Posted by Richard on March 31, 2012
The economic recovery isn’t going well in a number of respects, according to Reason’s Tim Cavanaugh. Americans are earning less (after taxes and inflation) and spending more. So borrowing has increased and saving has collapsed. The cheerleaders for the Obama administration and the Bernanke Fed at CNN think this is good news.
Of course it is. Any farmer will tell you that the way to ensure bigger harvests in the future is to eat some of your seed corn.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: bernanke, debt, economy, monetary policy, obama, saving, spending | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Richard on March 30, 2012
The Second Amendment Foundation had a great month in March, winning four gun rights victories in court. The latest was in Massachusetts, of all places. The Federal District Court struck down a law barring permanent resident aliens from owning a handgun:
BELLEVUE, WA – A Federal District Court Judge in Massachusetts today granted summary judgment in a Second Amendment Foundation case challenging that state’s denial of firearms licenses to permanent resident aliens.
U.S. District Court Judge Douglas P. Woodcock concluded that “…the Massachusetts firearms regulatory regime as applied to the individual plaintiffs, contravenes the Second Amendment.”
The case involves two Massachusetts residents, Christopher Fletcher and Eoin Pryal, whose applications for licenses to possess firearms in their homes for immediate self-defense purposes were denied under a state law that does not allow non-citizens to own handguns. SAF was joined in the case by Commonwealth Second Amendment, Inc. and the two individual plaintiffs. The case is Fletcher v. Haas.
The previous three victories came in North Carolina, Washington state, and Maryland. Read about them here.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: civil liberties, firearms, human rights, second amendment, self-defense | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Richard on March 30, 2012
A few years ago, the World Wildlife Fund came up with an annual event called Earth Hour, when Gaia-worshipping idiots around the world who think the planet would be better off if the Industrial Revolution had never occurred turn off their lights “to reduce energy consumption and draw attention to the dangers of climate change.”
For several years (when I’ve remembered it), I’ve marked Earth Hour by maximizing my energy consumption to celebrate the Industrial Revolution, progress, modernity, and technology. This year, Earth Hour starts at 8:30 PM (in whatever time zone you’re in) on Saturday, March 31st. I’ll turn on every light, appliance, and electronic device in the house.
The Competitive Enterprise Institute has a similar idea. Instead of Earth Hour, they’re going to celebrate Human Achievement Hour:
Human Achievement Hour (HAH) is a celebration of individual freedom and appreciation of the achievements and innovations that people have used to improve their lives throughout history. To celebrate Human Achievement Hour, participants need only to spend the hour from 8:30 pm to 9:30 pm on March 31 enjoying the benefits of capitalism and human innovation: Gather with friends in the warmth of a heated home, watch television, take a hot shower, drink a beer, call a loved one on the phone, or listen to music.
You can also utilize one of man’s greatest achievements, the Internet, to join CEI’s in-house party, which will live stream right here at CEI.org beginning at 8:00 pm EST. You can use the chat function to tell us how you are celebrating human achievement in your neighborhood
I hope you’ll join me and the fine folks at CEI in celebrating human achievement on Saturday night. As I’ve stated before, “My ancestors didn’t survive the Black Plague and Dark Ages, create the Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution, and bring about the past two hundred years of astonishing scientific and technological progress so that we could huddle in the dark.”
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: energy, environmentalism, global warming, lights, moonbats | 3 Comments »
Posted by Richard on March 28, 2012
In debates over Obamacare’s health insurance mandate, its defenders invariably trot out the comparison with mandatory auto insurance. I’m really getting tired of it. But I’m even more tired of what a crummy job Obamacare opponents do of countering that bogus argument. Inevitably, the first thing out of their mouths is something like “that’s a state mandate, not a federal mandate.” Next, they usually stammer that “driving on public roads is a privilege.” Talk about missing the key point!
No state mandates that you carry collision and comprehensive insurance on your car (or, for that matter, insure yourself against injury). Of course, if you borrow money to buy a vehicle, your lender will require that you have collision and comprehensive insurance as a condition of making the loan; they have a legitimate interest in protecting the property that secures the loan.
But state mandatory auto insurance laws only require you to purchase liability insurance (and in five states, uninsured motorist coverage) in order to cover property damage or injury to someone else. The purpose is to indemnify others against damages you cause. In some states, in lieu of liability insurance you can post a bond or provide other evidence of financial responsibility. In a couple of states (South Carolina and Virginia), you can just pay an uninsured motorist fee (around $500) and be on your way.
Whether that’s a legitimate exercise of state power is arguable. I say it’s not. If I’m concerned about being hit by someone who’s not financially responsible, I can buy uninsured motorist coverage (I am and I do). If I choose not to, I’ve voluntarily assumed the risk that I’ll be unable to recover damages from someone who hits me. But I sure wouldn’t man the barricades over the issue. On the long, long list of examples of government overreach, that one has to rank very near the bottom.
In any case, mandatory automobile liability insurance is not analogous to a mandatory health care policy on yourself (whose prime purpose in Obamacare is to force healthy people to subsidize the less healthy) and is entirely irrelevant to the debate over Obamacare.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: health care, insurance, obamacare | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Richard on March 27, 2012
The New York Times isn’t totally bereft of value (only in politics and economics). For instance, there’s Natalie Angier’s article about a largely forgotten math genius admired by Albert Einstein and largely forgotten today:
Noether (pronounced NER-ter) was born in Erlangen, Germany, 130 years ago this month. So it’s a fine time to counter the chronic neglect and celebrate the life and work of a brilliant theorist whose unshakable number love and irrationally robust sense of humor helped her overcome severe handicaps — first, being female in Germany at a time when most German universities didn’t accept female students or hire female professors, and then being a Jewish pacifist in the midst of the Nazis’ rise to power.
Through it all, Noether was a highly prolific mathematician, publishing groundbreaking papers, sometimes under a man’s name, in rarefied fields of abstract algebra and ring theory. And when she applied her equations to the universe around her, she discovered some of its basic rules, like how time and energy are related, and why it is, as the physicist Lee Smolin of the Perimeter Institute put it, “that riding a bicycle is safe.”
Ransom Stephens, a physicist and novelist who has lectured widely on Noether, said, “You can make a strong case that her theorem is the backbone on which all of modern physics is built.”
Interesting, even if you’re not a math nut. And it’s a shame she died too soon. RTWT.
(HT: Fred Lapides, whose blog, including its name, is definitely NSFW, but which often has fascinating links and info.)
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: history, math | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Richard on March 22, 2012
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: humor, technology | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Richard on March 20, 2012
After a cursory look at Rep. Paul Ryan’s new budget proposal, I’m inclined to give it two cheers. It’s certainly in stark contrast to the President’s bloated and irresponsible plan. And maybe it strikes an astute balance between what really needs to be done and what’s palatable, for now, to the majority of Americans. But I agree with Investor’s Business Daily:
… It’s a good start, but we’d prefer a plan that cut spending more deeply, killed off a few needless Cabinet agencies and truly embraced the Founders’ vision of a limited federal government.
Despite the wailing from Democrats about draconian spending cuts, Ryan’s near-term cuts would still leave government spending 5% more in 2014 than it did in 2008 — even after adjusting for inflation.
It never gets federal outlays below 19%, which is still too high. And annual deficits worryingly start to rise again after 2018, although at a far lower level than under Obama’s budget.
But we’ll take Ryan’s responsible and perfectly reasonable plan over Obama’s recklessness any day.
And we suspect that when voters have a chance to see the two budget futures explained to them, they will too.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: budget, fiscal policy, paul ryan | 1 Comment »
Posted by Richard on March 20, 2012
Chilling news from Simon Black:
Quietly, and with little fanfare, President Obama signed a “National Defense Resources Preparedness” Executive Order on Friday. As the name suggests, the order intends to shore up the country’s national defense resources in advance of a national emergency.
To be fair, this is not the first time that such an order has been written. Presidents Bush (II), Clinton, Reagan, and even Eisenhower provided directives in the same spirit as President Obama’s order– providing some level of government commandeering in times of national emergency.
In the past, these orders have related to things like production capacity for defense contractors, or giving FEMA authority to resolve disputes between other departments in federally designated emergency areas.
President Obama’s order, however, takes things much, much further.
Much, much further indeed! Read the whole disturbing thing.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: big government, obama | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Richard on March 15, 2012
After several days of spring-like weather, the south side of my back yard (shaded all winter by my neighbor’s fence) is finally free of snow cover for the first time since before Thanksgiving.
I blame global warming.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: denver, global warming, snow | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Richard on March 15, 2012
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry has a proposal for preventing another financial crisis like that in 2008, and it’s a significant departure from the other reforms that have been advocated (emphasis in original):
My blueprint has two basic planks:
- A return to the partnership model
- Almost complete deregulation of the financial system
I know, I know, but hear me out.What should be the goal of financial reform? Its goal should be not to prevent bubbles and busts, which are the normal result of an economy full of “animal spirits” (quiet, the Austrians in the back!), but to prevent the busts from a) necessitating taxpayer bailouts and b) having ripple effects that threaten the very existence of the financial system and wreck the economy, and by the way c) still ensure that credit flows throughout the economy (i.e., don’t destroy the village in order to save it).
Read the whole thing. It’s not a pure libertarian proposal by any means, and I’m not knowledgeable enough about banking and finance to evaluate it intelligently. But it strikes me as an interesting and at least superficially plausible proposal.
My friend David knows much more about such things than I do, and I’m interested in his opinion. Maybe he’ll let us know what he thinks.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: economics, finance, regulation | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Richard on March 14, 2012
That TSA story I just posted about reminded me of something David Aitken linked to that I meant to pass on. The TSA advertises for security screeners on pizza boxes and gas pumps. The people it hires are given a bit of classroom and on-the-job training (far less training than it takes to get a cosmetology license in the District of Columbia). It’s enough for the relatively simple work they do.
But now the Obama administration, in keeping with its “we don’t need no stinkin’ Act of Congress” way of governing (remember when liberals fretted about the imperial presidency?), has “administratively reclassified” these security screeners as Transportation Security Officers, complete with federal law enforcement uniforms and badges. All they lack is law enforcement training. And guns — but they’re already pushing to get those.
Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) details the whole story in an excellent Forbes op-ed column, including the way the TSA is extending its tentacles far beyond airports. Not content to rifle through luggage and grope genitals, the newly-minted TSOs can be found at train and subway stations, ferry terminals, and along Tennessee highways randomly inspecting cars and trucks.
Rep. Blackburn has introduced a bill to rescind this “administrative reclassification,” and it deserves your support:
In order to help rein in the TSA I introduced H.R. 3608, the Stop TSA’s Reach in Policy Act aka the STRIP Act. This bill will simply overturn the TSA’s administrative decision by prohibiting any TSA employee who has not received federal law enforcement training from using the title “officer,” wearing a police like uniform or a metal police badge. At its most basic level the STRIP Act is about truth in advertising.
As TSOs continue to expand their presence beyond our nation’s airports and onto our highways, every American citizen has the right to know that they are not dealing with actual federal law enforcement officers. Had one Virginia woman known this days before Thanksgiving she may have been able to escape being forcibly raped by a TSO who approached her in a parking lot in full uniform while flashing his badge.
Please contact your congresscritters and ask them to support H.R. 3608.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: airport security, big government, bureaucracy | 3 Comments »
Posted by Richard on March 14, 2012
The Transportation Security Administration is going to ease up on air travelers over the age of 75. They’ll be able to keep their shoes and jackets on and will no longer be groped (emphasis added):
The new guidelines from the Transportation Security Administration, which take effect Monday at four U.S. airports, are part of an effort to move away from its one-size-fits-all security procedures and speed lower-risk passengers through while focusing on those who may need more scrutiny. Similar changes were made last fall for travelers 12 and younger.
Since the 9/11 terror attacks that led to tighter security, air travelers have criticized what they say is a lack of common sense in screening all passengers the same way, including young children and the elderly. That criticism grew louder in 2010 when the government began using a more invasive pat-down that involves screeners feeling a traveler’s genital and breast areas through their clothing.
“By moving away from a one-size-fits-all approach to security and applying some intelligence-driven and risk-based security models, TSA is looking at how this works for passengers,” said agency spokesman Jim Fotenos.
Correct me if I’m wrong — isn’t this profiling? I thought profiling was both ineffective and un-American.
I guess it’s OK if it’s just based on ageism. I guess the Obama administration has determined that the single most reliable predictor of whether someone might be a security risk, the one thing that potential terrorists have in common, is being between the ages of 12 and 75.
I’m so glad they’ve figured that out. I feel safer already. Oh, look — a 76-year-old woman in a hijab accompanied by her two Yemeni grandsons.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: air travel, airport security | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Richard on March 14, 2012
Item: The federal government has exempted an Indian tribe from the Bald and Golden Eagle Act to accommodate their religious beliefs.
A pair of Wyoming bald eagles now qualify as a really endangered species.
The Northern Arapaho Tribe secured an extraordinarily rare permit from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service allowing the Native Americans to kill two of the national birds for religious use.
The national agency, in a 2009 report, said it has never issued a license for the killing of a bald eagle — making it likely that the tribe was the first group to ever get the legal go-ahead.
…
Federal law bars the killing of any bald eagle under almost any circumstance. The Wyoming tribe argued that the ban was a violation of their religious freedom.
Item: The federal government has refused to exempt Catholic institutions from the mandate to provide birth control and “morning-after” (abortifacient) pills to their employees. The Catholic institutions argued that the mandate was a violation of their religious freedom.
I’m not religious, or anti-abortion, or particularly pro-eagle. But I’d love to have someone explain to me on what rational basis the federal government can choose to accommodate one group’s religious beliefs, but not the others’.
Does the phrase “equal protection under the law” have any meaning at all anymore under the Obama administration?
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: big government, discrimination, obama, religion | 2 Comments »
Posted by Richard on March 13, 2012
In California, dairy farmer James Stewart is being prosecuted for selling unpasteurized milk to unsuspecting consumers. No, wait, I got that wrong. He sold it to consumers who eagerly sought him out and stood in line for the opportunity to buy it.
In France, you can buy raw, unpasteurized milk in vending machines, and Mark Perry noted the irony:
… We always hear about France being an example of heavy-handed government bureaucracy and “European-style socialism,” but that seems to more accurately describe California’s approach in this case while France takes the “laissez-faire” approach.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Agriculture is putting pink slime in school lunches.
Because the government knows what’s best for us.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: agriculture, big government, paternalism, prohibition | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Richard on March 9, 2012
The new Disney film, John Carter, is based on Edgar Rice Burroughs’ “John Carter of Mars” series, begun in 1911. The eleven books in the series are among the great classics of science fiction, and inspired many of those who followed in Burroughs’ footsteps. But did Disney do right by this legend of the genre?
Bryan Young of Big Shiny Robot emphatically says yes. He wrote not only a glowing review, but an intelligent one — the kind of review that persuades me to go see this film. Here’s an excerpt:
There’s one thing you have to do for this movie, and that is this: forget that you’ve seen every other cliched, formulaic blockbuster of the last thirty years. The source material is the thing that inspired all of the tropes we’ve seen in cinema since the old Flash Gordon serials and somehow John Carter’s adventures have remained sacred and off the big screen.
Watch this and understand that it’s true to the source material. You’ll have fun.
But on a subconscious level, you’ll be entertained by a level of filmmaking much more even handed, capable, and mature than you’re used to. The story is told elegantly, the wraparound sequences serve a purpose, the characterizations are deep and complex. …
But it’s still a Saturday afternoon serial, perfect for a matinee.
Read the whole thing, and see if you aren’t persuaded too. I’ll update with whether I think he’s right or not after I see it. If you see it first, let me know what you think.
UPDATE (3/25): Finally saw it today, and enjoyed the hell out of it. Excellent film! Go see! (If I have time tomorrow, I’ll post about it in more detail.)
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: film, movies, science fiction | 2 Comments »
