Dispatches from District 48
Archive for December 2015
Campaign spending limits allow only the already-famous or the inflammatory populist to challenge incumbents...kindof like Trump @instapundit
— Coyoteblog (@Coyoteblog) December 31, 2015
Trump has spent virtually no money this campaign, so he should be the dream candidate of election finance reformers, right? @instapundit
— Coyoteblog (@Coyoteblog) December 31, 2015
[This is first in a series of comments I would like to post at Mother Jones, but I have been banned]
Liberal Kevin Drum is crowing that the ACA is "doing exactly what it was designed to do" in "successfully browbeating" and "threatening" young people to buy health insurance, a product that in most cases they don't want and can ill afford -- particularly since the rules of Obamacare risk-rating jack up the prices to young healthy people in order to subsidize the premiums of older, wealthier, more politically powerful people. Wow, the term "liberal" has sure come a long way, hasn't it? Those of us who still respect the dignity and autonomy of individuals, and by the way are horrified at the idea of having younger lower income people forced to subsidize older higher income people, would like our term "liberal" back.
I will say, though, that it is nice to see Progressives being more up-front about their authoritarianism.
I am out of the country (currently in Thailand for a wedding). I read this in the local Asian WSJ, an article about money and patronage in the Malaysian political process. And while I suppose I was supposed to think "wow, Malaysia is sure screwed up" -- all I was really left with at the end of this article was "how is this any different from the US?" How does 1MDB differ from, say, various green energy funds at the Federal level or community development funds at the local level?
Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak was fighting for his political life this summer after revelations that almost $700 million from an undisclosed source had entered his personal bank accounts.
Under pressure within his party to resign, he called together a group of senior leaders in July to remind them everyone had benefited from the money.
The funds, Mr. Najib said, weren’t used for his personal enrichment. Instead, they were channeled to politicians or into spending on projects aimed at helping the ruling party win elections in 2013, he said, according to a cabinet minister who was present.
“I took the money to spend for us,” the minister quoted Mr. Najib as saying.
It still isn’t clear where the $700 million came from or where it went. But a six-month Wall Street Journal examination revealed that public entities spent hundreds of millions of dollars on a massive patronage machine to help ensure Mr. Najib’s United Malays National Organization stayed in power. The payments, while legal, represented a new milestone in Malaysia’s freewheeling electoral system, according to ruling-party officials....
The effort relied heavily on the state investment fund Mr. Najib controlled, 1Malaysia Development Bhd., according to minutes from 1MDB board meetings seen by The Wall Street Journal and interviews with people who worked there.
The prime minister, who is chairman of 1MDB’s board of advisers, promised repeatedly that the fund would boost Malaysia’s economy by attracting foreign capital. It rolled up more than $11 billion in debt without luring major investments.
Yet Mr. Najib used the fund to funnel at least $140 million to charity projects such as schools and low-cost housing in ways that boosted UMNO’s election chances, the Journal investigation found.
The minutes portray a fund that repeatedly prioritized political spending, even when 1MDB’s cash flow was insufficient to cover its debt payments.
This illustrates one (of many) reasons why those lobbying to reduce campaign spending are on the wrong track. Because no matter how much one limits the direct spending in elections, no country, including the US, ever limits politicians from these sorts of patronage projects, which are essentially vote-buying schemes with my tax money.
The reason there is so much money in politics is because supporters of large government have raised the stakes for elections. Want to see money leave politics? -- eliminate the government's ability to sacrifice one group to another while subsidizing a third, and no one will spend spend a billion dollars to get his guy elected to public office.
By the way, in this current Presidential election we are seeing a vivid demonstration of another reason campaign spending limits are misguided. With strict spending limits, the advantage goes to the incumbent. The only people who can break through this advantage are people who are either a) already famous for some other reason or b) people who resort to the craziest populist rhetoric. Both of which describe Donald Trump to a T (update: Trump has spent virtually no money in this election, so he should be the dream candidate of clean elections folks, right?)
To me, this proves that crazy stuff can happy to anyone. Jon is as bright and hard-working as anyone I know. He is also entirely trustworthy and honorable in a business that often lacks these qualities. The thief apparently sold one large stone, about 10 ct., to someone in the same building** who then cut it down to 9 ct. and resold it. There would be no reason for a dealer to cut down an already cut stone, since it substantially reduced the value, unless he knew the stone to be stolen and was purposely trying to disguise the stone for resale. Its like a thief robbing your house and selling your TV to your neighbor, who changes the label so you won't recognize it when you come over.
** all of the major diamond dealers in New York seem to work in just 2 buildings on Fifth Avenue.
I have always thought so, and the danger of the job is a large reason why police get so many special privileges, from outsized pensions to minuscule accountability for people they shoot or kill.
But police are not among the top most dangerous professions -- they are not even in the top 10. Being a taxi driver is more dangerous ( and in fact for 2015 the #1 cause of death on the job was traffic accidents). We don't fetishize garbage collectors like we do police but they die on the job at twice the rate as do police.
In fact, the rate at which police are killed by gun violence is not substantially higher than for the average citizen. In 2015 there were 39 firearms deaths of police (from the source above). Given the way that firearms stats are reported broadly, these are probably not all killings by other people (some police likely are killed by accidental discharge, etc). But assuming they are all gun killings, and assuming about 900,000 police (I get a broad range of estimates for this seemingly simple number) gives a rate of 4.3 per 100,000 per year, not much higher than the US gun homicide death number of 3.55 (you may have seen much higher numbers of gun death numbers -- over 2/3 of these are suicides).
Postscript: The current media model is breaking the Internet. I have seen the chart a ton of times on the most dangerous professions, so I searched for it. Do it yourself. The first 8 or 9 links all turn out to be the stupid new media format of requiring 10 clicks to get through a list. I simply refuse to ever click on these things. It is a horrible way to present information. I suggest you boycott them as well.
[no spoilers] I don't mean the title negatively -- I liked the reboots of both Star Trek and Star Wars that he wrote and directed. Given the long absence of each franchise, there is no problem in my mind restarting the series with an homage to the old series and characters. In particular, Abrams is great at peppering the movie with little shout-outs and inside jokes for the fan base. And both are reasonably good adventure movies with beautiful action scenes.
The problems comes with the second movie, and moving the series into new territory. The second Star Trek movie (Into the Darkness) couldn't seem to extricate itself from fan fic mode, retelling the Kahn story for the third time, with cute little reverses like Kirk dying and Spock screaming "Kahn.....", the opposite from The Wrath of Khan.
I understand the pressure. The fan base of both franchises was ready to strangle Abrams at the first hint of heresy to the original material. But for God sakes the Star Wars loyalists, of which I consider myself one, endured Jar Jar. The new Star Wars movie has some flaws, but it is a perfectly serviceable and enjoyable reboot. Now it's time to take some risks with it.
Postscript: Is there a handbook of Star Wars Imperial architecture? Is it driven entirely by creating movie aesthetics or have directors started to work a running gag here? In the new movie -- I promise this is not really a spoiler -- there is a scene with one of those classic Imperial rooms with the infinitely deep hole in it, featuring tiny narrow walkways without handrails (I consider this not a spoiler since at least one such room has probably been featured in every Star Wars movie). Anyway, one of the characters finds themselves clinging to the walls of said infinite drop some 12 or 15 fee below the nearest walkway. And what do you know, there is some sort of switch lever there. There are wall switches in my house that I think are located inconveniently, but wtf? Who designs these places?
By the way, the movie Galaxy Quest, which I still love, had a great parody of this sort of sci fi architecture. John Scalzi's Redshirts also touches on this territory as well.
This is one of those questions that seems like a no-brainer -- a bunch of people are sharing a ride, so they must be saving energy. When asked this question, we all think of a full bus or train of people vs. the number of cars that would have carried the same people.
The key issue turns out to be occupancy -- how full is the train or bus. And it turns out that occupancy is probably lower than most people think. That is because everyone rides on buses or trains as they commute -- they are going in the direction of most people's travel at the time of day they travel, so the transit is totally full. But no one thinks about those trains having to go back the other direction, usually mostly empty. As a result, we get to this fact, from the National Transit Database as synthesized by Randal O'Toole.
2014 Energy Use per Passenger Mile
- Transit: 3141 BTU
- Driving: 3144 BTU
Valley Metro Rail here in Phoenix does better, at a reported 1885 BTU per passenger mile. As reported many times here on this site, the cost of building this rail line, now well over one and a half billion dollars, would easily have bought every round trip rider a new Prius, with a lot of money left over. This would have saved more energy as well. Buses in Phoenix are averaging just over 6000 BTU per passenger mile.
How did Disney buy Star Wars for only $4 billion? I first saw this question asked by Kevin Drum, though I can't find the link (and I am not going to feel guilty about it after Mother Jones banned me for some still-opaque reason). But Disney is going to release a new movie every year, and if it is anything like the Marvel franchise, they are going to milk it for a lot of money. Plus TV tie-ins. Plus merchandising. Plus they are rebuilding much of their Hollywood Studios park at DisneyWorld in a Star Wars theme.
The answer is that this is the kind of deal that makes trading in a free market a win-win rather than zero-sum. Lucas, I think, was played out and had no ability, or no desire, to do what it would take to make the franchise worth $4 billion. On the flip side Disney is freaking good a milking a franchise for all its worth (there is none better at this) and so $4 billion is starting to appear cheap from their point of view.
By the way, Disney is going to need the profits from Star Wars to fill in the hole ESPN is about to create. A huge percentage of the rents in the cable business have historically flowed to ESPN, which is able to command per-subscriber fees from cable companies that dwarf any other network. Times are a-changin' though, as pressure increases from consumers to unbundle. If cable companies won't unbundle, then consumers will do it themselves, cutting the cable and creating their own bundles from streaming offerings.
ESPN is already seeing falling subscriber numbers, and everyone thinks this is just going to accelerate. ESPN is in a particularly bad position when revenues fall, because most of its costs are locked up under long-term contracts for the acquisition of sports broadcasting rights. It can't easily cut costs to keep up with falling revenues. It is like a bank that has lent long and borrowed short, and suddenly starts seeing depositors leave. And this is even before discussing competition, which has exploded -- every major pro sports league has its own network, major college athletic conferences have their own network, and competitors such as Fox and NBC seem to keep adding more channels.
Not really sure what I did to reach this achievement, but somehow I got banned in the last 2 days by Mother Jones, and probably by Kevin Drum. My comment history is here, and I am totally perplexed what led to this. My last comment was on a post of Drum's about hospital price competition, where I wrote:
The authors portray this (at least in the quoted material) as an anti-trust issue, but I suspect a bigger problem is the cronyist certificate of need process. In many locations, new hospitals, or hospital expansions (even things as small as buying a new cat scanner) require government permission in the form of a certificate of need. As one may imagine, entrenched incumbents are pretty good at managing this process to make sure they get no new competition. This, by the way, is a product of classic progressive thinking, which in its economic ignorance saw competition as duplicative and wasteful. We are lucky the Supreme Court shot down FDR's NRA or we would have this sort of mess in every industry.
Hard to believe this got me banned, unless Mother Jones has gotten really thin-skinned. The second to last comment I made there was actually in support of Mother Jones, congratulating them on winning a libel suit against them. The most recent one before that was over 2 months ago. This leads me to believe the comment above had to have gotten me banned, but the mind boggles -- did I run into some secret National Industrial Recovery Act fetishist?
Update: Mr. Drum, who I respect while disagreeing with frequently, was nice enough to write me back and said he didn't ban me, it had to come from Mother Jones staff somewhere. Which leaves me even more confused. Not sure why this comment among all the flotsam that washes ashore in the totality of Mother Jones comment sections would earn the ire of some intern.
It is a tradition of Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin West architecture school (in Scottsdale, AZ) that students build their own small shelter in the desert. I am a fan of Dan Simmons' Hyperion series. If any of you read it, perhaps you remember the section where Aenea is at some strange out-of-time version of this school. Following the real-world tradition, she builds her own dwelling in the desert.
These are not necessarily cardboard box and plywood forts -- many are real engineered structures whose materials can be expensive (the students do most of the building with their own hands). I wish more architecture schools emphasized their students actually constructing some of their own work.
The students are looking for your help to support their projects, and have a Kickstarter campaign in progress.
The video below shows what they are doing:
As an aside, if you are in Phoenix, I would put Taliesin West as one of the top 2 places to tour in town, along with the Musical Instrument Museum. Phoenix of course is much more of an outdoor town. The very top thing to do in town, not just to tour, is probably to climb Camelback Mountain or Piestawa peak. Both are mountains dead in the middle of the city, something that is relatively unusual (in Denver, Portland, Seattle, etc the mountains are off to one side). The views are spectacular, and there is no funicular or cable car. The view only rewards effort.
A while back I got a LOT of feedback when I asked if Republicans really wanted to create 12 million refugees. My assumption was that if one opposed substantially liberalizing immigration quotas (ie making the quota near unlimited) and one opposed "amnesty" for the 12 million currently illegal immigrants in this country, the only alternative was to try to deport them all.
I got a lot of responses back from all over the political spectrum, but the one I found the most surprising was to say that I was setting up a false choice. The only alternative to amnesty was not deportation. Many advocated for what I would call an "illegal but tolerated" status for these 12 million people, sortof a parallel to how marijuana is treated in many states. I have a few reactions to this:
I am not blind to the problems that our generous welfare policies have on immigration. I would argue that what is needed is a new immigration status. In a sense, those who want 12 million people to be "illegal but tolerated" are essentially arguing for the same thing, but frankly that solution sucks for everyone. I would argue for institutionalizing a new level of legal presence in this country, well short of "citizen" but beyond "illegal but tolerated."
As an aside, for years the Roman Empire was really good at this, at least in its early years. It grew and adopted and eventually commanded the loyalty of a broad range of peoples and cultures in part because it was incredibly flexible in thinking about citizenship status. It had many custom levels, such as Civitas sine suffragio (citizenship without the vote). Many Conservatives argue that Barbarian immigration brought down the Roman Empire and use that as an argument for modern restrictions. But in fact, I believe just the opposite -- that it was the Romans losing their knack for citizenship flexibility and integrating new cultures that contributed to their downfall.
Here is a plan I posted nearly 10 years ago for a new, legal, less-than-full-citizen ability to be present in this country. I am still mostly OK with it:
It may be possible to earn-in to benefits in #5 and #7 based on some cumulative tax payment history. For example, unemployment taxes are really close to an insurance policy, such that a couple of years of payments into the system could make one eligible for benefits. Given how much fraud I see on this from citizens**, I can't believe immigrants would be any worse.
Typically, I see a LOT of people with no intention of working or looking for work collecting unemployment insurance payments. For example, we have summer workers who take the winter off but still collect unemployment in the winter as if they were looking for work. Most state governments have no desire to hear about this. In fact, in California (at least a number of years ago) if you call the unemployment fraud number the only kind of complaint they take is reports of employer fraud. You can't actually report employee fraud, and the one time I tried to do so I was threatened by a California State employee with dire legal consequences for "harassment" and "retaliation".
The new dodge I saw the other day is when Company A goes to an employee of Company B and offers to hire them away for higher pay. When the employee leaves B for A, A tells them that they should file for unemployment, claiming they were forced out rather than quit (essentially constructive termination). In most states, if an employee says one thing (I was forced out!) and an employer says another (She quit!), the employee is almost always believed unless the employer can bring an absurd amount of written evidence to the table to prove otherwise.
Anyway, having convinced the state the employee was terminated rather than quit, the employee collects unemployment benefits. Then, company A pays the employee in cash under the table an amount per hour less than minimum wage but which in combination with the state unemployment payments does indeed add up to more than they were making at B. They end up paying less than minimum wage and pay no employment taxes (since it is cash under the table) and the state makes up the difference with an unemployment check. Company B, by the way, sees its unemployment taxes go way up because these rates are experience-based.
I present, the shrinking American middle class. 2/3 of the losses were because they moved to "rich".
I will add to this that even our poor are materially better off than the poor in European socialist / 3rd way countries. Here is the absolute well-being by income percentile of the US vs. Bernie Sander's beloved Denmark.
A group of Harvard Law professors wrote an editorial a while back criticizing parts of the movie "A Hunting Ground" -- a movie that from every thing I have seen offers a pretty fertile ground for criticism. Now, it appears that makers of the movie are considering using Title IX to suppress this criticism they don't like, arguing that since they are (to them) obviously the defenders of women, anyone who criticizes them must be attacking women. Suffice it to say that this is pretty far afield from what Title IX was meant to accomplish.
One of the professors, Jeannie Suk wrote in the New Yorker:
But last week the filmmakers did more than understandably disagree with criticism of the film, which has been short-listed for the Academy Award for best documentary. They wrote, in a statement to the Harvard Crimson, that “the very public bias these professors have shown in favor of an assailant contributes to a hostile climate at Harvard Law.” The words “hostile climate” contain a serious claim. At Harvard, sexual harassment is “unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature,” including verbal conduct that is “sufficiently persistent, pervasive, or severe” so as to create a “hostile environment.” If, as the filmmakers suggest, the professors’ statement about the film has created a hostile environment at the school, then, under Title IX, the professors should be investigated and potentially disciplined.
To my knowledge, no complaint of sexual harassment has been filed with Harvard’s Title IX office—though I’ve been told by a high-level administrator that several people have inquired about the possibility—and I don’t know if the school would proceed with an investigation. Precedent for such an investigation exists in the case of Laura Kipnis, a feminist film-studies professor at Northwestern University, who earlier this year wrote an article criticizing aspects of Title IX policies and culture and was accused of creating a hostile environment on campus; Northwestern conducted an investigation and ultimately cleared Kipnis of sexual-harassment charges. A handful of students have said that they feel unsafe at Harvard because of the professors’ statement about the film. If a Title IX complaint were filed and an investigation launched, the professors wouldn’t be permitted to speak about it, as that could be considered “retaliation” against those who filed the complaint, which would violate the campus sexual-harassment policy.
It's Stalinists all the way down.
The other day John Hinderaker of Powerline wrote:
If someone proposes that next year we should import 10,000 unskilled immigrants from Pakistan, the first question we should ask is: why do we need them? But that is the one question that no one ever seems to pose.
This is a terrible question and to my eye shows just how close Conservatives come to accepting many of the assumptions of Socialism.
Socialists seldom think in terms of individuals, but instead talk about the economy as some great big machine that they get to run. We all remember Bernie Sanders saying
“You don’t necessarily need a choice of 23 underarm spray deodorants or of 18 different pairs of sneakers when children are hungry in this countryâ€
When Hinderaker is asking if we need more immigrants, or Sanders is asking if we need more deoderant choices, they are both working from an assumption that some authoritarian gets to sit at the top and make these choices for us.
The question "do we need immigrants" is actually senseless. Who is "we"? Who gets to make decisions for "we"? Only a socialist thinks this way. In a free society, the questions that matter are "Do I want to hire this immigrant?" or, as an immigrant, "do I want to take the chance of moving to an unfamiliar country to try to better my life." If I wish to hire someone from another country and they wish to move here and take the job, what the hell does it matter if John Hinderaker thinks this person is "needed"? I have decided I need a certain immigrant for my business, and the immigrant has decided that moving here is a good tradeoff for him. In capitalism, that should be a done deal.
Could the immigrant or I be wrong about my employment offer being a good idea? Sure. But authoritarian government second-guessing of individual decisions is supposed to be a progressive-socialist game, and here is a prominent Conservative doing exactly the same thing. If Bernie Sanders wanted to require me to get government permission to produce a new flavor of deodorant, Hinderaker would be outraged. But never-the-less he similarly wants me to get government permission (actually he wants to deny me government permission) to hire the employee I want to hire.
All this "Amercan jobs for Americans" thing may sound nice, and get head nods at the local Rotary, but what it actually means is that individual business people like myself have to be limited to hiring from a government-approved list. Doesn't sound much like the free markets and small government Conservatives claim to want.
Hinderaker quotes approvingly from David Frum
However one assesses [the Farook family] chain and its consequences, it seems clear that the large majority of legal immigrants choose to come—or, more exactly, are chosen by their relatives—for their own reasons. They are not selected by the United States to advance some national interest. Illegal immigrants are of course entirely self-selected, as are asylum seekers. …
Donald Trump’s noisy complaints that immigration is out of control are literally true. Nobody is making conscious decisions about who is wanted and who is not, about how much immigration to accept and what kind to prioritize—not even for the portion of U.S. migration conducted according to law, much less for the larger portion that is not.
Doing things for one's own reasons. Self-Selection. Lack of government control. Lack of government decisions about who or what is wanted. Lack of national priorities. These all sound like ... capitalism and a free society. Replace the word immigration with any other term and Conservatives would blast these two sentences and Bernie Sanders and Barack Obama would vigorously nod. I could write a $15 minimum wage screed using almost these identical words from Frum. Here, let me try:
However one assesses [the John Smith] $8 wage and its consequences, it seems clear that the large majority of employers set wages for their own reasons. These wages are not set by the United States to advance some national interest. The wage rates are entirely self-selected by employers and employees.
Bernie Sanders's noisy complaints that wage rates and income inequality are out of control are literally true. Nobody in government is making conscious decisions about who is hired and for how much, about how much income to accept and what kind to prioritize.
Postscript: Yes, I know that Conservatives are all worked up because 1 in a 1,000 or so of our immigrants might be murderers. You know what, one in a thousand Americans born every day will likely grow up to be murderers, but we don't ban sex. We accept the consequences that we get a few bad apples along with a lot of awesome productive people.
I would also ask Conservatives this -- why don't you think the Left's desire to ban gun ownership to head off mass shootings is fair? I would suggest one reason is that it is unfair to ban legal gun ownership for 1,000 good people because one will use their gun to commit a murder. If you agree with this statement, explain why your argument against immigration is different from the Left's call to ban gun ownership.
Left & Right each hope to ban large group (Gun owners & Muslims, respectively) from US because 0.1% of them might be dangerous @instapundit
— Coyoteblog (@Coyoteblog) December 11, 2015
Left & Right each hope to ban large group (Gun owners & Muslims, respectively) from US because 0.1% of them might be dangerous @instapundit
— Coyoteblog (@Coyoteblog) December 11, 2015
OK, it is not just freedom, but rule of law, protection of property rights, eschewing of cronyism and kleptocracy. But you get the idea. There is nothing in the Progressive oppressor-oppressed narrative that would predict that an impoverished "victim" of western colonialism would perform like this (via Cato)
Though I will say that, speaking of colonialism, it tends to support my old argument that it sure was better in the long-run to be a British or American rather than a French colony.
Mickey Kaus wonders why the GOP elite is still "clinging to amnesty" for illegal immigrants. I have the same thought every time I hear someone rail against "amensty": What the f*ck else are we going to do? Put 12 million people in jail for violating immigration laws? Are we really talking about deporting 12 million people? Do you have any idea how ugly this will be? I don't want to commit a Godwin's Law violation, but rousting people -- whole families -- out of their homes at gunpoint and loading them up on trucks and trains to be shipped en mass somewhere else -- does this sound like any other 20th century event to you? If you wanted to find some other precedent for this that was not the German shipping of Jews to Poland, what would even be close?
Looked at another way, the disastrous government and civil war in Syria has created, by UN estimates, 4 million refugees. At a stroke, do Republicans really want to create 12 million refugees? I get it that there is an ugly populist sentiment in a percentage of the Republican base to let Mexicans go hang, but the definition of responsible leadership in a Republic has got to include ignoring, or at least defusing, these sentiments. But the current crop of Republican Presidential candidates seem no more willing to avoid this particular evil than Democratic candidates can seem to rise above ugly sentiments in their base to put the 1% richest people up against a wall.
The US Government hates when you use cash, because its use makes it harder for them to spy on your private affairs and to tax or confiscate your private commerce. An implication of that I had not considered before is on gift cards. I was making a large order of Amazon gift cards for a Christmas bonus for employees when I got this email from Amazon:
Hello,
We're contacting you regarding your recent Amazon.com order xxxxxxxxx, which included one or more gift cards. To comply with the U.S. federal regulations, purchases of gift cards from Amazon.com and its affiliated websites are limited to up to $10,000 for any customer in a single day. Because this order contained gift card purchases in excess of this limit, it has been cancelled and you won't be charged for any items in this order.
