Coyote Blog

Via Hit and Run:

Federal Price Gouging Prevention Act - Makes it unlawful for any person
to sell crude oil, gasoline, natural gas, or petroleum distillates at a
price that: (1) is unconscionably excessive; or (2) indicates the
seller is taking unfair advantage unusual market conditions or the
circumstances of an emergency to increase prices unreasonably.

Well, since they establish such a bright-line legal standard like "unconscionably excessive," I guess it is OK.

I am reading a fabulous book called "The Rise and Fall of Society" by Frank Chodorov.  It was apparently first published in 1959 and has been republished recently by the .  Here is an early bit I particularly liked:

One indication of how far the integration [between state and society] has gone is the disappearance of any discussion of the State qua State -- a discussion that engaged the best minds of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.  The inadequacies of a particular regime, or its personnel, are under constant attack, but there is no faultfinding with the institution itself.  The State is all right, by common agreement, and it would work perfectly well if the "right" people were at its helm.

His next line is clearly aimed at his conservative contemporaries

It does not occur to most critics of the New Deal that all its deficiencies are inherent in any State, under anybody's guidance, or that when the political establishment garners enough power a demagogue will sprout.

I offered up similar observations here, though aimed at the left, who at the time were the minority opposition party:

I am reminded of all this because the technocrats that built our
regulatory state are starting to see the danger of what they created.
A public school system was great as long as it was teaching the right
things and its indoctrinational excesses were in a leftish direction.
Now, however, we can see the panic.  The left is freaked that some red
state school districts may start teaching creationism or intelligent
design.  And you can hear the lament - how did we let Bush and these
conservative idiots take control of the beautiful machine we built?  My
answer is that you shouldn't have built the machine in the first place
- it always falls into the wrong hands.  Maybe its time for me to again invite the left to reconsider school choice.

Today, via Instapundit, comes this story about the GAO audit of the decision by the FDA to not allow the plan B morning after pill to be sold over the counter.
And, knock me over with a feather, it appears that the decision was
political, based on a conservative administration's opposition to
abortion.  And again the technocrats on the left are freaked.  Well,
what did you expect?  You applauded the Clinton FDA's politically
motivated ban on breast implants as a sop to NOW and the trial
lawyers.  In
establishing the FDA, it was you on the left that established the
principal, contradictory to the left's own stand on abortion, that the
government does indeed trump the individual on decision making for
their own body  (other thoughts here).
Again we hear the lament that the game was great until these
conservative yahoos took over.  No, it wasn't.  It was unjust to scheme
to control other people's lives, and just plain stupid to expect that
the machinery of control you created would never fall into your
political enemy's hands.

If I owned a newspaper, in the style guide I would ban the term "public service" as a synonym for political career, and I would ban the words "public servant" when describing a politician.

Though I have a number of people I pay for services, I consider each of these too honorable a relationship to say these folks are my "servants."  But if I did have servants, I absolutely guarantee that:

1. They wouldn't take 40% of my pay
2. They wouldn't micro-manage the smallest decisions in my life, and
3. They wouldn't demand that my kids pledge allegiance to them every morning at school.

A few days ago, I was astounded to find that oil prices had a here-to-for unsuspected (at least by Congress) utility - that they can actually manage demand to help match supply.  But this strange phenomenon is even more amazing, because it now appears that higher oil prices also have the ability to stimulate investments in increasing production of this scarce commodity:

The American oil patch, once left to languish during an extended
period of low oil prices, is on the rebound. Wildcatters like Mr.
Bryant are ready to pounce. With oil prices now hovering around $60 a
barrel "” three times higher than they were throughout the 1990s "” the
industry is expanding at a pace last seen decades ago.

"The oil
industry has changed dramatically in the last 20 years," Mr. Bryant
says. "Barriers to entry have dropped significantly. It doesn't matter
if you've been in the business 100 years or 100 days."

Easily
available capital and technology, once the preserve of traditional oil
companies, are reordering the business. Investors are lining up to
finance energy projects while leaps in computing power, imaging
technology and collaborative online networks now allow the smallest
entities to compete on an equal footing with the biggest players.

"There's
a lot of money out there looking for opportunities," said John
Schaeffer, the head of the oil and gas unit at GE Energy Financial
Services. "It seems like everyone wants to own an oil well now."

Advice to Nancy Pelosi and Maria Cantwell:  You may need to study this phenomenon.

Via TJIC:

In his commencement speech at Southern New Hampshire University
this morning, Obama - like most commencement speakers - delivered a
call to public service; unlike many, however, he also warned against
the charms of doing what most college graduates set out to do: Make
money.

"In a few minutes, you can take your diploma, walk off this
stage and go chasing after the big house and the large salary and the
nice suits and all the other things that our money culture says you
should buy.

"But I hope you don't. Focusing your life solely on making a
buck shows a poverty of ambition. It asks too little of yourself. And
it will leave you unfulfilled," he told the crowd.

This statement would certainly be true in 18th century European monarchies, in Soviet Russia, in third world Kleptocracies, in Cuba, and in Chavez's Venezuela.  Because making money in these environments is a zero-sum game, and the only way to get rich is to loot it from some poor schmuck who is actually creating the value.

But here in America, we (mostly) have this cool system called capitalism.  In capitalism, all interactions are based on the voluntary self-interest of the parties involved.  This means that one only can "make a buck" by doing something or making something that is of value to another person.  And only by successfully serving the needs of a LOT of people does one get really rich. 

TJIC's conclusion is wonderful:

Far better that they spend their life

• majoring in political "science"
• working for a meaningless non-profit
• trying to register more people to vote so that the negative-sum game of politics can have more credibility
• helping political partisans redrawn electoral district boundaries in the same negative-sum game of politics
• being a senator, pushing for more regulations and tax increases

That, clearly, is a fulfilling life.

Let the suckers create value.

The best and brightest should just steal it, and move it around
(while taking some portion of it for themselves, and destroying another
portion of it).

Beware of people who try to demonstrate how much they "care" using other peoples' money.

Freedom of Association is not explicitly listed in the First Amendment, but the Supreme Court has never-the-less upheld association rights in expressive organizations and for intimate associations, such as the family and more broadly in private social clubs.

The State of California continues its attack on Craigslist and Roommates.com trying to make these organizations liable for California Fair Housing Law violations when they publish a classified ad that breaks the law.  In short, it is illegal in California (and some other states) to advertise for a roommate who is a specific gender or race or religion, even if there are strong compatibility reasons for doing so (As in most states, it is A-OK to discriminate against smokers).

I won't get into the whole legal argument about these listing services, except to say that it is absurd to hold third parties accountable for other people's speech.  I want to ask a more general question.  How do laws that prevent me from choosing a roommate (however I want to) pass constitutional muster?  Taking on a stranger for a roommate is a scary proposition, especially in states like California that make it well nigh impossible to evict someone once they have moved in.  Short of marriage, it is hard to imagine a more intimate relationship -- in fact, many roommates probably see more of each other than some spouses.  On average, most people are probably not a compatible roommate for me.

Beyond this, most of the people who run afoul of the housing law do so with their speech, not the actual selection of a roommate.  Most fair housing complaints are against people's advertisements or public statements.  This strikes me as a double violation - the banning of speech about my association preferences. 

Today, Greenpeace attacked ExxonMobil for exercising its free speech rights.  In particular, it criticized Exxon-Mobil for spending $2 million funding about 40 groups it calls "global warming skeptics."  For perspective (missing from this article), pro-anthropomorphic global warming research receives over $2 billion in the US alone (and that is just government money, it does not include private money), making Exxon's funding less than 0.1% of that provided to groups with opposing viewpoints. 

How settled can the science be if the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) believers feel horribly threatened by a group they outspend more than 1000:1?  This is like Hillary Clinton complaining that Mike Gravel is being allowed to spend too much money.  The AGW folks have consistently lost debates where they went head to head against credible skeptics.  If you don't want to argue the issues, you resort to ad hominem attacks.

By the way, shame on Exxon-Mobil for getting all defensive about their spending.  They should have said "sure we are skeptics, and we think there are a lot of good reasons to be skeptics.  In fact, we'd love to have a televised debate with Greenpeace on AGW."

Update: In a related announcement, scientists declared the science of Phlogiston settled.

Of late, Democratic lawmakers have argued that gasoline prices are set at the caprice of oil companies, and mainly serve to provide them with undeserved profits.  However, we here at Coyote Blog try to bring you breaking news at the frontiers of scientific inquiry, and, via the USA Today, we get this fascinating revelation:

The average American motorist is driving
substantially fewer miles for the first time in 26 years because of
high gas prices and demographic shifts, according to a USA TODAY
analysis of federal highway data.

The growth in miles driven has leveled off
dramatically in the past 18 months after 25 years of steady climbs
despite the addition of more than 1 million drivers to the nation's
streets and highways since 2005. Miles driven in February declined 1.9%
from February 2006 before rebounding slightly for a 0.3% year-over-year
gain in March, data from the Federal Highway Administration show.
That's in sharp contrast to the average annual growth rate of 2.7%
recorded from 1980 through 2005....

The nation has not seen such stagnant growth in
driving since 1981, when the USA staggered through an oil shortage and
a recession. Gas prices reached an all-time high of $3.223 in March
1981 when adjusted for inflation in today's dollars.

Wow!  This seems to imply that prices have a here-to-for unsuspected utility.  They might actually be useful for matching supply and demand of scarce resources.  Fascinating.  Maybe Congress can commission a study of this phenomenon.

Postscript: Leaving the snark aside, it is hilarious in this article to see an urban planning group trying to bend over backwards to say that really, price was only a minor factor -- this really had to do with demographics and the success of our urban planning and public transportation.  Of course, it's just a coincidence that this step change occurred at the same time as a gas price spike, and that the last time it happened was the last time that gas price spiked.  Note that none of the data in the article actually supports the point of view that this was anything but a direct response to price signals.

Absolutely hilarious interaction between TJIC and an attorney looking for class actions in all the wrong places.  Extra marks for gratuitous Conan reference. 

And while we are on the subject of class actions, note this case in Overlawyered  where the class itself received a sum total (not average per person, but cumulative total) of $2,402 while their lawyers received $1,000,000.  Once a useful tool for redressing fraudulent behavior, class actions now have become primarily either 1) a profit-making-through-extortion tool for lawyers or 2) a way to legislate without actually going to the legislature. 

I know a number of my readers are also friends with my Princeton roommate Brink Lindsey.  Look for Brink tonight on the Daily Show with John Stewart at 11PM EST on Comedy Central.

This is an outstanding post that a reader sent me that offers a number of climate scientists in their own words taking issue with the climate consensus on CO2-driven anthropogenic global warming.  I won't convince you that man-made CO2 is not one cause for warming -- at this point in the science's development, that would be as big a mistake as declaring AGW theory "settled."  However, for those who get beaten about the head with "consensus" every time you ask a skeptical question about AGW, you should enjoy this article.  This is just one of the 13 vignettes on newly minted skeptics the author highlights:

Botanist Dr. David Bellamy, a,
recently converted into a skeptic after reviewing the science and now
calls global warming fears "poppycock." According to a May 15, 2005 article
in the UK Sunday Times, Bellamy said "global warming is largely a
natural phenomenon.  The world is wasting stupendous amounts of money
on trying to fix something that can't be fixed." "The climate-change
people have no proof for their claims. They have computer models which
do not prove anything," Bellamy added. Bellamy's conversion on global
warming did not come without a sacrifice as several environmental
groups have ended their association with him because of his views on
climate change. The severing of relations came despite Bellamy's long
activism for green campaigns. The UK Times reported Bellamy "won
respect from hardline environmentalists with his campaigns to save
Britain's peat bogs and other endangered habitats. In Tasmania he was
arrested when he tried to prevent loggers cutting down a rainforest."

Here is a copy of the petition sent to the Canadian government which several of the people in the article refer to.  One taste:

Observational evidence does not support today's computer climate
models, so there is little reason to trust model predictions of the
future. Yet this is precisely what the United Nations did in creating
and promoting Kyoto and still does in the alarmist forecasts on which
Canada's climate policies are based. Even if the climate models were
realistic, the environmental impact of Canada delaying implementation
of Kyoto or other greenhouse-gas reduction schemes, pending completion
of consultations, would be insignificant. Directing your government to
convene balanced, open hearings as soon as possible would be a most
prudent and responsible course of action....

While the confident pronouncements of scientifically unqualified environmental groups may provide for sensational headlines, they are no basis for mature policyformulation.
The study of global climate change is, as you have said, an "emerging
science," one that is perhaps the most complex ever tackled. It may be
many years yet before we properly understand the Earth's climate
system. Nevertheless, significant advances have been made since the
protocol was created, many of which are taking us away from a concern
about increasing greenhouse gases. If, back in the mid-1990s, we knew
what we know today about climate, Kyoto would almost certainly not
exist, because we would have concluded it was not necessary....

"Climate change is real" is a
meaningless phrase used repeatedly by activists to convince the public
that a climate catastrophe is looming and humanity is the cause.
Neither of these fears is justified. Global climate changes all the
time due to natural causes and the human impact still remains
impossible to distinguish from this natural "noise." The new Canadian
government's commitment to reducing air, land and water pollution is
commendable, but allocating funds to "stopping climate change" would be
irrational. We need to continue intensive research into the real causes
of climate change and help our most vulnerable citizens adapt to
whatever nature throws at us next.

It is signed by scientific no-names like Freeman Dyson and Dr. Richard S. Lindzen, Alfred P. Sloan professor of meteorology, Dept.
of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute
of Technology

Possibly this is one of those things that everyone but me knows about, but Google apparently has a search function for music.  I found it only because I was searching for the Rolling Stones and found this search page.  Its got track listings and ratings.  Kind of cool.

FIRE points out yet another university that is attempting to restrict speech it does not agree with, in the name of, uh, freedom or something.  The university's Student Union proposed to close down the campus humor magazine that made a joke about race relations.  The reason?

Specifically, in response to the "overtly racist, sexist, and generally
offensive articles, statements, and images published in the Spring
Issue of Gravity Magazine," and because the publication of this joke
had caused "members of our community to feel "˜unsafe,' "˜powerless,'
"˜unsupported,' "˜harassed,' and "˜threatened;'"

Now, this university is private, so I suppose as a private body they can define acceptable speech in their private confines any way they want (just as my kids dropping F bombs is legal by the first amendment, but banned in my household).  However, I fear that the folks involved do not understand that they need to leave these attitudes behind when they leave their private little cocoon university, because speech that hurts your feelings is not illegal, thank goodness, in the rest of the country. 

Unfortunately, it is almost too much to ask nowadays that universities understand that, as Louis Brandeis wrote, the best response to speech you don't like is more speech.  The rich irony comes from the fact that this occurred at ... Brandeis University.  The freaking place was named after the man who wrote:

Those who won our independence believed"¦ that freedom to think as
you will and to speak as you think are means indispensable to the
discovery and spread of political truth; that without free speech and
assembly discussion would be futile; that with them, discussion affords
ordinarily adequate protection against the dissemination of noxious
doctrine"¦

They recognized the risks to which all human institutions are
subject. But they knew that order cannot be secured merely through fear
of punishment for its infraction; that it is hazardous to discourage
thought, hope and imagination; that fear breeds repression; that
repression breeds hate; that hate menaces stable government; that the
path of safety lies in the opportunity to discuss freely supposed
grievances and proposed remedies; and that the fitting remedy for evil counsels is good ones.

Fear of serious injury cannot alone justify suppression of free
speech and assembly"¦ To justify suppression of free speech there must
be reasonable ground to fear that serious evil will result if free
speech is practiced"¦ [N]o danger flowing from speech can be deemed
clear and present unless the incidence of the evil apprehended is so
imminent that it may befall before there is opportunity for full
discussion. If there be time to expose through discussion the
falsehoods and fallacies, to avert the evil by the process of
education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence. Only an emergency can justify repression.   (Emphasis added.)

Check out the FIRE article to learn much more about the events in question, including what the original joke was.

Consider this situation:  You are a member of a four-person rock band.  Each member of the band has contributed somewhat equally over time, and band revenues have always been split evenly, 25% to each member, though its total earnings on an absolute basis have been small  However, the band has suddenly become the next U2.  It is likely the band will make tens of millions of dollars over the coming years.  Just as this is happening, the other three band members come to you and threaten to make you Pete Best.  They will allow you to stay with the band, but only if you accept a reduction in your share of the earnings to 10%.  You perceive this move as unfair given your equal contribution to the band to date.  However, even 10% of the band's new fortunes would be a LOT of money (and fame) and you honestly believe that even a 10% share is better than you could do with any other band or occupation.  What do you do -- take 10% or quit?  (assume you want to be famous and you have no legal recourse against the other members)

In an analytical vacuum, one might predict that any rational person would take the deal -- while it is less than might be hoped, it is certainly a better deal than one could get any place else.  A pure profit maximizing decision would be to stay with the band (and watch you back at night for more knives).

However, numerous studies and surveys have shown that in fact, a  large number of people would choose to give up the money rather than feel cheated.  Just look at the number of professional football players who have held out for a whole season to try to get a better contract.  In every case, the present value of the salary lost for that season is far greater than any increase in salary in the future from taking the tough stand.  But these players would rather be paid nothing than feel underpaid.

TJIC had a pointer to an interesting article on game theory.  In it, the author talks about this behavior in the context of a game that divides up pies, and summarizes:

Apparently, making money is not the players' only concern; participants have a sense of pride and care about how they are treated by others, economists have concluded. Thus, offers perceived to be "unfair" are rejected out of a desire for revenge.

In fact, revenge and/or envy has been tested in a number of games, where scientists gave players trailing in the game the ability to spend money solely to take away money from the leading players  (e.g. you can spend your last $10 to make $10 of your opponents money disappear).  There is something in human behavior that wants to bring down the winners, even when doing so makes one worse off himself.  (Question to Red Sox fans:  would you accept a lifetime bad of the Sox from the World Series if you were guaranteed the Yankees would never make the World Series either?)

I guess I don't really have a problem with such behavior in consensual transactions (though I personally work pretty hard to purge my ego from business decisions).  My problem comes when people motivated in this way vote in our society that has proven to have inadequate protections of the minority, at least when we refer to the minority of rich and successful. 

In Closing of the American Mind,  Allan Bloom tells the story of a question he used to ask his classes vis a vis income inequality.  He would ask something like "Would you vote for a law that reduced income inequality but at the same time reduced total wealth, such that the poor might get a larger slice of a smaller pie, and might even be worse off on an absolute basis afterwards."  Apparently, he would get solid majorities for "yes" and in fact I have been in classes where this same question was asked and at least 40% said "yes."  This is a situation a bit similar to the one above, but without it being personal.  In other words, no one has explicitly hosed you, they have just done better.

I hope you can see the parallel.  Large numbers of people are willing to pay (or equivalently make less money) to reduce the earnings of people who are wealthy and/or successful. They are even  more willing to do so if they think that they have been treated unfairly.  Which is why you see so many politicians and media outlets working so hard right now to convince the middle class that current income distribution patterns are somehow "unfair."  Politicians are pandering to this base human emotion, the desire to spitefully bring someone else down (in the case of income equality laws, someone the person has likely never even met or transacted with) even if it makes oneself worse off.   

I can understand why Pete Best might harbor a grudge against the Beatles.  But why do so many Americans harbor a grudge against people they have never met, just because they make more money?

I won't even add a comment to this:

Real, or fake? Never mind the busty woman walking her dog in the park - it may just be her pooch who's sporting implants.

Some pet owners who neuter their male dogs are opting for a surgical
procedure meant to make Fido feel like he's back in the good ol' days
B.C. - Before Castration.

Neuticles - testicular implants for dogs that look and feel like the
real thing - are said to boost a pet's self-esteem by replacing what
was lost. It's a procedure that's becoming increasingly popular in New
York.

"We did it so Truman could still walk proudly down the street," says
Penny Glazier, a Manhattan restaurateur, of her 8-year-old bull mastiff.

"We felt it would be good for him psychologically," she adds. "He
actually still marks trees, though I'm told neutered dogs aren't
supposed to do that anymore."

Extra points to the poor slob who worked overtime to get the "feel" right. Edgar River has the best comment:

For dog owner Edgar Rivera of the Bronx, whose Jack Russell terrier and
Chihuahua were both neutered, Neuticles were never an option. "That's
just nuts," Rivera says.

"Fire Joe Morgon" nominates this for best headline of the year.

Straight from the 1970's, the US's golden era of bumbling government intervention in the economy, come the same proposals that worked oh-so-well the first time around.  Democracts blame big oil for gas prices, and propose channeling solutions from Hugo Chavez:   (via Q&O)

Congressional Democrats are taking aim at big oil companies as U.S. gasoline prices near a record average $3.05 a gallon.

Although
industry experts doubt it will have any effect, half a dozen senators
gathered in front of a Washington service station to push their own
remedies to the situation, the Washington Post said.

The latest average price for a gallon of unleaded regular gas was $3.042, according to the AAA Fuel Gauge report.

Sen.
Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., called on Congress to consider breaking up the
giant companies. Sen. Bernard Sanders, I-Vt., pushed for a windfall
profits bill.

Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., promoted her
anti-price-gouging bill, which the Senate Commerce Committee adopted
earlier this week.

Gee, since every transaction in a free market requires a willing buyer and a willing seller, wouldn't it be just as correct to blame profligate consumers for the increase?  And why is it I don't remember any of these actors in Congress rushing to clamp down on greedy sellers when home resale prices skyrocketed far more than gas prices have?  Does anyone remember Maria Cantwell imposing windfall profits taxes on home-sellers?  Or, for that matter, on sellers of Internet stocks who financed their campaigns selling stock above $80 that would soon trade only in the single digits?  And by the way, how can any party who elected Maria Cantwell to the Senate seriously call members of the other party "stupid."

Let's do a thought experiment.  Let's assume that through a series of government actions, Congress is able to return oil profits "to the people."  Oil company profits are now reduced to zero.  That should make a huge difference in gas prices, right?  Well, out of a $3.00 gas price, taxes and the retailers margin are probably 75 cents or so (46 cents tax, 10% or 30 cent retail margin).  This leaves $2.25 for the greedy oil companies.  It turns out large oil companies like Exxon make about 6% of revenues in the bad times, and 10% in the good times, like now.  So, this leaves a profit of  14-22 cents per gallon.  The "people" are saved!  Gas prices can come down by a whole 15-20 cents.  Of course, in return for saving a buck or two on fill-ups, we've nuked the whole incentive system for investment and finding new oil and improving efficiency.  Gas prices over time will rise much higher than they are now, and lines will start reappearing at gas stations, but that probably won't show up until after the next election, so why should anyone in Congress care?

True monopolies, which are extraordinarily rare in the private sector but all too common when the government uses it coercive power, lose any incentive to provide good customer service.  Via Adam Schaeffer at Cato, here are your government monopoly schools at work:

In Montgomery County, beloved third-grade teacher Soon-Ja Kim was
bounced on the word of one reviewer despite an outpouring of support
from parents who knew what great work she had done with their
children.  I can't say it better than it's reported:

But a panel of eight teachers and eight principals
charged with reviewing Kim's performance gave little weight to the
parent letters when they considered her future in a closed-door
meeting, according to panel members.

Doug Prouty, vice president of the Montgomery County
Education Association and co-chairman of the panel, said in an
interview that the strong parental support for Kim was considered only
a "secondary data source."

The good test scores of Kim's students, he said, were also secondary.
The primary sources for the decisions, he said, were the judgments of
Principal Elaine Chang, a consulting teacher assigned to evaluate Kim
and the panel members themselves that Kim was ineffective in the
classroom and hurting her students' progress.

"That's a bunch of hooey," said Elyse Summers, one of the multitude
of pro-Kim parents. "Our children went to Mrs. Kim's class every day,
came home and are performing extremely well."

"We take parent feedback, both good and bad, about teachers very
seriously," Edwards replied. But the Montgomery schools spokesman added
that "the final decision about the effectiveness of teachers must come
down to those with the professional expertise."

So, it does not matter if you are a great teacher who gets good results, if you don't kiss the principal's ass enough, you are gone.  This is not to say that private employers can't be equally silly.  However, in the private sector, if a company is stupid enough to fire a good employee for petty political reasons, its competitors will snap that person up.  If it happens enough, company 2 will quickly begin to outcompete company 1.  When the government maintains a forced monopoly on schools, there are no such feedback mechanisms to force improvement, except maybe parental feedback, and you see how much that achieves in this case.

A while back I profiled my most abusive and annoying vendor, which turned out to be .. the government.  After profiling some of their practices in a quiz format, I wrote:

Give up?  Well, most of you have probably guessed that this vendor
is... the government!  Or specifically, the Colorado Department of
Wildlife and the specific product discussed is fishing licenses.  That
is why this particular vendor can get away with practices that no
company that actually has to compete in the market place would ever
attempt, and, in a couple of cases, gets aways with practices that
would be illegal for a private company.

I have an update, again for fishing license sales but this time from the Arizona Department of Fish and Game.  My business only sells fishing licenses.  We have no call for hunting licenses, and in fact hunting is illegal on the lands surrounding the store in question.  But in January each year, the government FORCES me to take a whole pile of hunting license and duck stamp inventory as a prerequisite to get the fishing license inventory.  I have to hold this inventory, unused, in my safe all year.  I cannot return it until the end of the year, and if I lose it or forget to return it (12 long months after it was sent to me) then I have to pay for it all.  Lovely. 

My company is a big supporter of Open Office, the free MS Office clone that works great (and was developed by Sun as a jab at their least favorite competitor).  Generally I promote it because it works fine and costs $0.  We are putting it on all our new computers instead of Microsoft.

Today I have a new reason to promote it.  I had a very large and complex .xlw file that Excel refused to open - it gave me messages that it was locked and read only and eventually opened it as a total mess, giving me a message that the file was impossible to repair.  Obviously, the last time Excel had worked on and saved the file, it had corrupted it somehow.  All the formatting was gone, data was missing, etc.  So, on a whim, I dug up a copy of the Open Office spreadsheet (which can open and write MS formats), and what do you know, it opened the file right up.  Everything in its place.  I save-as'd to an Excel file, and now Microsoft can open its own file again, but only after Open Office fixed it.  LOL.

Hollywood may like to criticize GWB for his over-eager and intrusive anti-terrorism precautions, but they sure seem ready to take a page out of the homeland security book when it comes to protecting their CD sales:

In Florida, the new legislation requires all stores buying second-hand
merchandise for resale to apply for a permit and file security in the
form of a $10,000 bond with the Department of Agriculture and Consumer
Services. In addition, stores would be required to thumb-print
customers selling used CDs, and acquire a copy of state-issued identity
documents such as a driver's license. Furthermore, stores could issue
only store credit -- not cash -- in exchange for traded CDs, and would
be required to hold discs for 30 days before reselling them.  (HT Overlawyered)

Requiring thumbprints from customers just to sell used CD's?  Are they nuts?  Can you imagine if they tried to apply this to anything else?  You'd have to have a retina scanner to use eBay.  Freaking totally insane.  I can buy a gun, an aircraft, and a shopping cart full of rat poison without a thumbprint but I need to go through the jailhouse booking routine to sell a CD?

By the way, note how insane the requirements on resellers are.  For example, having to hold a disc 30 days before selling.  Why?  I am sure for a lot of hot music products the value goes down about 50% a month.

Of course, we all know the reason why.  This is about politically powerful incumbents protecting their business from competition.  In this case, music companies don't want to have to compete with their own CDs showing up on the aftermarket.  Well you know what -- suck it up.  Car companies have had to deal with this problem for years.  I am sure they would love laws that make it difficult for anyone to buy a used car (or maybe they wouldn't - a healthy secondary market gives consumers the ability to trade up to new models frequently, something music sellers should consider).

Think about the recycling angle, by the way.  The best recycling plan is to reuse an item for its original use.  We all remember Hollywood giving Al Gore a big wet kiss at the Oscars, and congratulating themselves for being more green than the rest of us schmucks  Except, of course, when it hits the bottom line.  "Hey you little guys out there, don't resell those CD's, we want to make sure you throw them out and buy new.  After all, we can't keep our private jets flying without selling lots more CDs."

If I invite an illegal immigrant to come stay in my house, is he trespassing?  My Arizona legislators think so:

State Representative Jonathan Paton, a Republican, ... added that he
would prefer to detain smuggled immigrants under trespassing laws, a
move lawmakers are considering under a package of bills intended to
crack down on illegal immigration.

Wikipedia describes trespass as "criminal act of going into somebody else's land or property without permission of the owner or lessee." 

The only way one can define an illegal immigrant at my house as "trespassing" is if one accepts some kind of statist-socialist view of property, that the state has effective ownership of my property.  I have asked this before, but do Republicans, who once upon a time were at least nominally the defenders of private property, have any idea what they are doing?

Frequent readers of this blog will know that I am a strong supporter of open immigration, and have substantial problems with how we are effectively criminalizing poor people looking for work. 

However, it is perhaps most important to defend the free speech of people with whom one disagrees.  A while back, my employee accidentally sent a private email from his private account expressing opinions about stronger defense of the border and enforcement of immigration laws (opinions that run counter to my own) to a government employee with whom we interact fairly frequently.  The government employee's first impulse was to threaten that our company may be liable under anti-discrimination laws for such speech, but to their credit quickly agreed that it was inappropriate for a federal employee to take any action based on private speech.  But that first, initial reaction was interesting.

It seems a professor here in the Phoenix area is facing sanction for similar reasons.

The case involves Walter Kehowski, a math professor at Glendale
Community College"”part of the Maricopa County Community College
District (MCCCD) system"”who e-mailed a single Thanksgiving message to
the entire MCCCD community. On the day before Thanksgiving, Kehowski
sent an e-mail
containing the text of George Washington's "Thanksgiving Day
Proclamation of 1789" over the district's "announcements" listserv.
Kehowski had found the Proclamation on Pat Buchanan's blog, and included a link to that webpage in his e-mail. That citation would have dire consequences.

 

Within weeks, five MCCCD employees complained that Kehowski's
e-mail was "derogatory" and "hostile" because the link he'd included"”if
you decided to open it"”led to a page where Buchanan also posted his
opinions of immigration. MCCCD soon held an Initial Assessment
of the complaints, and decided that since Kehowski's e-mail was not
work-related but rather expressed a "social comment," he had violated
MCCCD's e-mail policies, which limit e-mails to work-related
information. MCCCD reacted on March 9 by forcing Kehowski to cease
teaching, placing him on immediate administrative leave, and
recommending that he be terminated....

MCCCD has also found Kehowski guilty of violating the Equal Employment Opportunity policy.

Again we have government sanctioning speech based on its content, a definite no no, particularly since there was a pretty clear precedent for other people using the email system ant that particular listserv to pass on social commentary without sanction.  Its clear, though, that many in the college's community found the speech somehow in violation of discrimination laws.

However, this is the irony I find amazing:  State, Federal, and Maricopa County law require that businesses discriminate against undocumented aliens.  I can be fined and sent to jail for not discriminating against them.  Maricopa county, which runs this particular community college, employs a sheriff that revels in anti-immigrant rhetoric that probably runs more extreme than even Pat Buchanan and who prides himself on how many illegal immigrants he has rounded up this week (he.  In this context, how can it be illegal to advocate for enforcement of current law?  How can it be illegal to advocate for policies aggressively pursued by your own employer? 

Any viewpoint in speech needs to be tolerated, but I find it especially odd that government institutions are unable to tolerate speech that upholds what is essentially the official position of the government.

Small business tip of the day:  If you find yourself waking up on Monday, thinking that you have finally climbed on top of things and everything is humming pretty well, expect a torpedo to hit you.  Maybe several. 

The red lights are all flashing here and the bulkheads are leaking.  Blogging will be light for a couple of days, while damage control progresses. 

Though my usual musical tastes run more to this, my wife and I went to see the Celtic Women in concert the other night.

So what's wrong with a hot blond babe playing the fiddle and a singer who looks like Xena warrior princess in an evening gown?

Uh, nothing.