Friday, July 30, 2004

Media elite vs the masses?

With one exception (significantly?) here all reviews of The Village have been negative -- and all reviews of Manchurian Candidate (except -- significantly? -- this one) have been positive. So elite opinion makers at the truth-denying, ever-decreasing-circulation newspapers have spoken -- and guess which film the moviegoing public is choosing this weekend? Go on. Guess...

Link posted by Steve Antler : 1:59 PM

Taxcutfortherichtaxcutfortherichtaxcu...

TAP lists the usual suspects and says the usual things.  Meanwhile, from the recent IRS data, here's a look at progressivity, then and now.  First let's look at the situation faced by all of us in the real world:   Interpretation?  Not too bad.  We've actually had a tax cut!  Now move on to Kerry territory, those bad rich guys between $100,000 and $500,000.  (I know he says $200,000, but does anyone really believe that?) Yup, pesky six-figure households have had a tax cut haven't they?  But check out how the gap narrows as we get up there towards $500,000.    This seems counter to what we've been told by TAP and others, no?  As income increases towards about a half million, the tax cut (as measured by relative progressivity) gets smaller and smaller. But let's move on to the upper brackets.  (Watch out for nosebleeds, folks!  We're really gaining altitude quite fast here!) Whoops!  Even though at the very top we're looking at flat tax after about $2.25M, things have got more progressive, not less!  The breakeven seems to be about $1.5M.  Lots of this has to do (of course) with the stock market and with people moving in and out of brackets, but it does give one cause to think. As things have worked out this seems to actually have been a tax cut for everyone but the very rich!

Link posted by Steve Antler : 11:52 AM

Ebert on The Manchurian Candidate

Read the whole thing, but it boils down to this: Are corporations really a threat to America's security? The rotten ones are. When you consider that the phony California electric crisis, with its great cost in lives and fortune, was an act of corporate terrorism, he has a point. I guess from Roger's point of view since every dumb jerk on the street considers himself a movie critic, it's okay for Roger to act like an expert on California energy deregulation.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 9:52 AM

The canary died...

My personal indicator regarding the success of last night's speech is this. Vietnam is, for me, unfinished business.  Sometimes -- late at night -- what I did, what I believed, what I saw when the Boat People came to Canada, all still crash back and forth. I know I am not the only one.  Some commentators I see on TV every week -- Chris Matthews, for example -- feel much the same way. So my little canary is this:  Do any of the commentators my age or thereabouts show any sign John Kerry has given them even the smallest hint of comfort or closure?   The poor little bird, it would appear, gave a tiny chirp, wobbled back and forth, then dropped to the bottom of the cage stone cold dead.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 6:48 AM

Consensus versus chaos...

Intentional?  Unintentional?  Who knows, but this little Eric Zorn essay points to one of those obvious conclusions nobody seems to talk about.  While the Republicans enjoy (a rather boring) consensus about everything -- yes, there are factions, but all accept the "system" as something which in general "works" -- the Democrats can only simulate  a similar consensus by keeping quiet and not expressing the disparate (and contradictory) causes motivating their many factions.  Perhaps they all agree the "system" has "failed" in some way, but all attempts at explanation fail.  Their many varieties of anger start sounding like chaos. The demonstrators -- who (says this report) have quietly saved their real venom for New York -- are therefore a great metaphor for the entirety of  the Democratic Party and the just-ended convention. UPDATE:  Via Milt Rosenberg, Robert Novak says very much the same thing.  Only better.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 6:19 AM

Thursday, July 29, 2004

Earth to Mickey Kaus, Earth to Mickey Kaus...

Come in please...please be advised Kerry did not shoot two hours of video in Vietnam...Home video had not been invented yet...Not for fifteen years...Earth to Mickey...come in please... UPDATE:  Is that "two hours" number correct?  As of the late 1960's the cost of super-8 film stock and procesing was enormous.  The typical family might accumulate a sum total of no more than twenty to thirty minutes over the entire lifetime of the camera.  Stock and processing of two hours' worth of super-8 film back then cost a small fortune.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 1:17 PM

Did someone say "automatic stabilizer"?

I know this will get into circulation as proof the economy is somehow worse than we thought, but the article actually supports (1) the contention the recession, not the tax cut alone, generated the deficit, (2) stock ownership is no longer limited to those in the upper tax brackets, and (3) in terms of tax revenue generated, progressivity really matters whenever a recession affects those at the top: From 2000 to 2002, individual income taxes fell 18.8 percent, more than three times the decline in adjusted gross incomes, the I.R.S.'s latest statistical reports show. (Adjusted gross income is the broadest category of income taxpayers report to the government, excluding only a small portion of income in other forms, notably interest on tax-free bonds.)...To some extent, taxes fell more than incomes because of tax cuts championed by President Bush and approved by Congress in 2001. But in that year and in 2002 the cuts applied primarily to those making less than $100,000, especially families with children, and to capital gains from the sales of appreciated assets like stock...The major tax rate reductions for highly paid Americans did not take effect until 2003, when - it is clear from spending patterns, general income data and the performance of the stock market - more affluent taxpayers regained some of the losses they experienced in the earlier years of the decade....Falling incomes, rather than tax cuts, appear to count for the greatest share of the decline in income taxes paid.  That is because the higher one stood on the income ladder the greater the impact was likely to be from the stock market crunch.  (emphasis added) There is a final potential lesson.  Some tax experts -- Bruce Bartlett, for one -- credit declining stock prices (rather than the Bush tax cut) for lowered tax burdens in the upper brackets.   It looks like important support for that position has now been provided by the IRS itself. UPDATE:  In terms of actually locating the IRS document, the NYT is useless.  Here's the page that should access it, but I can't find it anywhere.   Does anyone know where the doggone thing can be found? UPDATE II:  And then  of course there's this.  Now while I don't waste too much sympathy for those at such higher altitudes, it might be noted the article only talks about CEO's with jobs -- not about those who've been nudged out (and who, therefore, haven't enjoyed those 15% raises). UPDATE III: Reader Tom Lane sends this link, which I think is the report in question.   Meanwhile, Bruce Bartlett adds the following: Well, according to [the article] the wealthy suffered a massive reduction in income between 2000 and 2002, while the income of the middle class increased.  In other words, we got exactly what the left has always [claimed it wants].  But does [anyone actually] feel better?  Who wouldn't [gladly] trade the years 2000 to 2002, when the rich were getting poorer, for the years 1997 to 1999, when the rich were getting richer?  Very, very few people, I think.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 6:27 AM

Wednesday, July 28, 2004

Just in via CrushKerry.com

Either the Heinz Foundation or the Heinz Corporation we're not sure is reportedly threatening legal action against anti-kerry bloggers and websites --  rumor has it some have actually been forced to shut down. If you find yourself threatened, call these people for help.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 4:09 PM

Just in via Drudge...

This afternoon Michael Moore is not the only one being accused of faking documentary footage.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 1:22 PM

Are they really evil, or just very bad?

Here's the money quote from a tiny advance review of one of the few movies I'm actually willing to line up for -- the new Jonathan Demme Manchurian Candidate: Perfectly poised to stand beside Fahrenheit 9/11 and The Corporation this election year, The Manchurian Candidate is a worthy companion piece to both. Hollywood's record on tackling social issues is at best overrated. The masterpieces like Grapes of Wrath or Citizen Kane/Magnificent Ambersons draw much of their strenght not from advanced social ideas, but rather from an appropriate distance/proximity toward subject matter. These were all films addressing social issues of previous decades, not current events. Whenever Hollywood tackles current social issues the results run from irrelevant to disastrous. For example: what do you really learn about the sixties from What's New Pussycat or The Trip, or any other sixties film that addressed social issues of that decade? Virtually nothing. These documents are confused and incoherent, which partly explains their obscurity. Again: the 80's "dust bowl trilogy" -- Places in the Heart, Country, and The River -- were great films motivated by the 80's family farms crisis. But the films taught you nothing about the crisis because they hadn't a clue what was really going on. And now, even though there is a great Hollywood tradition of love/hate relationship with big business, we have this tradition culminating in the Hollywood social thesis of the early 21st century -- the story of the "evil multinational." Look for more films on the subject. And, look as you will for coherent understanding of what the films address, you'll find no real evidence the screenwriters know what they're talking about. UPDATE:  While driving back to office heard an NPR expert respond to an interesting point regarding Hollywood and politics: while all those Hollywood actors are definitely to the left, all the truly successful political leaders and/or office holders who have come out of Hollywood -- Reagan, Heston, Eastwood, Schwartzenegger, for example -- seem to be political conservatives. The expert of the moment explained this is because Hollywood specializes in putting forward the myth of the dominant patriarchal male hero.  That is, all these guys are, uh, dominant patriarchal male heroes I guess. UPDATE II:  John R Henry finds two movies he thinks do handle business themes in a competent fashion: One of them is 1979 "The China Syndrome" [which purports] to show the dangers of nuclear power plants [but in actuality shows] how safe they are.  [T]he plant is shoddily built with lots of defective welds... Jack Lemmon...breaks into the plant and takes over the control room.  [T]o prevent the shutdown, a bunch of techs rewire the entire plant in a couple hours so it can be controlled externally. Then a SWAT team blows the door off the control room and shoots up all the controls...[As] all this [goes] on, the shoddy welds are popping and a pump is coming loose from [its] moorings.  In other words, everything that could possibly be wrong at a nuclear plant, plus some other stuff [goes] wrong... [T]he end result?  Nothing... The safety controls shut...down safely. [No] hole to China[, and no] radiation... [Nobody gets hurt except] Lemmon who [is] shot...Burns and Roe, a large NJ engineering firm involved in power plant construction [gave] out copies of the movie [during the 1980's].   Their VP of business development...told me the movie actually promoted nuke safety if you knew what you were looking at...   The other good business movie...is "Other People's Money"...I am still trying to figure out if Norman Jewison meant to make this movie or if he screwed up. It is a remarkably sympathetic view of the way the marketplace really works.  (Well,allowing for dramatic license etc.   It is a movie, after all.)

Link posted by Steve Antler : 7:22 AM

Tuesday, July 27, 2004

What they don't tell you...

Teflon and Scotchguard are appearing in animals all over the world, from the cute bunnies in your back yard to Arctic polar bears. The article doesn't even hint at the most interesting question.  How has measuring technology improved over the past twenty years?  Are we simply measuring  (a) that which has always been there but (b) was previously unmeasurable? UPDATE:  I must admit I've been strongly influenced by the work of Bruce Ames -- who found more naturally-occurring carcinogen in broccoli than suspect man-made pesticide.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 7:24 AM

Everyvotemustcounteveryvotemustcounteveryvote...

Paul "Michael Moore" Krugman has discovered touchscreen voting machines leave no paper trail -- and, predictably, he innuendoes his way toward a secret conspiracy hatched by Jeb Bush. Left offscreen, unfortunately, is the mad, stupid scramble toward "new technology" voting following the Democratic-media-inspired panic of the "every vote should count" postelection sloganeering.  (Also left offscreen is whether the no-paper-trail machines have been bought by Democrat or Republican districts.) And also left offscreen is evidence of massive voter fraud outside Florida putting Democrats in office.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 6:21 AM

Monday, July 26, 2004

Not Harding -- Nixon!

If John Kerry is now reinventing himself as Warren "return to normalcy" Harding, the RNC is busy reinventing Bill Clinton as -- get ready for this -- none other than Herbert Hoover himself: Clinton's Advisors Noted The Economic Downturn In 2000. " 'Economic growth had started to fade in the fall of 2000...I developed this line that we better get out while the going is good,' said Kathryn L. Shaw, a former member of Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers" (Source:  Speech by Kathryn Shaw, Progress and Freedom Foundation's Aspen Summit, 8/20/01). Clinton's Former Labor Secretary Noted Job Declines In The Middle Of 2000.  "… the economy is starting to slow. Employers got rid of 116,000 jobs last month -- the largest drop in more than eight years, and the first job decline since the economy took off in the mid-1990s. Jobs disappeared in just about every sector of the economy. Wages have stopped rising. The unemployment rate has started to edge upwards." (Source:  Robert Reich "When the Fed Picks the Presidents," NPR's Market Place, 6/2/00)  "Those who were supposedly guiding the country's economy benefited from the euphoria brought on by false accounting no less than did the CEOs." "Yes, the statistics looked good in the final years of the bubble, the final years of the Clinton Administration. But the bursting of the bubble has put America's economy in jeopardy." (Source:  Joseph Stiglitz , "The Roaring Nineties," Atlantic Monthly, 10/2/02) Seeds of "Destruction" Were Planted During the Clinton Administration:  "Referring to the Clinton administration, [Stiglitz] writes, 'We had also planted some of the seeds of destruction that would underlay the recession that arrived in March 2001.'"  (Source:  William Nordhaus, "The Story of the Bubble," The New York Review, 1/14/04) The Myth of Deficit Reduction As the Cause of the Economic Recovery:  "In explaining our success in the nineties to ourselves and the world we have largely drawn on a set of myths that desperately need debunking: that deficit reduction by itself led to the economic recovery of the 1990s."  (Source:  Joesph Stigliz, "The Roaring Nineties," Atlantic Monthly, 10/02)   Interesting tactic; well documented; lots to think about.  (I especially liked that "planting the seeds of destruction" part.) UPDATE:  My mother, who seems surprised and impressed that I'm a "blogger" (love it -- she finally found out what it means!) tells me Harding is irrelevant here.  Nixon is the better analogy because (1) those who want the war to be over (even if it is before its time) will vote for him, and (2) his many plans for blue ribbon commissions to study this or that are starting to resemble Nixon's "secret plan" to end the war. UPDATE II:  Brian Considine sends this comment regarding Stigliz: I think you are being a bit misleading here.  If you read his piece you'll notice that he cited deficit reduction as a key cause of the recovery in the 90's.  Specifically, banks in the early 90's had been permitted to classify investments in Treasury Bonds as 'riskless' by regulators.  After being burned by bad property loans, many banks were very heavily invested in Treasury Bonds.  While T-Bonds are riskless in terms of default risk, they are not in terms of interest rate risk.  If interest rates rose, the banks would have suffered serious losses and this could have set off a banking crises along the lines of the Savings and Loan crises.  By cutting the deficit, what would have been a curse was turned into a blessing.  Lower interest rates yielded windfall profits for the banks which improved their balance sheets.  Even better, lower rates meant that banks could no longer earn high returns by buying Treasuries.  Instead they started loaning to individuals and businesses again. Stigliz's point was simply that the circumstances were such that deficit reduction caused the boom, but that those circumstances were partially unique to the time.  Lower interest rates are always stimulative of investment spending as well as consumption (through mortage refinancing).  If the deficit was not controlled in the 90's, the boom would have been a lot smaller (if there even was one). EconoPundit responds:  In other words, it is a myth that deficit reduction by itself leads to economic booms.  What am I missing?

Link posted by Steve Antler : 10:39 PM

Lest we forget...

Milt Rosenberg:  This bulletin  from VOA makes it all too clear that the elite of the Murder State based in Khartoum will not be dissuaded. If NATO or the UN or the African National Congress had any will to oppose consumate evil they would act now----BUT THEY WON'T!

Link posted by Steve Antler : 9:17 PM

Just what we need to start the week...

Bruce Bartlett has written a very depressing article for Fortune Magazine.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 9:56 AM

Saturday, July 24, 2004

Glenn Reynolds on CNN

"Being a rock star in the blogging world is kinda like being a championship bowler..."

Link posted by Steve Antler : 2:08 PM

Is it getting cold in here?

This has to be one of the longest summaries on record giving evidence something doesn't in fact exist.   Okay, quite, I've got to think for a minute or two... (Absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence.  Right.  But evidence of absence isn't... what?)

Link posted by Steve Antler : 6:42 AM

Friday, July 23, 2004

Class

I'd like to think Robert Kuttner really knows better: Under Bush, the pay of ordinary workers has lagged behind inflation. About 77 percent of all the dollars in tax cuts went to the richest 20 percent of households. More workers have lost health insurance and pension coverage. These policy changes did not just happen; they were worked out in concert with organized business. You would think, therefore, that the Democrats would make Republican responsibility for these skewed benefits and costs the centerpiece of the 2004 campaign. But that enterprise is trickier than it might seem. Since all but the most destitute of voters consider themselves middle class, a politics that talks about haves and have-nots starts sounding like a politics of handouts.  (Emphasis added) So it all boils down to this: the federal government regulates income distribution, workers are too stupid to recognize their true class interests, and there exists an elaborate conspiracy invisible to workers but all too clear to enlightened social theorists like Kuttner.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 6:46 AM

You always know exactly where to look...

Here's the simple blogger's formula for critiquing a column by Paul Krugman. It's so easy I'm reluctant to give the secret away.  (It might, after all, cause thousands of new competitors to enter the EconoPundit industry -- watering down my profits, putting downward pressure on prices, stuff like that.)  Oh heck, here's the secret.  Just read the doggone column and look for those one or two key points that seem just a little, you know, "blurry."   One or more important points he seems to nervously push forward and then quickly move away from -- usually with a writing style that suggests he's sweating, eyes darting back and forth, like he actually wants to be caught. Take today's column, for example.  Can you find that "blurry" point I'm talking about? When KPMG auditors hired by an international advisory board finally got to work, they found that no effort had been made to keep an accurate record of oil sales, and that accounting for the $20 billion Development Fund for Iraq consisted of "spreadsheets and pivot tables maintained by a single accountant." You guessed it!  Where did that oh-so distinguished-sounding "international advisory board" come from, anyway?   It seems Paul was a little hasty in cribbing from various newspaper articles in writing the column.  What we're talking about here is not "an" international advisory board but the International Advisory and Monitoring Board set up by none other than the folks who brought you the oil-for-food scandal, the United Nations, and currently being utilized in a partisan fashion by hate-America Democrats to hang (you guessed it) Haliburton: Rep. Henry A. Waxman (Calif.), ranking Democrat on the Committee on Government Reform, urged Davis in a July 9 letter to "investigate potential mismanagement" of Iraq's oil revenue by the United States. He also pressed Davis to subpoena documents from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which was hired by the U.S.-led coalition to handle Iraq's oil revenue. Waxman cited a preliminary audit by the accounting firm KPMG charging that the coalition's management of Iraq's oil revenue was "open to fraudulent acts" and that its accounting practices were "prone to error." The final audit, which was commissioned by the International Advisory and Monitoring Board, is scheduled for release Thursday. The auditing board was established by the U.N. Security Council in May 2003 to monitor Iraq's oil exports under the U.S. occupation of Iraq. But the preliminary findings noted that KPMG's auditors "encountered resistance" from coalition authorities, particularly their refusal to turn over "special audit reports" related to contracts awarded without competitive bidding to Halliburton and other companies. Paul, haven't you heard?  This week you're supposed to be nonpartisan.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 5:44 AM

Thursday, July 22, 2004

Even so, it was a great movie...

Drudge is linking to early commentary on the new Manchurian Candidate's partisan bias.  We've already worked out one lame joke on the subject, but ignored the obvious point that the old version (great movie that it was) had politics so over the top it envisioned a Sino-Soviet-John Birch Society alliance.  (Yeah, all those bad guys working together.) Judging from previews, the modern version has replaced the evil forces of the 60's -- political conservativism and communism -- with the new evil forces of the current era -- political conservativism and big corporations. UPDATE:  Drudge is quoting Jonathan Demme: This is a movie about political brainwashing, and we're right back there again now...I hope it has the potential for stimulating people to start thinking about the process because Lord knows we could use some stimulation. Worth thinking about, no?  Back in the old days the actual process of Communist brainwashing was usually left offscreen, because nobody was quite sure how it was done.  If we've now returned to the days of political brainwashing and our own nationals are guilty, what's the mechanism?  How are they actually doing it right before our very eyes? I'll know more once I've seen the movie (which will be soon), but for now here's a working hypothesis: it has something to do with (a) advertising and (b) the elitist (and basically anti-"small-d" democratic) idea the public is too stupid to withstand advertising not regulated by an enlightened elite.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 9:26 PM

Just coincidence? Maybe, but who knows?...

So I'm just settling in with my family to watch this movie (really great to see Harvey Keitel playing Harry Houdini!) and I get an email from Milt Rosenberg directing my attention to this article (scoll down to material on Conan Doyle). So hey, is this, you know, weird or what?  (Cue theme from Twilight Zone.) UPDATE:  Which reminds me, a lesser-known fact about Harry Houdini was his thick Yiddish accent.    Think about it -- born in Hungary, dad an immigrant Rabbi, mother spoke no English -- he simply couldn't have spoken perfectly unaccented English. You can confirm this for yourself by visiting the Houdini Museum in Appleton, Wisconsin, which has a copy of the only existing Houdini voice recording.  Yup, sure enough, sounds just like Mel Brooks imitating his grandfather.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 7:25 PM

Omission...

John J. Miller at The Corner: The Washington Post today says that left-wingers dominate the business of documentaries--a claim I won't even begin to challenge (except to note that most documentaries are probably non-political and are watched on the Discovery Channel and its cousins). But the piece probably should have mentioned one of the most important documentaries of all time -- Free to Choose, the 10-part television series hosted by Milton Friedman. At the end of the Carter years and the start of the Reagan era, it promoted the concept of free market economics to a huge audience. The medium has in fact worked for the Right. Let's bring this up to date and mention Daniel Yergin, maybe?

Link posted by Steve Antler : 1:17 PM

One gets more attention with a constructive attitude...

If (as I believe) this is rent seeking behavior, put your money on these: (1) a new centrism -- largely defined by mainsteam media's mad scrample to narrate the story of this pheonomenon, (2) ever-slightly lower ratings for Rush and Sean, and (3) Bush re-election.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 6:45 AM

Wednesday, July 21, 2004

Part of your obligation to the Party...

Remember these words: Anything could be true. The so-called laws of Nature were nonsense. The law of gravity was nonsense. 'If I wished,' O'Brien had said, 'I could float off this floor like a soap bubble.' Winston worked it out. 'If he thinks he floats off the floor, and if I simultaneously think I see him do it, then the thing happens.' Suddenly, like a lump of submerged wreckage breaking the surface of water, the thought burst into his mind: 'It doesn't really happen. We imagine it. It is hallucination.' He pushed the thought under instantly. The fallacy was obvious. It presupposed that somewhere or other, outside oneself, there was a 'real' world where 'real' things happened. But how could there be such a world? What knowledge have we of anything, save through our own minds? All happenings are in the mind. Whatever happens in all minds, truly happens. when you read this.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 6:42 AM

Tuesday, July 20, 2004

How to reduce labor cost by 2.86%...

I know this will be touted as "retreat from welfare state" but the more important message is how much smarter than government are the workers.  Note the vote was 98%.  The lessons of Flint Michigan (thanks in no small part to Michael Moore!), the US electronics and steel industries, and many others similar haven't been lost on the workers of the world.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 8:34 AM

Monday, July 19, 2004

The Iranian Candidate?

Really disquieting connections documented with lots of links over at CrushKerry.com.   Really -- was there any time during Kerry's brief service in Vietnam when he was listed missing for any reason?  Does he have sleep disturbance issues?   UPDATE:  And in case you haven't heard yet, Kerry/Clinton security adviser Sandy Berger is now the subject of an FBI criminal investigation for stealing and apparently destroying (losing?   misplacing?  giving away?) classified documents.  Via Glenn Reynolds.   UPDATE II:  Kerry Spot points to at least one previous advisory seemingly relating to the documents Berger stuffed in his pants:  If the document in question states...a warning about "a substantial al Qaeda network and affiliated foreign terrorist presence within the U.S., capable of supporting additional terrorist attacks here" and "seventeen months before the September 11 attacks, the review recommends disrupting the al Qaeda network and terrorist presence here using immigration violations, minor criminal infractions, and tougher visa and border controls", then Berger has been caught removing documents indicating he and his team dropped the ball on having any chance to stop the 9/11 plot in March 2000. And note how closely tied to all this is Jamie Gorelick.  Where is Maureen Dowd when we need her the most?  Someone has to come up with a good nickname for this new Wilson/Berger/Gorelick triad. UPDATE III:  Debkafile's take on the subject: According to DEBKAfile's sources, Berger removed his notes from Middle East peace talks from the National Archives in view of the unfortunate sequels of the Clinton presidency’s two central, mutually supportive policies. On the one hand, Clinton pushed hard for accommodations between Israel, the Palestinians and its Arab neighbors, while at the same time nurturing American ties in the Arab and Muslim world. He hoped to gain the trust of Arab and Muslim leaders for peace with Israel while persuading the Jewish state to be forthcoming with concessions. However, Clinton's expectation of a Middle East peace triumph at the White House in the wake of the 1993 Oslo Accords melted down in the ensuing blight of the Palestinian suicide terror confrontation that continues to beset the region. The consequences of his second policy line were still more sweeping. In deciding to go to war in 1998 on the Muslim Albanian side of the Balkans against the Christian Serbs, Clinton may have been influenced by the atrocities committed there but he was in essence pursuing his global strategy. He chose to elide the fact that Iranian Revolutionary Guards and al Qaeda cells -- most Saudi-dominated -- were fighting alongside Albanian and Bosnian Muslims -- as did his advisers, especially Berger and secretary of state Madeline Albright. Islamic extremists and Arab terrorists as well as the Saddam regime prospered unnoticed in the Clinton years. Al Qaeda was allowed to build up in the Balkans a central logistical base for operations in Europe, from which the Hamburg cell later derived back-up for plotting the 9/11 attacks against America. Berger is the second Clinton-era official to face prosecution for withdrawing classified materials from secure premises. Former CIA director John Deutsch was pardoned by Clinton hours before he left office and saved from paying the price for taking home laptops with classified materials in 1996. Earlier, Deutsch resigned. The case of Sandy Berger differs because the charges against him arise from the request of a former president in connection with an official probe. There will always be a question hanging over the precise nature of this request. Did the former adviser copy and “discard” documents at Clinton’s behest or his own initiative? In the absence of answers, a cloud of suspicion will hang over the affair and almost certainly influence American opinion before and after November's presidential election. UPDATE IV:  It has now emerged Bill Clinton knew about the investigation months ago.  This leaves us to ask what didn't John Kerry know and when didn't he know it?  Or, as Roger Simon puts it: But wait... if Clinton has known about Berger's problems for months, has Kerry? And if so, why did the presidential candidate continue to use the former National Security Adviser as an adviser to his campaign, knowing, at the least, that Berger was under investigation for a serious crime? That would be amazingly irresponsible for someone running for President. Of course, there is the possibility that Berger informed Clinton about his problems without telling Kerry. That would make the former NSA a real piece of work (if serial lifting of secure papers doesn't already). Now there is a third possibility... that Kerry knew and for reasons unknown was powerless to act. But I don't want to go there except maybe in a novel. EconoPundit responds to Simon's last comment:  How about in a movie?

Link posted by Steve Antler : 7:37 PM

EconoPundit reports, you decide...

I was fooling with the monthly employment numbers this morning, getting ready for a new econometrics class this Fall, when I stumbled on a new employment prediction by, basically, doing some homework exercises.  (Yeah -- one of the problems of teaching math or statistics is you have to be able to do those pesky homework exercises just in case the students actually get around to trying them -- which can sometimes lead to students coming to you with questions about how you do these stupid problems sitting around at the end of the chapter!)   Anyway, I tested out five or six different single equation forecast models on the BLS payroll survey and -- using the Akaike and Schwarz criteria (don't ask!) -- I settled on a simple cubic specification that according to the criteria will generate the most reliable out-of-sample forecasts.  Here are the results: As you can clearly (?) see from the diagram we're not out of the jobless recovery quite yet, since the payroll survey's preliminary number for July is roughly 1.2 million below the prerecession peak of 132.5 million jobs in March of 2001.   But check out where the model puts us next month, the month after,  all the way to the election itself.  The up-down arrow outside the forecast (right side of diagram) shows a 95% confidence interval around the forecast results.  (Only 5% of the time will actual numbers lie above or below the boundaries indicated by the arrow.)  The most-pessimistic forecast within the boundaries of the 95% confidence interval (roughly indicated by the blue arrow) is a net gain of 1.53 million jobs (over the prerecession peak) by election time.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 2:33 PM

Yo, cowboy!

Vivid essay on two frontier border towns -- one US, one Canadian.  As a bonus, if you read far enough you finally discover where the expression "smile when you say that" came from.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 5:43 AM

Sunday, July 18, 2004

Diary of an ex-Marxist Manufacturer

As a Manufacturer and ex-Marxist I'm attracted to a pseudo-Marxist political argument I heard years ago, that American economic life is increasingly dominated by "class conflict" between producers and redistributors. By "producers" the argument imagines manufacturers, their employees, as well as providers of all directly-consumed services from fast food to education. By "redistributors" the argument means, basically, government and lawyers. The argument is simple: producers and redistibutors are two distinct classes, each with its own relationship to the means of production and (therefore) its own (class) interests.  Each has its own ideology growing out of its basic relationship to the means of production.  And, finally, each is locked in an historical struggle with the other for domination of what Lenin (and Daniel Yergin) called the "Commanding Heights" of the economy. These two class ideologies are as simple as the argument itself.  Producers are classic liberals -- believers in property rights and the righteous working of the invisible hand.  Redistributors are classic rationalists -- believers in organization, policy, institutional reform. On the basis of normative dispute the two sides have irreconcilable differences, simply because normative disputes can't be resolved scientifically.  So when the redistributors lament all inequalities generated by private enterprise and the invisible hand, the producers can't really provide an answer.  Or can they?  There's something that feels "historical" about the appearance of John Edwards on the current Democratic ticket.  And while some have wisely pointed out how poorly Republican core resentment of trial lawyers travels once you get beyond the conservative base -- Glenn Reynolds points out, for example, nearly everyone has been helped one time or another by some lawyer somewhere -- it still feels like a classic re-education opportunity is, slowly but surely, building.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 6:03 AM

Saturday, July 17, 2004

Lost Paradise of the Good Jobs Revisited

The jobless recovery is finally over, more or less at pace with predictions.   Needing a substute, the victimology machine is now developing a "wageless recovery" trope.  While data on this are mixed, numbers do exist suggesting the recovery is in fact neither jobless nor "wageless."

Link posted by Steve Antler : 8:12 PM

If you happen to have some spare time...

Someone linked to us at this marvelous web site which is totally new to me.  Also, while driving around on business yesterday I listened to a fabulous interview with he author of this somewhat related but more political site.   UPDATE: And speaking of useful idiots...

Link posted by Steve Antler : 9:20 AM

Ignorance of cost is no excuse...

This editorial's  subtext is "U.S. security may be enhanced by making friends with dictatorships."  This may actually be true, though I hope (and suspect) it is false.  What bothers me is the editorialist's reluctance to be explicit about the matter.   Biographical note for anyone who's interested:  It was the American left's drift away from "classical" Marxism (i.e. the historical model upon which the Communist Manifesto is based) toward Monthly-Review-style romanticization of third world dictatorship that pushed me from radicalism to Keynesian liberalism in the early 1980's.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 9:09 AM

Friday, July 16, 2004

Another report from the Academy...

When you read a commentator with whom you don't agree, there are points where you say to yourself "yes but,"  and there are points where, instead, you say with exasperation "Oh please."    The following column has so many "oh please" points I have to reproduce and Fisk it: OP-ED COLUMNIST Medical Class Warfare By PAUL KRUGMAN Published: July 16, 2004  If past patterns are any guide, about one in three Americans will go without health insurance for some part of the next two years. They won't, for the most part, be the persistently poor, who are usually covered by Medicaid. They will be members of working families with breadwinners who have jobs without medical benefits or who have been laid off.   Oh please.  "One in three?"  "For some part of the next two years?"  How many of these are perfectly well-off people swiching jobs?  How many are young folks who voluntarily decline health insurance?  How many are undocumented immigrants?  Whenever we  adjust the data for these, the number of uninsured drops substantially.  A real figure is roughly 22 million.      Many Americans fear the loss of health insurance. Last week I described John Kerry's health plan. What's the Bush administration's plan? First, it offers a tax credit for low- and middle-income families who don't have health coverage through employers. That credit helps them purchase health insurance. The credit would be $3,000 for a family of four with an income of $25,000; for an income of $40,000, it would fall to $1,714. Last year the average premium for families of four covered by employers was more than $9,000. How can you throw out that last number without thinking about it?  The average premium for two-child employer-covered families was more than $9000?     A study by the Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that the tax credit would reduce the number of uninsured, 44 million people in 2002, by 1.8 million. So it wouldn't help a great majority of families unable to afford insurance. For comparison, an independent assessment of the Kerry plan by Kenneth Thorpe of Emory University says that it would reduce the number of uninsured by 26.7 million. 1.8 divided by the real number, 22, is an improvement of 8.1 percent.  Not perfect, but still a measurable improvment.  Sure, other plans may do more -- but what do they cost?    The other main component of the Bush plan involves "health savings accounts." The prescription drug bill the Bush administration pushed through Congress last year had a number of provisions unrelated to Medicare. One of them allowed people who purchase insurance policies with high deductibles, generally at least $2,000 per family, to shelter income from taxes by setting up special accounts for medical expenses. This year, the administration proposed making the premiums linked to these accounts fully tax-deductible. Although the 2005 budget presents that new deduction under the heading "Helping the uninsured," health savings accounts don't seem to have much to do with the needs of the families likely to find themselves without health insurance. For one thing, such families need more protection than a plan with a $2,000 deductible provides. Furthermore, the tax advantages of health savings accounts would be small for those families most at risk of losing health insurance, who are overwhelmingly in low tax brackets. Many working poor families and their employers have plans with large deductibles like these because that's all the employer can afford.  As usual, Krugman applies his wide experience of sheltered high-benefit academic life to the reality of working America -- and comes out looking very silly indeed.   But let's move on to the real "oh please" moment -- the "tax advantages" issue.  As it turns out, Krugman is less interested in what the plan will accomplish than he is in how the benefits will be distributed.  But for people whose income puts them in high tax brackets, these accounts are a very good deal; making the premiums deductible turns them into a great deal. In other words, health savings accounts will offer the already affluent, who don't have problems getting health insurance, yet another tax shelter. Meanwhile, health savings accounts, in the view of many experts, will actually increase the number of uninsured. Ohkay -- first we have that patented Krugman phrase "in the view of many experts" -- since this is the New York Times and Krugman cites many experts who know more than you, the reader, the case is closed.  Medical savings accounts will increase the number of uninsured.    Actually, Krugman may be offering the reader a silly Clintonian play on words.   Of course these accounts will reduce the number of insured.  Medical savings accounts  replace insured people with people who are and have saved for medical expenses!   But add to this the "perverse" effect -- medical savings accounts may (horror!) benefit people in the upper income brackets! This perverse effect shouldn't be too surprising: unless they are carefully designed, medical policies often have side consequences that worsen the problems they supposedly address. For example, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that one-third of the retirees who now have drug coverage through their former employers will lose that coverage as a result of the Bush prescription drug bill and will be forced to accept inferior coverage from Medicare.   Cute little aside, this.  Let's ignore it and get back to the main point. In the case of health savings accounts, the key side consequence is a reduced incentive for companies to insure their workers. When companies provide group health insurance, healthier employees implicitly subsidize their sicker colleagues. They're willing to do this largely because the employer's contributions to health insurance are a tax-free form of compensation, but only if the same plan is offered to all employees. Tax-free health savings accounts and premiums would provide healthier and wealthier employees an incentive to opt out, accepting higher paychecks instead, and would lead to higher insurance premiums for those who remain in traditional plans. This would cause some companies to stop providing health insurance, or raise employee contributions to a level some workers can't afford. And here of course is where Paul Krugman shows his ignorance of the real world of workers and employers.  The problem he warns about is already here.  Younger, healthier workers opt out of employer-provided health insurance all the time.  Sometimes they expect and get larger paychecks as a result -- and sometimes they don't.  This process has already generated higher the higher insurance premiums Paul warns of.   Paul -- listen to me.   All of this has all already happened.  The difference couldn't be starker. Mr. Kerry offers a health care plan that would extend coverage to most of those now uninsured, paid for by rolling back tax cuts for those with incomes over $200,000. President Bush offers a tax credit that would extend coverage to fewer than 5 percent of the uninsured, plus a new tax break for the affluent that would actually increase the number of uninsured. As I said last week, I don't see how Mr. Bush can win this debate. Wait and see.  Most Americans know more than you do.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 7:10 AM

In the old days we did it like this...

Jawsblog asks whether students in the 1950's-60's wrote term papers the same way John Kerry is now reportedly writing his acceptance speech.   The answer is "no" -- the really serious students knew how to touch type.  It was too expensive to write out the papers by hand and hire someone to type them for you, so you just typed up a long first draft and then (literally) cut and pasted together a final draft.  Then you re-typed it -- saving yourself the price of a modest dinner out and a tour of the State Street bars afterwards (I'm thinking Madison Wisconsin, of course!).    Of course the rich students wrote their papers longhand and had someone else type it.  None of them knew how to touch type, and few of them joined the computer age with the enthusiasm of those who weren't afraid of a keyboard to begin with.   Everything has its price, though; if you're really good at the keyboard (and especially if you like Henry James) your sentences tend to get kind of long -- with lots of phrases enclosed in ellipses and many semicolon dividers -- because one can just type and type seemingly endless run on sentences that, while they seem balanced and lovely to the writer, create major headaches for the poor, innocent reader trying to decode these long, elaborate constructions.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 6:46 AM

Thanks, think I'll drive...

Okay, time to comment on the new "terror in the skies" phenomenon now sweeping the blogosphere.   The major story seems to come from a genuine person.  On the other hand, confusing the issue is a Canadian of the same name -- a specialist in rather new age-style creative writing, dream journals, etc. -- whose photograph looks very roughly similar.  (Click on "About Annie Jacobsen" to get to her photo -- I said very roughly, remember?) The story appears at a genuine-looking website with some apparent history.  (It is not connected to WSJ, however -- at first glance one can be fooled into thinking there is such a connection.)  If this is a hoax, it is an elaborate one. The Minneapolis story which preceded it is apparently genuine. So there you have it.  Nothing new except a little checking.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 6:13 AM

Thursday, July 15, 2004

Budgetary surplus: forgotten but not gone...

The "Monthly Treasury Statement of Receipts and Outlays of the United States Government" is out (tip of the hat to David Watkins for reminding us).   Comparing 2004 to 2003 receipts        reminds us we're in a recovery.  (Look at the plot since mid-April -- revenues are distinctly up compared with last year.)   The idea of surpluses reappearing once the recovery takes off is not that outlandish, for the simple reason we've seen sporadic surpluses over the past several months.  Check this out:   Those hot pink arrows point to -- you guessed it -- surpluses!   The key to all this is tax revenue.  Look at the receipts curve as compared with outlays: its spiky nature shows you the month-to-month finicky nature of the recovery itself.   We live in interesting times indeed.   POSTSCRIPT (no pun intended):  This is the first post using what appears to be a host of new blogger features including new many new text formatting possibilities like alternate fonts and different text colors and cool stuff like that.   It will take me awhile to get used to all this new stuff.  If things look weird from time to time, have patience.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 4:06 PM

Okay. You can panic now again.

So the sun is more active now than in the past 1,000 years. Just a teeny bit more sun activity and we all fry, right? (I wonder how the NYT will relate this to global warming?)

Link posted by Steve Antler : 9:50 AM

Interview with the candidate...

Bruce Bartlett sends us this Fortune article, which I will now slightly alter (reformatting it as a dialogue between Fortune, Kerry, and a phantom small business guy who Fisks both Fortune and Kerry: Q&A What John Kerry Can Do For You The candidate speaks out on death, taxes, and his love for the SBA. FORTUNE SMALL BUSINESS Saturday, July 17, 2004 By Richard McGill Murphy With so much focus on small business in this year's presidential campaign, we thought it was time to get Senator John Kerry's views. In an exclusive interview aboard his gleaming new Boeing 757 campaign jet, FSB asked Kerry to weigh in on topics ranging from universal health insurance (good) to blowing up the SBA (very bad). FORTUNE: Poll after poll shows small-business owners favoring Bush over you. Why? KERRY: George Bush has been downright unfriendly to small business by consolidating loans under the Small Business Administration and handing them out to large businesses, not honoring the small-business set-asides or the procurement programs that try to help small business. And he's done nothing to lower the cost of health care. I have a 50% tax credit for health care that will lower their cost of doing business. George Bush does not. I introduced legislation to reduce the filings on tax forms so that a small business could file a single tax form, federal and state.... George Bush has not. I think as people learn that, I'm gonna do fine. PHANTOM SMALL BUSINESS GUY: John, after searching "tax simplification" here's all I could find on your web site on this matter: John Kerry will reduce this burden by simplifying tax filing for small businesses including allowing the IRS and state agencies to combine, on one form, both State and Federal employment tax returns. Is this new? What do you mean "allowing" IRS and state agencies to combine returns? FORTUNE: Based on the recent economic rebound, the Bush administration is arguing that its tax cuts worked. How do you respond? KERRY: Rarely in modern times has the American economy had so much stimulus in it, aside from any tax cuts. I mean, just the war spending alone ought to move some jobs, for God's sake.... But the kinds of jobs that are being created are way below the pay level of the jobs we're losing.... There's a $172 billion gap between what Americans are earning and what they should be earning if we'd had growth at the normal rate of any recovery in the past. PHANTOM SMALL BUSINESS GUY: John, stop whining! It's us and our employees who feel the pain of international competition -- not you! And by the way, check out any introductory economics textbook for the difference between cyclical and structural change in an economy. If you really think you can bring back those good jobs, tell us how. Al Gore talked about it a lot, had eight years to do something about it, and hey, guess what? Those "good jobs" just kept on going, and going, and going. FORTUNE: You're at odds with majority small-business opinion on the inheritance tax and on rolling back income tax cuts for those earning more than $200,000. Why? KERRY: Well, actually, 95% of all business owners would not be affected at all by the rollback, No. 1.... PHANT0M SMALL BUSINESS GUY: What percentage of total small business employment is accounted for by the remaining 5%? Isn't that a more important number? Do you know it? Why not? KERRY: No. 2, I will lower their cost of doing business. On health care, on energy costs, on procurement, transportation, I'll be much better for them....And on the inheritance tax, I'm going to give them a more generous exemption than they get under Bush, of $10 million. PHANT0M SMALL BUSINESS GUY: Why haven't we heard of this $10 million exemption before? With all due respect, are you making this up as you go along? KERRY: For those small businesses struggling to compete in the U.S., I will be using the money that we get from closing the loophole that rewards overseas investment, and we will be providing a tax cut to homegrown businesses. So 99% of American businesses get a 5% tax cut from John Kerry. That's better than George Bush. PHANT0M SMALL BUSINESS GUY: Lemme see if I understand. You're going to raise taxes on "investment flowing abroad," and cut taxes on something you call "homegrown" businesses? Forget for a moment how one might define "homegrown business," do you really mean you would tax California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS) funds flowing abroad, or are you talking about raising corporate income taxes (even though they are already among the highest in the world)? FORTUNE: Given that the SBA reaches only a tiny percentage of small-business owners, might it make sense to eliminate the SBA and give the money back to small businesses in tax cuts? KERRY: Absolutely, positively not. The record shows that we have repaid the budget of the SBA many times over through the success stories that it has helped to fund. Intel, FedEx, Callaway Golf, to name a few ... have paid the budget of the SBA many times over in their tax revenues to the U.S. PHANT0M SMALL BUSINESS GUY: Is there any federal program you would cut? Any at all? No, don't stop to think, answer right NOW! Okay, now you see why small businesspeople don't trust you. Listen for a second (I know it is hard, but try): When what we do is judged useless by the public, we go out of business. One reason small businesspeople don't trust politicians like yourself is you seem to doggedly defend all government programs even when they produce public equivalents of the typewriter -- things people no longer want, no longer need, and (therefore) should no longer be forced to pay for. We're in business because people want what we make. We fear many of the programs you defend can't say the same thing. FORTUNE: Under what circumstances would you contemplate raising tariffs to protect U.S. jobs? KERRY: Carefully. Very, very reluctantly.... Tariffs, by and large, are a very blunt instrument and not a particularly helpful tool in the end. On a temporary basis, occasionally, they may help you rectify an imbalance, but you have to be really thoughtful and careful about it. PHANTOM SMALL BUSINESS GUY: I wish you showed the same attitude towards the rest of the economy.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 8:08 AM

"I hate war -- and so does Eleanor..."

Peggy Noonan: When you are president and you are doing hard things in history like making war, and you are doing it in the jingle-jangle of the modern media environment, you have a kind of moral responsibility to make it clear that you hate war, really hate it, and love peace. This would seem obvious, but is not. Men and women in the midst of planning war forget to say it and insist it. Sly old FDR didn't forget, though. Lincoln didn't forget it either. He always made it clear he thought the impending and then ongoing war a painful tragedy. Mr. Bush has not made it clear, or has not repeated often enough, that he hopes for peace, yearns for peace, loves it. He seems part of the very drama he has been forced to wage, and seems sometimes to enjoy it.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 7:40 AM

"I claim no higher truth than my own perceptions. This is how I lived it."

While checking on my Kaus links I stumbled on this old essay describing Robert Reich's disturbingly casual relationship with objective reality. (Link can be found here; it explains the title.)

Link posted by Steve Antler : 6:18 AM

Wednesday, July 14, 2004

Darfur continues...

Have you ever wondered why, even though the Arab world consumed at least as many black African slaves as did the United States, there seem to be no Arab-world equivalents of Colin Powell and Condi Rice? Here's an answer: While Gordon acknowledges that at times the Islamic version of slavery could be more "humane" than the European colonial version, he provides many facts which point out that the Muslim variety of slavery could be extremely cruel as well. One particularly brutal practice was the mutilation of young African boys, sometimes no more than 9 or ten years old, to create eunuchs, who brought a higher price in the slave markets of the Middle East. Slave traders often created "eunuch stations" along the major African slave routes where the necessary surgery was performed in unsanitary conditions. Gordon estimates that only one out of every 10 boys subjected to the mutilation actually survived the surgery. That term "genocide" is being thrown around a lot lately. I wonder whether people know how right they really are.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 7:38 AM

Tuesday, July 13, 2004

The cost of the future is the past...

Shiny new Millennium Park, with its video fountain sculptures and state of the art (I hope) outdoor audio, is virtually across the street from Roosevelt University -- but all this glitter is lost on my good friend and colleague Steve Balkin: The mayor has little patience with those who do not share his vision. Last year he tired of the debate over what to do with a small lakefront airstrip called Meigs Field and ordered the field bulldozed in the middle of the night. He also encouraged the transformation of Maxwell Street, a historic center for peddlers and street musicians, into a shiny cluster of college dormitories, chain stores and upscale condominiums. "Maxwell Street was something beautiful and intrinsic to Chicago, but it wasn't fancy or upscale, so Daley didn't have eyes to see it," said Steve Balkin, a professor of economics at Roosevelt University. By promoting Millennium Park so vigorously, Mayor Daley has probably secured his position among the city's great builders. But at a cost.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 3:05 PM

Okay. You can panic now.

I wonder how they will relate this, which I think has primarily to do with earth's molten core and how it flows, to global warming?

Link posted by Steve Antler : 8:11 AM

Trying to work this out...

Crushkerry.com has discovered at least five "first" things John Kerry has promised he will do as President. If he does all of them exactly at the same time I suppose there's no problem.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 8:05 AM

Remember that arsenic in the drinking water?

There is much to criticize about governance thru regulation. Democratic laws are written by elected officials after discussion and compromise; regulations are written by hired hands, often with no discussion, no compromise, and sometimes no genuine understanding of what's being regulated. The Clinton administration's "midnight regulations" were particularly maddening to critics of regulation, not only because they were enacted with no public discussion in the last week of the administration, when any meaningful public response was impossible, but also because of their breathtakingly sweeping scope. Some of these regulations are now being addressed by the Bush administration. Hopefully the result will be lower housing costs, in some parts of the country at least, and a lowering of that annual and ever-mounting bill for fighting Summer forest and brush fires. UPDATE: Let's deconstruct Michael Kilian's reporting of this in today's Chicago Tribune, to see how media bias creeps into even the most simple matters. There's a good start to the article; had it ended after seven paragraphs, I think few would have cause to complain. Here's the okay opening sequence: WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration announced plans Monday to revoke former President Bill Clinton's "roadless rule" that protected millions of acres of national forests by banning roads that might be used by loggers, mining operations and other commercial interests. The administration would replace it with a more industry-friendly procedure, in which governors would have to petition the federal government to block road-building in national forests in their states. Administration officials said that the move was necessary to improve cooperation between federal and state authorities, and that it would halt a spate of lawsuits over the rule. "State governments are important partners in the stewardship of the nation's land and natural resources," said Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman, whose department includes the U.S. Forest Service. "Strong state and federal cooperation in the management of roadless areas will foster strong local involvement and support for a final policy." Conservationists decried the move. Phil Clapp, president of the National Environmental Trust, called it the Bush presidency's "biggest single giveaway to the timber industry." Environmentalists noted that under the rule, if a governor asked to have road-building blocked in his or her state's national forests, the federal government would not have to agree. And in states where governors support commercial use of forestland, the roadless rule would effectively be neutered. But the timber industry has long said that the rule is unfair and has cost jobs. The industry also contends that the rule aggravates the nation's forest fire problem by denying firefighters access to remote wooded areas. Okay, so far so good, all sides have had their say, everything is reasonably fair and balanced (to coin a phrase). The problem is, they needed to fill more space, so the reporter from this point on had to rely on his inner dialogue to add color to the story: One of the major environmental initiatives of the Clinton presidency, the Roadless Area Conservation Rule prohibited building new roads on 58.5 million of the 191 million acres managed by the Forest Service. This makes it sound like years of discussion and study went into this "major environmental initiative," whereas in fact the regulations were enacted overnight after no discussion in the last week of Clinton's second term. If the "initiative" was so "major" why didn't all this take place at the start of his second term? The rule effectively ended new logging, mining, and other commercial activities in the designated areas, many of them containing vast stretches of pristine wilderness. And it is this paragraph, of course, where the religio/environmental rubber hits the road. "Commercial activities" versus "vast stretches of pristine wilderness." The virgin made impure by capitalism. Of course. "In the new scheme, governors will be forced to petition the federal government to protect the last remaining pristine forests in their states," said William Meadows, president of the Wilderness Society. "This approach is in truth an outright repeal of the rule, replacing what Americans have supported for years with a meaningless and confusing petition process that tries to hide the fact that the Bush administration is getting rid of the rule," he added. Once again "pristine," this time in the mouth of a critic who is cited with no rebuttal from the many critics on the other side. And to the extent this critic is being cited for fact rather than opinion, his facts are simply wrong. Americans have not supported these regulations for years. These were the midnight regulations, passed with virtually no discussion and no support outside the religio/environmental community. Under the proposed rule, interested parties, or the U.S. government, could build new roads with the approval of the Forest Service and by following standard procedures for environmental impact and safety concerns. The initial rule took effect in January 2001, Clinton's last month in office. The following May, Veneman said the Bush administration would implement the rule, albeit with some changes "because of concerns expressed about it by local communities, tribes, and states." But now, it appears the rule will be reversed... This is highly misleading, to say the least. It is true the "initial rule took effect in January 2001, Clinton's last month in office" because the rules were enacted during that last month with no public discussion. The Clinton initiative was already facing legal challenges. Since it was enacted, nine lawsuits have been filed seeking to overturn it on a variety of grounds. In May 2001, a federal court in Idaho issued an injunction against implementing the roadless rule, but the decision was reversed by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Last year, Alaska's Tongass National Forest was temporarily exempted from the roadless rule as part of a court settlement between the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Alaska. With so much litigation pending, an interim protection measure was established under which the administration permitted road construction projects in designated roadless areas, but only with the approval of Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth. He has not approved any projects. Why these legal challenges? Are they unusual? The cynical reader wonders, in the back of his mind, whether all this isn't make-work for the environmental lawyer class, those in and out of government. Do we really need to pay taxes for these nine lawsuits? This temporary protection will be extended for 18 months while the proposed rule announced Monday goes through the public comment phase and other procedures required for enactment. "Our actions today advance President Bush's commitment to cooperatively conserving roadless areas in national forests," Veneman said. "The prospect of endless lawsuits represents neither progress nor certainty for communities." As initiated by the Clinton administration, the roadless rule targeted forests and grasslands that were considered among the most pristine and ecologically valuable in the system, as well as areas chosen because they were threatened by development. It has had marginal impact on Illinois' two national forests --Will County's Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie and the Shawnee National Forest in the southern part of the state. The same largely holds true for Wisconsin's Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest... EconoPundit and his family have visited the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest many times while camping, and we all can attest to the fact it is about as pristine and beautiful as these things can be. But the rule has had enormous implications in the West, where the bulk of national forest lands are located. The Pacific Northwest is particularly sensitive, because activist environmental and conservation movements face off against large-scale logging operations. For example, timber companies have been seeking access to 8,000 acres in Oregon's Rogue River National Forest and Siskiyou National Forest. EconoPundit and his family visited Oregon's Rogue River National Forest several years ago. At that time environmentalists were "spiking" trees to prevent logging where they felt no human should tread. This results in injury and possibly death to loggers. When we visited, all garbage needed to be ported out at the end of one's stay. Regulations due to go into force the following year required porting out of all fecal material as well. Think of it. Bears, rabbits, chipmunks -- everyone but human beings -- retained their rights to poop in the woods. Veneman made her announcement at the Idaho Capitol in Boise, accompanied by Republican Idaho Gov. Dirk Kempthorne and Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho), both foes of the roadless rule. Now it gets interesting. We have two governors opposing the roadless rule, During a later telephone news conference, New Mexico's governor, Democrat Bill Richardson, said that there are other Western governors and lawmakers who strongly support forest protection under the roadless rule and that he would fight the administration on the issue. "This is a very bad decision for the environment," said Richardson, who was energy secretary and ambassador to the United Nations in the Clinton administration. "The Forest Service is walking away from the environmental protection of our national forests." Richardson added: "It's a bad political decision on the administration's part. There are suburbanites and other swing voters in the West who are very supportive of the environment." So what do we hear from these governors in states strongly affected by the regulations? What do we learn of their their arguments, their point of view? Absolutely nothing. Instead, we move on to Bill Richardson, a former energy secretary whose state is known more for high altitude desert than logging, for his liberal opinion on the matter! Fair? Balanced? Gimme a break!

Link posted by Steve Antler : 5:51 AM

Monday, July 12, 2004

Evidence of the crowding out effect...

I'm kind of hard to persuade when it comes to the "public spending crowds out private spending" point of view, but the following graphic from this study stopped me cold and told me maybe I ought to check into this a bit more. Anyway here's the graphic: In case your eyes are as bad as mine, the black line is nonresidental fixed investment as a percentage of GDP, while the red line is federal spending as percent of GDP.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 11:16 AM

Dogma...

Here's the Religious Left in full battle gear.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 8:39 AM

How does he touch type, anyway?

The Chicago Tribune discusses the new economics of advertising on weblogs -- featuring the great Glenn Reynolds and ad-leader Instapundit. In the print edition, there's a photo of Glenn that (a) was taken with a distorting lens or (b) shows Reynolds has a massive right arm, a right hand larger than a computer keyboard, and a very small head.