Coyote Blog

Silflay Hraka has a nice post on Kyoto and Global warming.  I expressed many of the same thoughts here and here, though Hraka is much more concise and eloquent about it.  However, I missed this bit on Russia:

Europe as a whole may be able to meet its goals thanks to huge potential market in emissions trading brought about by the unprecedented collapse of heavy industry in the former nations of the Warsaw Pact and Soviet Union--graphically portrayed in this pdf from the Guardian--but actual levels of European CO2 output will not fall at all.

That's one reason it was so important for the EU for Russia to ratify Kyoto. Ratification of Kyoto allows that nation to enter into the emissions market, where the EU desperately needs it.

This makes a lot of sense.  I explained here how the Kyoto protocols, and particularly the 1990 date, were carefully structured to slam the US and make meeting targets relatively easy for Europe.  In short, 1990 was the beginning of a massive economic expansion for the US and a decade-long slump for Japan and Europe.  In addition, 1990 marked the date of German reunification and the fall of the Soviet Union -- since this time, thousands of horribly inefficient pollution-producing Soviet industries have shut down, giving Europe a huge reduction credit with no work.  Switch-over from coal to North Seas oil and gas has done the same for Britain.

February 9 will be my first attempt to host Carnival of the Vanities.  For those of you unfamiliar with the Carnival, it was started by Silflay Hraka and is meant to give smaller blogs a chance to reach a wider audience.

Submission guidelines

Send an e-mail sent to coyote@coyoteblog.com.  Put "COTV" in the subject line. Add a one word category to help me sort them (i.e., sports, religion, politics, etc.). It should look like this: cotv -- rambaldi devices.  I am not insisting on any theme, and all political points of view are gratefully accepted (if you want a theme, wait for our Carnival of the Capitalists issue at the end of the month).

In the text of the e-mail include the following information:

• Name of your blog:
• URL of the blog:
• Title of your post:
• Permalink to that post:
• Trackback of the post:
• Describe the post in a sentence or two:

I need to receive your e-mail by 3 p. m. (EST) Tuesday, Feb. 8 for it to make the 125th edition.  Deadline extended to 6PM EST.

Today I am going to the the Phoenix Mardi Gras, which happens to take place at a golf tournament.  The Phoenix Open is unique among PGA Tour events, with about twice the attendance as the next-most-attended tournament, and with a huge party atmosphere.

Below is the famous 16th hole, ringed all the way around with grandstands and tents.  Absolutely the loudest and rowdiest hole on the PGA tour:

By the way, here is the weather forecast today (he he):

Windy with a mix of clouds and sun. High 69F. Winds E at 15 to 25 mph.

Before you read any further, look at the houses here.  Here is an example:

They look like normal, everyday Midwestern houses, right?  I mean, some are kind of small but several look pretty nice and all of them are in good shape with well-kept lawns, etc.

So what do these houses have in common?  They have all been condemned as "blighted" by Norwood, Ohio.  They have been seized by the city government and will be torn down.

OK, what's the real reason?  The real reason is that Norwood, Ohio wants a Crate & Barrel store where these houses are.  They think the Crate & Barrel is a better use of the land, and they are pretty sure that C&B will pay them more taxes than these homeowners, so they are taking people's homes and giving the land to the developer.  More here and here on this story, and Cato has a whole bunch of articles on abuse of the Constitution's takings clause here.  We have had our own local ongoing takings debate in nearby Mesa, Arizona.

This kind of garbage happens far, far too often.  If the developer wants the land, he can buy it.  If people won't sell, he can go somewhere else.  Simple.

Update:  Here is a pretty bizare intrusion of local government on your home here, too.  Hope they don't find out house.

I pulled out my old Commodore 64 the other day and played a bunch of fine old games including Raid on Bungling Bay, Choplifter, and M.U.L.E.  All were fun, even if their graphics do not stand up to the test of time.  In particular, M.U.L.E. is a fabulous game and it amazes me nothing like it has ever been produced since.

Currently, Congress is considering scaling back on tax breaks for conservation easements.  As habitat protection and open space have become larger environmental issues, conservation easements have gone way up in use.  As with most government programs, the laws of unintended consequences have taken over, and many have found ways to get tax breaks some feel are undeserved.  Nature Noted has a long series of posts on the debate. 

I have mixed feelings on the change.  To understand this, lets take a step back and look at government environmental policy.  As I have written in the past, I think of government environmental legislation in 2 parts:

1. Regulation of pollution and emissions that affect other people's property.  These regulations are essential to the maintenance of a system of strong private property rights.  Without them, we would all be in court every day suing each other for damage to our property or water or air on our land from neighboring lands. Of course, we can all argue about whether set limits are reasonable, and we do.
2. Regulations of land use that effects only your own land.  This is a relatively new area of environmental law, ushered in by the Endangered Species act and various wetlands regulations.  These regulations say that even if your proposed land use doesn't create any emisions that affect anyone else, the government may still ban your land use for some other environmentally related goal (habitat, watershed, anti-sprawl, the list is endless). 

These land-use laws constitute by far the most distressing area to me in environmental law.  In the worst cases, these laws can result in what are effectively 100% takings of a person's land without any compensation. (Example:  you buy a lot on the ocean for $500,000 to build a beach house.  Before you can build it, new regulations are passed making it illegal for you to build a house on that land.  Yes, you still own the land, but it is now worthless to you since you cannot use or develop it).  Good article on this here (pdf) and a listing of Cato Institute articles on this topic here.

I have for a long time been a supporter of the Nature Conservancy and other land trusts (see Nature Noted site linked above for lots of links and info).  These trusts works to reach the goals in #2 above but with private money instead of government regulation and takings. 

Back to the issue of conservation easements.  It is becoming clear to me that while deals made by the Nature Conservancy rely on private money, they also rely on government subsidy through conservation easement tax breaks.  Their actions are not as private as I thought the were.  And therefore my mixed feelings.  I still think that their activities, even with the tax breaks, is more fair and probably much more efficient than the government takings approach.

This is my browser mix here at Coyote BLog this week:

UPDATE:  I just checked, and Firefox is at 25% today. IE under 60%. I seem to be
single-handedly bringing down Microsoft. Maybe thats how I will make
money with this site - Bill Gates will pay to shut it down [cue Dr.
Evil with pinky at corner of mouth saying "one Miiillliiiioonnnn
dollars"].

Release from the Associated Press:

Photo of Kidnapped Soldier Fake, But Accurate

London:  We are working hard to authenticate the photograph of the American Soldier we reported kidnapped by Islamic terrorists freedom fighters.  A number of extremist right-wing reactionary bloggers have accused the AP of being duped by a photo of an action figure propped against a cement block.  Bloggers point to differences in clothing vs. standard US combat gear as well as a similarity in appearance to the "Cody" action figure.

The AP stands by its story.  We have engaged a world famous collector of 1970's Barbie dolls that we met in an eBay chat room who has assured us that no action figure clothing ever made could possibly match what is shown in the photo.  We are meeting with our expert next month at the Houston rodeo to review his findings.

Even if the photo is eventually determined to be fake, we still believe it is an accurate representation of our need to find a negative story in Iraq to counterbalance the positive press President Bush has gotten after the recent elections. 

And, in a related story... well, not really related, except it is also about Iraq... OK, actually its related only because I am too lazy to start a new post:

UN officials reacted strongly to the attacks on its recent blogads taking credit for the recent Iraqi election.  Critics called the ads rank hypocrisy, given the fact that the UN funneled over $20 billion of food money to Saddam, opposed the overthrow of Saddam, and cut-and-run from helping to rebuild Iraq at the first sign of violence.  The UN said that the ads were perfectly consistent with its policy, since it "was against elections before it was for them."

Interviews of Iraqi citizens on the street showed strong support for the UN's lack of support.  Said one Iraqi who asked to remain anonymous, "given the UN peacekeepers terrible performance in Kosovo and their serial rape and white slavery in the Congo and their sanctioning of genocide in the Sudan, we haven't really missed them."

Ann Coulter doll giving speech to the troops, ala Patton

Ann Coulter doll saves Cody (or is that Jenifer Garner doll in disguise?)

Stay tuned next week when computer-savvy terrorists kidnap Aki from Final Fantasy

Scrappleface has yet another take.

Despite opposing the war in Iraq for reasons related to its cost and probability of success, I am perfectly able to cheer the recent elections and wish the Iraqis all the best (more here);  unlike many who seem to root for Iraqi failure, I would be thrilled to be proved wrong.   However, despite being more upbeat about Iraq, I am not shameless enough for suddenly try to somehow ex-post-facto take credit for the results of a war I opposed. 

But that is exactly what the UN is doing in recent blogads from the UN Foundation.  What's more, the ad taking credit for Iraqi elections is probably the least outlandish of the two.  The second, trying to push the benefits of an oil for food program that has proved completely riven with corruption, is just insane.

By the way, the UN is running these ads at the same time it is happily allowing genocide to proceed unchecked in Darfur.  Of course, the UN won't call it geneocide.

Check out the link a ways down on the left.  I am thinking we need to have a get-together for all those featured on the home page.  Looks like I am the only "dog" on the page.

I sent this email to NZ Bear today:

From reading the FAQ's, I guess I am not the only one, but in moving my blog from my Typepad address https://coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog to a dedicated address www.coyoteblog.com I have managed to grossly inflate my ranking, since my link score has been credited with cross-links between these two sites.  I am not actually a "Large Mammal" "“ I am actually small and weak and survive by hiding among the rocks from the larger beasts.  When you work up your "merge" code, please add these sites to your list of targets.

Warren Meyer "Coyote"

Via Wizbang, who helped point the finger at the CBS forged memos, comes this story about an AP Report of a American service man supposedly held hostage:

Iraqi militants claimed in a Web statement Tuesday to have taken an American soldier hostage and threatened to behead him in 72 hours unless the Americans release Iraqi prisoners.

The posting, on a Web site that frequently carried militants' statements, included a photo of what appeared to be an American soldier in desert fatigues seated with his hands tied behind his back.

A gun barrel was pointed at his head, and he is seated in front of a black banner emblazoned with the Islamic profession of faith, "There is no god but God and Muhammad is His prophet."

It even is accompanied with this picture:

Only problem is that this is actually a photo of a GI Joe doll. 

The "professionals" at the AP were taken in hook line and sinker, leaving it to "amateurs" on the web to debunk the hoax in about a half and hour.  Read all about it at the Wizbang link above.

Update:  CNN has caught up on the story

Via Wizbang, who helped point the finger at the CBS forged memos, comes this story about an AP Report of a American service man supposedly held hostage:

Iraqi militants claimed in a Web statement Tuesday to have taken an American soldier hostage and threatened to behead him in 72 hours unless the Americans release Iraqi prisoners.

The posting, on a Web site that frequently carried militants' statements, included a photo of what appeared to be an American soldier in desert fatigues seated with his hands tied behind his back.

A gun barrel was pointed at his head, and he is seated in front of a black banner emblazoned with the Islamic profession of faith, "There is no god but God and Muhammad is His prophet."

It even is accompanied with this picture:

Only problem is that this is actually a photo of a GI Joe doll. 

The "professionals" at the AP were taken in hook line and sinker, leaving it to "amateurs" on the web to debunk the hoax in about a half and hour.  Read all about it at the Wizbang link above.

Update:  CNN has caught up on the story

My apologies to folks who have emailed me over the last few weeks.  Every day I check the box and each day it is empty.  I figured I must not be provocative enough in my writing - no hate mail or anything. 

The long and the short of it is that it turns out that the account was forwarding to a moderately random email address.  I will work to recover the lost emails, but things are working now (just in time for my hosting the Carnival of the Vanities next week).  Sorry to anyone who thought I was ignoring their mail.

Its that time of the year again.  Each year we hire over 400 RVers and workampers as seasonal camp hosts.  If any of you out there are interested, check out our site for camp hosts jobs here, or visit our main recreation web site here.  Last month I wrote an article on the work camping lifestyle here.

Support for free speech is generally tested at the margins -- everyone supports free speech for themselves, but the real challenge is to support free speech for your enemies.  It is for this reason that I force myself not to get worked up about the American Nazi party adopting a highway in Oregon.  LGF is wrong in this post to cheer the illegal removal of this sign.  And a state government cannot be put in the position of screening out groups eligibility based on their political views - where would it stop?

Besides, since Nazis unfortunately don't seem to be going away, what better use for them than cleaning litter off of highways?

Update:

The next step on the slippery slope.

Via Dave Berry, it is lucky that these guys didn't get a Darwin Award, so why am I so jealous?  Other great moments in thinking with your y-chromosome here and here.

Forward:  The following post contains criticism of the administration's foreign policy, including the war in Iraq.  However, I am not one who wishes to see Iraq fail, just to make me feel better about my criticisms.  In this critical week for Iraq, I wish the people of that country all the best with their fledgling democracy and I am thrilled that their elections seem to be going well.  Writing from here in the US where millions of people don't bother to vote if it's raining, the people of Iraq who are risking their lives to vote have my deep respect.

Summary:

From time to time, like many libertarians, I tend to isolationism -- but as tempting as isolationism may be, that approach is just not supported by history.  As the richest, strongest nation in the world, we run and hide from the rest of the world. In fact, I think the world is well and truly screwed if the US does not actively involve itself in making the world a better place. Since the cold war ended, the US has the luxury of intervening in world affairs and conflicts solely based on its values, such as promotion of democracy or end to genocide, rather than merely to check Soviet power. No longer do we need to support jerks like the Shah of Iran because we feel we must have allies in a particular area. GWB has outlined a fairly clear foreign policy for using American power to unseat dictators using whatever force is necessary. It is fair for us to oppose this policy for being too impatient, too violent, too expensive, too dependent on the military -- but shame on us for ceding the moral high ground of promoting democracy and opposing totalitarianism, as Democrats and many libertarians have. You can't oppose spreading democracy (or set a low priority to it, as Kerry explicitly said he would) and win with the American people. Heck, this is the Democrats' issue "“ how can they give it up to Republicans? When did pragmatic amorality rather than idealism become the hallmark of Democratic foreign policy? Where is the party of Kennedy and Truman and Roosevelt? Democrats have no one to blame but themselves for not clearly outlining a foreign policy alternative to GWB's for using the US's strength to do good in the world.

Continue reading ‘Wanted: Foreign Policy Alternative’ »

I have this weird problem when I jog.  When most people jog, people nod at them or wave or say hi or maybe just ignore them.  When I jog, people more often than not say things like "you can make it" or "not much further", like I am about to die or something.  I am not exactly Governor Arnold but I am not John Candy either.  I wish I knew what it was about my body language when I jog that makes everyone think I am about to have a coronary - maybe I will have to get my wife to video me sometime.  Or maybe not - the kids would probably run it over and over and laugh at me.

Over the last several days, more revelations have emerged that the Bush administration seems to be spending unprecedented amounts of taxpayer money for third party PR support of administration policies.  There is nothing that makes me madder than politicians using my money to help cement their own position in office.  For all the majesty of the office, the President is still the taxpayers' employee, and we should expect an honest accounting of his performance and programs.  What makes this even more ridiculous is that the US Presidency is the greatest bully pulpit in the world -- no one gets more of a chance to get his/her point of view into the public domain than the President.  But Bush is generally a crappy communicator, so he has squandered this opportunity and is forced into paying others to speak for him.

Often business people like myself lament that the government needs to be run like a business - meaning more focus on efficiency and productivity and process improvement.   But there are a number of ways the the government is NOT like a business.  The key difference is that a private company can, at the end of the day, give outsiders the brush-off.  As a private company (with no public stock float) I don't have to tell anyone anything about the decisions I have made or why I made them.  I am not only allowed but expected to pay money (in the form of PR, sales, advertising, etc.) to  put a public spin on my products and services -- this is called marketing.  The government, of course, is not supposed to do this.  They have an accountability to everybody.  (actually, even CEO's of public companies are not supposed to do this either, at least with their shareholders, but they do).

The Bush administration wants to believe they are still running their own private business, rather than a public trust.  They have used 9/11 and the war on terror as excuses to pull a veil of secrecy over decision-making, data, and even mistakes that often have little to do with national security.  They have set a number of unsettling precedents around managing their public image, and their payments for PR and good press fall into this category.

Free trade, despite it enormous benefits, is constantly under attack.  Yesterday I heard a radio ad, with the sound of a toilet flushing, and the a voice over saying something like "that is the sound of 3 million jobs being lost due to NAFTA".  Since the US unemployment rate when NAFTA was passed was over 7% and is currently under 5.5%, its hard to figure out just how they did their math.  The problem is that it is relatively easy to spot job losses due to foreign competition (cars, apparel, memory chips) and much harder to find the jobs that were created due to lower cost materials supplies and increased exports.

Virginia Postrel has a really nice article in the NY Times (yes, reg required) on how industries and jobs have prospered due to NAFTA.

Economists argue for free trade. They have two centuries of theory and experience to back them up. And they have recent empirical studies of how the liberalization of trade has increased productivity in less-developed countries like Chile and India. Lowering trade barriers, they maintain, not only cuts costs for consumers but aids economic growth and makes the general public better off. 

Even so, free trade is a tough sell. "The truth of the matter is that we have one heck of a time explaining these benefits to the larger public, a public gripped by free trade fatigue," the economist Daniel Trefler wrote in an article last fall in The American Economic Review.

If you don't want to register, she has a longer excerpt at her site here.

I have written several times that one of the perverse effects of lawsuits aimed at unsafe products is that they generally punish any company that has an open, honest internal debate on safety.  However, as I wrote here, that honest internal debate is critical to selling safe products and services.

Today, Marginal Revolution links a New Yorker article that points out the same deadly paradox:

Merck would seem to have one big thing in its favor: the company voluntarily withdrew Vioxx from the market. But while Merck executives may have hoped to persuade people that they were acting responsibly, plaintiffs' attorneys have taken the withdrawal as an admission of guilt...internal company documents show that Merck employees were debating the safety of the drug for years before the recall.

From a scientific perspective, this is hardly damning. The internal debates about the drug's safety were just that"”debates, with different scientists arguing for and against the drug....While that kind of weighing of risk and benefit may be medically rational, in the legal arena it's poison. Nothing infuriates juries like finding out that companies knew about dangers and then "balanced" them away. In fact, any kind of risk-benefit analysis, honest or not, is likely to get you in trouble with juries....Viscusi has shown that people are inclined to award heftier punitive damages against a company that had performed a risk analysis before selling a product than a company that didn't bother to. Even if the company puts a very high value on each life, the fact that it has weighed costs against benefits is, in itself, reprehensible. "We're just numbers, I feel, to them" is how a juror in the G.M. case put it. "Statistics. That's something that is wrong."...

Before a jury, then, a firm is better off being ignorant than informed.

This, from Marginal Revolution, is kind of funny for its irony value:

For years, France has fought what is sees as an American cultural invasion, powered by Hollywood movies, U.S. pop music and giant brands like Coca-Cola.  Now, it is going to great lengths to save an American cultural icon in its backyard: Disneyland

The French government has just finished helping Walt Disney Co. bail out Euro Disney SCA, the operator of two Disney theme parks outside Paris.  A state-owned bank is contributing around $500 million in investments and local concessions to save Euro Disney from bankruptcy.  This comes after 17 years during which French leaders have spent hundreds of millions of dollars and countless hours to ensure that the land of Money [ed: Monet?] could keep Mickey Mouse.  Still saddled with debt, Euro Disney is gambling that expensive new attractions and an improved tourism climate will deliver a turnaround.

I am not sure the Euro Disney site will ever work.  The main problem is that it was put in the wrong place.  The plurality of European tourists go to Spain for vacation - Spain is the Florida/California of Europe, with its warm weather and nice beaches.  Putting a theme park in northern France may seem geographically logical, on the transportation nexus between England, France, and Germany, but it makes no sense for tourism -- its in a great place for a distribution warehouse, but no one wants to take their vacation there. 

The equivalent would be putting a Disney theme park in Chicago.  Chicago is a wonderful town and sits astride the #1 transportation hub in the US, but few people want to go there on their vacations, at least not for about 9 months of the year (by the way, due to ocean currents the situation is not that comparable, but note that Euro Disney is actually NORTH of Chicago!)

Mises Institute presents a study whose results are fairly unsurprising for any who is not a socialist or member of a teachers union.  The study

showed that private schools are more efficient -their students perform better at lower costs- than public schools and moreover that the presence of private schools in one locality improves the efficiency of government schools too, presumably because of the pressure from competition.

The only real surprise was the study's source:  the department of education in Socialist Sweden.  As you can imagine, the powers that be were not amused by the results:

The teacher's union became enraged at the results as was prime minister Persson and education minister Ibrahim Baylan .

The end result, though, was ENTIRELY predictable.  Did anyone in power change behavior or their opinion?  Nope, they just hid the report and moved on:

After [education minister] Baylan publicly blasted the report (needless to say without using any real factual arguments) the Agency for Education officially disavowed it and simply withdrew it from their web site and stopped giving out the printed version of it.