for them to pass.

"Students
[would] have a chance to recover," Martin said. "Getting a bad grade or
having a bad day does not mean you are a failure. This is about hope."

There is simply no way this is going to help, and it is amazing to me that educated people can't see it, yet I think that is the case (I don't believe they are trying to be evil)  A staggeringly large percentage of what goes awry in the world can be explained by bad or mismatched incentives, so it is incredible to me that our education system seems to so consistently resist teaching this topic.

A good column on gas prices by George Will.

Can a senator, with so many things on his mind, know so precisely how
the price of gasoline would respond to that increase in the oil supply?
Schumer does know that if you increase the supply of something, the
price of it probably will fall. That is why he and 96 other senators
recently voted to increase the supply of oil on the market by stopping
the flow of oil into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve,
which protects against major physical interruptions. Seventy-one of the
97 senators who voted to stop filling the reserve also oppose drilling
in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

One million barrels is what might today be flowing from ANWR if in 1995 President Bill Clinton
had not vetoed legislation to permit drilling there. One million
barrels produce 27 million gallons of gasoline and diesel fuel.
Seventy-two of today's senators -- including Schumer, of course, and 38
other Democrats, including Barack Obama, and 33 Republicans, including John McCain -- have voted to keep ANWR's estimated 10.4 billion barrels of oil off the market.

The Europeans have crafted a regulatory environment in their labor market that grants all kinds of protections and gauranteed benefits at the expense of new or unskilled workers trying to join the workforce.  We are doing the same thing:

This year, it's harder than ever for teens to find a summer job. Researchers at Northeastern University
described summer 2007 as "the worst in post-World War II history" for
teen summer employment, and those same researchers say that 2008 is
poised to be "even worse."

According to their data, only about
one-third of Americans 16 to 19 years old will have a job this summer,
and vulnerable low-income and minority teens are going to fare even
worse.

The percentage of teens classified as "unemployed""”those
who are actively seeking a job but can't get one"”is more than three
times higher than the national unemployment rate, according to the most
recent Department of Labor statistics.

One of the prime reasons
for this drastic employment drought is the mandated wage hikes that
policymakers have forced down the throats of local businesses. Economic
research has shown time and again that increasing the minimum wage
destroys jobs for low-skilled workers while doing little to address
poverty.

According to economist David Neumark of the University of California at Irvine,
for every 10 percent increase in the minimum wage, employment for high
school dropouts and young black adults and teenagers falls by 8.5
percent. In the past 11 months alone, the United States' minimum wage has increased by more than twice that amount.

My son and I went to see a game today in Yankee Stadium. both because he is a big Yankees fan and to see Yankee Stadium one last time before they tear it down.  While the Yanks lost, with Mariano Rivera giving up a solo home run in the 9th, my son, who is a huge A-Rod fan, got to see A-Rod go yard to tie the game in the 8th.  A couple of observations:

• There is a whole different seat-ethic going on in Yankee Stadium.  Every single time we got up to get food or go to the bathroom, we found someone in our seats.  Seat numbers on tickets seem to be a recommendation rather than an absolute assignment
• If you leave aside the history, there are a lot of very good design reasons for blowing up Yankee Stadium.
• The Yanks showed a nice Rocky-themed film in the 8th, but puh-leeze -- there is not any team in the world that can less wrap itself in the mantle of scrappy underdog.  If any team is Apollo Creed, its the Yankees.
• Enter the Sandman is great entry music for a closer like Rivera.

Oh, those wacky guys on the UN "Human Rights" Council.  They are now looking to Saudi Arabia as a model for protection of individual rights:

The top U.N. rights body on Thursday passed a resolution proposed by
Islamic countries saying it is deeply concerned about the defamation of
religions and urging governments to prohibit it.

The European Union said the text was one-sided because it primarily focused on Islam.

The U.N. Human Rights Council, which is dominated by Arab and other
Muslim countries, adopted the resolution on a 21-10 vote over the
opposition of Europe and Canada....

The resolution "urges states to take actions to prohibit the
dissemination ... of racist and xenophobic ideas" and material that
would incite to religious hatred. It also urges states to adopt laws
that would protect against hatred and discrimination stemming from
religious defamation.

Saudi Arabia said, "Maybe Islam is one of the most obvious victims of aggressions under the pretext of freedom of expression."

"It is regrettable that there are false translations and
interpretations of the freedom of expression," the Saudi delegation
told the council, adding that no culture should incite to religious
hatred by attacking sacred teachings.

Hat tip:  Yet another Weird SF Fan

Update:  I am kind of amazed the irony is lost on some folks, so I guess I need to be more explicit:  I found it depressing that the UN Human Rights Council is calling for limits on speech.

I am not big on arguing the immigration issue from an integration perspective, any more than I like to argue about who will pick the lettuce.  Free movement around the globe and the ability to take a job by mutual consent of the two parties rather than based on their country of origin should drive immigraiton policy.

I live in the state with the highest percentage of illegal immigrants, and I have never gotten my head around why this was culturally bad.  I think the Hispanic culture here brings at least as much to the table as, say, the Irish do in Boston.  So I did not find this to be surprising (from the Manhattan Institute, via Reason)

In general, the longer an immigrant lives in the United States, the
more characteristics of native citizens he or she tends to take on,
said Jacob L. Vigdor, a professor at Duke University
and author of the study. During periods of intense immigration, such as
from 1870 to 1920, or during the immigration wave that began in the
1970s, new arrivals tend to drag down the average assimilation index of
the foreign-born population as a whole.

The report found,
however, that the speed with which new arrivals take on native-born
traits has increased since the 1990s. As a result, even though the
foreign population doubled during that period, the newcomers did not
drive down the overall assimilation index of the foreign-born
population. Instead, it held relatively steady from 1990 to 2006.

"This
is something unprecedented in U.S. history," Vigdor said. "It shows
that the nation's capacity to assimilate new immigrants is strong."

Lots of new blog posts today.  The reasons is that I am in introvert's bliss, dodging the requirement to stand by my wife at reunions and be introduced to a lot of people I don't know and don't really know how to begin talking to.  So I have retreated to the Vassar library, a beautiful example of college Gothic, with my kids.   The only small problem I have is that I think some parents need to teach their kids better library manners.  Lots of kids dumped here in the library today, and teenagers are all around my watching YouTube with the sound turned way up and talking loudly about what they are seeing.  However, having avoided all social interaction, I am resisting the downward spiral into grumpy-old-man land by not snapping at the kids around me.

First, it was the National Recovery Act, where FDR explicitly tried to creat an economic system modelled on Mussolini-style fascism.  This was killed by the Supreme Court.  But the will of government to create an economic system where private companies win and lose based on how well connected they are to politicians never goes away.  The lastest attempt to set up such a managed system was via the Lieberman-Warner climate bill:

But perhaps even more pernicious is the way that "carbon credits" are distributed.

The credits are best described as a pulled-out-of-thin-air government-created fiat currency,
that is accepted only by the government in exchange for the
government's permission to let you emit CO2. (If ever a system was perfectly set up to be abused and politicized by politicians, this is it.)

Government bureaucrats will decide
sector by sector and industry by industry which companies get the
credits. Implicitly, that same decision by government regulators also
determines which companies will need to buy credits from the politically-connected companies who could get their carbon credits for free.

OK, so this guy committed fraud:

In the hundreds of bills for which he has provided estimates to
lawmakers since 2000, the actuary, Jonathan Schwartz, said legislation
adjusting the pensions of public employees would have no cost, or
limited cost, to the city.

But just 11 of the more than 50 bills vetted by Mr. Schwartz that
have become law since 2000 will result in the $500 million in eventual
costs, or more than $60 million annually, according to projections
provided by Robert C. North Jr., the independent actuary of the city
pension system, and by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's office....

Mr. North and other city employees made the calculations on the 11
bills when they were before the Legislature, but for the other bills,
no alternative to Mr. Schwartz's projections could be found. The New
York Times reported last month that in an arrangement that had not been
publicly disclosed, Mr. Schwartz was being paid by labor unions. He
acknowledged in an interview that he skewed his work to favor the
public employees, calling his job "a step above voodoo."

But really, did any of the legislators supporting these bills really think the costs were zero?  If the public employees union is asking for a pension change, you can be sure it is not to save the state money.  This does not let legislators off the hook for failing to exercises any common sense.

Last year, Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize for proposing world-wide government actions that will prevent a billion of more people form escaping poverty.  But, once upon a time, Norman Borlaug won a Peace Prize for actually helping the poor help themselves.  Here is what he is saying today.  Folks from the EU to Bono to Al Gore are standing in the way, again, of people feeding themselves by aggressively applying the technology we take for granted in America:

Yields can still be increased by 50-100% in much of the Indian sub-Continent,
Latin America, the former USSR and Eastern Europe, and by 100-200% in much of
sub-Saharan Africa, providing political stability is maintained, bureaucracies
that destroys entrepreneurial initiative are reigned in, and their researchers
and extension workers devote more energy to putting science and technology to
work at the farm level....

I now say that the world has the technology - either available or
well-advanced in the research pipeline - to feed a population of 10 billion
people. The more pertinent question today is whether farmers and ranchers will
be permitted to use this new technology. Extremists in the environmental
movement from the rich nations seem to be doing everything they can to stop
scientific progress in its tracks. Small, but vociferous and highly effective
and well-funded, anti-science and technology groups are slowing the application
of new technology, whether it be developed from biotechnology or more
conventional methods of agricultural science. I am particularly alarmed by those
who seek to deny small-scale farmers of the Third World -and especially those in
sub-Saharan Africa - access to the improved seeds, fertilizers, and crop
protection chemicals that have allowed the affluent nations the luxury of
plentiful and inexpensive foodstuffs which, in turn, has accelerated their
economic development.

What is adult prohibition of marijuana achieving, if teenage use rates of marijuana are nearly as high as those for cigarettes, where we don't have adult prohibition.  Prohibitionists argue that adult marijuana must be banned because its legal availability to adults would make it easier for teens to obtain, but a direct comparison of marijuana and tobacco smoking demonstrates little utility from this approach:

The cigarette use figure represents a sharp drop from
the 2005 survey, when it was 23 percent. Marijuana use, at 20.2 percent
in 2005, showed a much smaller decline....

Another report
released this week, the Fiscal Year 2007 Annual Synar Report on tobacco
sales to youth, showed the 10th straight annual decline in the rate of
illegal tobacco sales to minors. In 1997, 40.1 percent of retailers
violated laws against tobacco sales to minors. In 2007 the rate had
dropped to just 10.5 percent, the lowest ever.

"Efforts to curb
cigarette sales to teens have been wildly successful, and it's past
time we applied those lessons to marijuana," said Aaron Houston,
director of government relations for the Marijuana Policy Project in
Washington, D.C. "Tobacco retailers can be fined or put out of business
if they sell to kids, but prohibition guarantees that we have zero
control over marijuana dealers. Foolish policies have guaranteed that
the marijuana industry is completely unregulated."

Jacob Sullum provides additional analysis in the rest of the post.

I don't know much about geothermal power, but I do know I don't hear much talk about it of late.  Anthony Watt thinks this is a mistake, and discusses the potential.  To some extent, the problem with geothermal's acceptance is that it breaks our current centralized power model in favor of distributed power.  There are few spots where geothermal potential is large enough to run a big power plant, but apparently many where there is the ability to heat a single building.