No Oil for Pacifists

From the July 28th New York Times:

The oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico appears to be dissolving far more rapidly than anyone expected. . .

The immense patches of surface oil that covered thousands of square miles of the gulf after the April 20 oil rig explosion are largely gone, though sightings of tar balls and emulsified oil continue here and there. . .

The dissolution of the slick should reduce the risk of oil killing more animals or hitting shorelines. But it does not end the many problems and scientific uncertainties associated with the spill, and federal leaders emphasized this week that they had no intention of walking away from those problems any time soon.

The effect on sea life of the large amounts of oil that dissolved below the surface is still a mystery. Two preliminary government reports on that issue have found concentrations of toxic compounds in the deep sea to be low, but the reports left many questions, especially regarding an apparent decline in oxygen levels in the water.

And understanding the effects of the spill on the shorelines that were hit, including Louisiana’s coastal marshes, is expected to occupy scientists for years. Fishermen along the coast are deeply skeptical of any declarations of success, expressing concern about the long-term effects of the chemical dispersants used to combat the spill and of the submerged oil, particularly on shrimp and crab larvae that are the foundation of future fishing seasons. . .

Scientists said the rapid dissipation of the surface oil was probably due to a combination of factors. The gulf has an immense natural capacity to break down oil, which leaks into it at a steady rate from thousands of natural seeps.

In other words, Gaia's pretty good at self-repair; enviros are prone to exaggerate; and those scientists can't predict what happens in the oceans--much less its future temperature.

Last week, HR 4173, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, was proudly signed by the President:

I went to Wall Street and I called for common-sense reforms to protect consumers and our economy as a whole. And soon after taking office, I proposed a set of reforms to empower consumers and investors, to bring the shadowy deals that caused this crisis into the light of day, and to put a stop to taxpayer bailouts once and for all. Today, thanks to a lot of people in this room, those reforms will become the law of the land.

The new law is 2,074 pages long. Given that, one principal sponsor, Senator Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.), chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, conceded "No one will know until this is actually in place how it works."

Dodd was right about that. This week, we learn that subsection 929I of the new law effectively exempts many Securities and Exchange Commission records from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act.

Immediately upon assuming office, President Obama declared that:

Information maintained by the Federal Government is a national asset. My Administration will take appropriate action, consistent with law and policy, to disclose information rapidly in forms that the public can readily find and use.

Regarding this law in particular, President Obama claimed it would "increase transparency" in the financial sector. Apparently, he was just kidding.

(via Ed Morrissey, The Corner)

From the Daily Mail (U.K.):

EU bureaucrats have squandered millions of pounds on a study which reached the unsurprising conclusion that fruit is good for you.

An astonishing 13.8 million euros -- some £11.7 million [$17.5 million] -- has been spent on research involving 200 scientists which found that "two apples a day keep cholesterol at bay". Much of the money went on developing and promoting a green-skinned EU superhero called Mr Fruitness designed to persuade children to eat more fruit.


source: July 23rd Daily Mail
caption: Obvious waste: The EU has spent millions on campaigns to encourage healthy eating including the use of a cartoon character, Mr Fruitness

Last night critics said such examples of profligacy go to show that the EU should not be insulated from the kind of spending cuts that member states are making.

A spokesman for Open Europe, the Eurosceptic think-tank, said: 'ridiculous spending like this just goes to show that the EU budget contains plenty of fat that can be trimmed away.

"In these tough economic times, do we really need an EU-funded superhero to tell us that fruit is healthy?"

It's back! The healthcare "public option" that is. California Democrat Representative Lynn Woolsey last week introduced HR 5808 to "amend the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act to establish a public health insurance option." It's already got 128 House co-sponsors.

But wait, there's more: the rationale for the bill is cutting spending compared to over-costly Obamacare. In other words, the far left would save us from socialism via state-ism.

Yet that's not all. Supporters of the legislation cite a Congressional Budget Office estimate of $53 billion in deficit reduction over 9 years. The largest chunk, $37 billion, would come from bargaining doctor bills down to Medicare-plus-5 percent levels. Which might mean fewer available doctors and more emergency room visits.

And if Congress acts now, $27 billion of the deficit drop follows a future where CBO foresees (at 3) "a greater share of employees’ compensation taking the form of taxable wages and salaries (rather than nontaxable health benefits), thereby resulting in higher federal tax revenues." Yes, that's right, net salary reductions as employers "dump their employees onto government exchanges and (presumably) increase their employees' taxable wages as they phased out their health-insurance plans."

Like last year's public option proposal, HR 5808 won't pass. Still, you have to admire the bootstrapping--pass Obamacare to contaminate the health insurance market then push single-payer to cure it. Thus propelling "hopychange" into a political perpetual motion machine.

The White House released its mid-session budget review on Friday. Unsurprisingly, the Office of Management and Budget predicts the 2011 deficit will be $ 150 billion more than the Administration thought in February (see Table 1). This will be the highest Federal budget deficit in history.

Here's OMB's projection of the components of spending and revenue shares for FY2011 and FY2015:


source: OMB MSR Summary Tables at 153

Because there's a deficit, the spending and revenue "pies" aren't the same. This is illustrated by the Congressional Budget Office's analogous chart of 2020 spending and revenues:


source: CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf, Issues in Tax Policy at 10 (May 19, 2010)

Still, the OMB chart shows that increases in Medicare spending top growth in Medicare receipts (see also Summary Table S-4). And net interest keeps ballooning.

I continue to conclude that the shortfall isn't driven primarily by defense spending. OMB hasn't yet released the underlying spreadsheets, so I've done only a high-level review of the data. But I reviewed Summary Table S-4 (page 151) and interpolated the current-appropriation numbers in Table S-12 (page 52), to apportion predicted FY2011 spending between defense, on the one hand, and non-defense on the other. I assumed all discretionary "security" spending (about 73 percent of discretionary spending) was defense (though that includes Homeland Security), and added veterans benefits, military retirement and a small defense appropriation funded through mandatory spending. Non-defense outlays included the remaining 37 percent of discretionary spending, plus all but 4 percent of mandatory spending (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and income security account for virtually all remaining mandatory spending). I excluded net interest from both defense and other spending (i.e., focusing on so-called "primary spending," see CBO at 5, Note).

According to my rough calculation, in FY2011 defense/security at its most expansive extent will account for about 27 percent of non-interest spending. (With a more realistic definition, Veronique de Rugy recently estimated (page 9) "defense" spending plus vets' benefits at 20 percent of total spending; CBO says defense narrowly defined will be 15 percent of 2020 spending.) The remaining 73 percent will be non-defense spending--and most of that, about 80 percent, is entitlements (which CBO elsewhere predicts for 2020):


source: CBO Deputy Director Robert Sunshine, Mandatory Spending at 5 (May 12, 2010)

Meanwhile, President Obama seemingly ignores entitlements to focus on small-fry when pledging budget cuts.

Entitlements, and growth in entitlement spending, remain the biggest budget busters, not the Iraq war. Indeed, the CBO confirms (at pages 7, 10) that spending on Iraq and Afghanistan amounts to about 1.1 percent of GDP, as compared with 10.4 percent of GDP spent for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other health spending in total (adding income security spending would up the latter number). For the math challenged, that means entitlement spending's impact on the deficit is an order of magnitude greater than the cost of the war.

I hope to update with tables and graphs when the data become available.

The "12th annual Palestine International Festival of Dance and Music" rocked out in Ramallah last week. True, there was a brief power failure, yet the band played on.

Still, it was censored: The group Boney M. -- a 1970s German disco quartet -- was asked to skip one of its biggest hits, a cover of the reggae song "By the Rivers of Babylon." That's because the song starts:

By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down/
ye-eah we wept, when we remembered Zion

Festival organizers said the reference to Jews returning to the land of Israel would be "inappropriate."

Two points:

1) As Leo Rennert at American Thinker observes:

This censorship, mind you, did not occur under Hamas rule in Gaza, but in Ramallah, the "capital" of the Palestinian Authority, recognized as a trustworthy "moderate" peace partner by President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton.

So much for selling a two-state solution!

2) The lyrics are from Psalm 137:

By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.

We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof.

For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion.

How shall we sing the LORD's song in a strange land?

If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning.

If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy.

This passage recounts the "Babylonian captivity," when Jews were ejected then returned to Israel in the sixth century B.C. Now, Islam accepts most of the Bible, see Qur'an 3.3, including, specifically, the Psalms, see Qur'an 21.105:

Before this We wrote in the Psalms, after the Message (given to Moses): My servants the righteous, shall inherit the earth."

So, shouldn't Psalm 137's narrative be beyond disputation or doubt, see Qur'an 2.2? Or is the Qur'an law except when it's inappropriate for Islam?

Conclusion: Palestinian policy is grounded on the presumption that Jews are last-second squatters lacking historic and continuous links to the holy land. This is false--but even so-called "moderates" prefer shutting their senses to settling the peace. Or even listening to reggae.

(via reader Warren)

Still ringing; little writing. Last week's test showed a 50 dB hearing "notch" (loss) at 3.9 kHz--which is how loud the ringing appears to me. And it was normal just three weeks ago. . .

From the July 24th Economist:

The failures of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, America's housing-finance giants, are glaringly obvious. The two firms, which own or guarantee more than half of the country’s $10.7 trillion of mortgages, are awash in red ink. The Congressional Budget Office reckoned in August 2009 that the twosome’s cost to taxpayers could go as high as $400 billion. With housing showing renewed weakness, that number may rise.

It is also easy to see why the firms got into such a mess. These "government-sponsored enterprises" (GSEs) occupied a grey area between state and private ownership, benefiting from an implicit government guarantee on their own debt at the same time as they sought to maximise profits for shareholders. That hybrid model granted the GSEs access to cheap funding and gave them the incentive to load their retained portfolios with subprime mortgages whilst maintaining capital levels scanty enough to make investment banks blush.

Although everybody agrees on the need to overhaul Fannie and Freddie, nobody is rushing to do much about it. America’s thumping financial-reform bill, which was signed into law by Barack Obama on July 21st, found room in its 2,319 pages to create "Offices of Minority and Women Inclusion" in various federal agencies, but did nothing on Fannie and Freddie. The two were taken into "conservatorship", a form of government ownership, in 2008 and have been put to work ever since. Virtually the only mortgages investors will buy are those guaranteed by the GSEs and other federal agencies. More than nine in every ten new mortgages written in America during the first quarter of 2010 were government-backed. Policymakers are horrified by this level of intervention and terrified about withdrawing it. The Treasury says it will put out proposals on the future of Fannie and Freddie early next year but there are few signs that politicians are prepared to get rid of them altogether.

They should. The GSEs' mission is to provide "liquidity, stability and affordability" to America’s mortgage market. Set aside the fact that these aims tend to conflict: cheerleading for cheap mortgages is likely to produce instability, for example. The bigger question is why Fannie and Freddie are needed to achieve them. America’s obsession with home ownership is itself questionable, especially now that the trap of negative equity has hampered workers’ ability to move in search of jobs. Even if it were a valid goal, there are plenty of countries (Australia, Britain and Canada among them) that have similar or higher levels of home ownership with far less, and in some cases no, systemic government support.

As for liquidity, the argument that America needs Fannie and Freddie because private securitisation markets do not exist to take their place is circular. The GSEs have guidelines for the types of home loans they can guarantee: these let Fannie and Freddie colonise the safest, "conforming" bits of the mortgage market (before expanding into dodgier bits), leaving private lenders to swerve around them into ever-riskier areas. If the GSEs were not there to securitise and guarantee prime American mortgages, private firms would take their place.

Agreed--several times. (Another article about government-backed mortgage lenders in the same issue reports that "Mortgages originated in 2006 and 2007 account for 24% of Fannie’s business but 67% of its credit losses.")

I've talked tax cuts recently. Here's a profoundly different take from Kevin Williamson in the May 3rd National Review:

There are two schools of thought about the Reagan tax cuts. The conventional conservative view: They spurred investment, entrepreneurship, and real economic growth, helping to resuscitate the post-Carter economy, and, by doing so, they paid for themselves. The conventional liberal view: They were an ill-considered product of starve-the-beast ideology and produced crippling deficits, inaugurating a new era of fiscal irresponsibility only briefly transcended during the golden years of the Clinton presidency.

Here’s a different take: They never happened.

Properly understood, there were no Reagan tax cuts. In 1980 federal spending was $590 billion and in 1989 it was $1.14 trillion; you don’t get Reagan tax cuts without Tip O’Neill spending cuts. Looked at from the proper perspective, we haven’t really had any tax cuts to speak of -- we’ve had tax deferrals. Reagan and his congressional allies had an excuse in the considerable person of Speaker O’Neill. But George W. Bush and the concurrent Republican majorities in both houses of Congress didn’t manage to cut spending, either. Part of that was circumstances -- 9/11, Afghanistan, Iraq, the subprime meltdown -- but part of it was the fact that a poorly applied supply-side analysis has infantilized Republicans when it comes to the budget.

Read the whole thing.

More recently, Williamson also wrote:

Three programs -- Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid -- consume 100 percent of federal revenue, and everything else is paid for with borrowed money. This is why we cannot balance the budget by cutting military spending, foreign aid, food stamps, etc. There is not going to be a serious project to address our deficit/debt problem without deep, painful entitlement reform, and the longer we wait to admit that fact and get going on it, the worse it is going to be.

See also Heritage Foundation (twice), MaxedOutMama and Veronique de Rugy.

President Obama, Memorandum on Preemption for the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies, May 20, 2009:

From our Nation's founding, the American constitutional order has been a Federal system, ensuring a strong role for both the national Government and the States. The Federal Government's role in promoting the general welfare and guarding individual liberties is critical, but State law and national law often operate concurrently to provide independent safeguards for the public. Throughout our history, State and local governments have frequently protected health, safety, and the environment more aggressively than has the national Government.

An understanding of the important role of State governments in our Federal system is reflected in longstanding practices by executive departments and agencies, which have shown respect for the traditional prerogatives of the States. In recent years, however, notwithstanding Executive Order 13132 of August 4, 1999 (Federalism), executive departments and agencies have sometimes announced that their regulations preempt State law, including State common law, without explicit preemption by the Congress or an otherwise sufficient basis under applicable legal principles.

The purpose of this memorandum is to state the general policy of my Administration that preemption of State law by executive departments and agencies should be undertaken only with full consideration of the legitimate prerogatives of the States and with a sufficient legal basis for preemption. Executive departments and agencies should be mindful that in our Federal system, the citizens of the several States have distinctive circumstances and values, and that in many instances it is appropriate for them to apply to themselves rules and principles that reflect these circumstances and values.

President Obama, Justice Department's Brief in suit against Arizona's immigration law, July 6, 2010:

In our constitutional system, the power to regulate immigration is exclusively vested in the federal government. The immigration framework set forth by Congress and administered by federal agencies reflects a careful and considered balance of national law enforcement, foreign relations, and humanitarian concerns -- concerns that belong to the nation as a whole, not a single state. The Constitution and federal law do not permit the development of a patchwork of state and local immigration policies throughout the country. Although a state may adopt regulations that have an indirect or incidental effect on aliens, a state may not establish its own immigration policy or enforce state laws in a manner that interferes with federal immigration law.

The State of Arizona has crossed this constitutional line.

(via Washington Examiner)

The U.S. Agriculture Department is tasked to supply "leadership on food, agriculture, natural resources, and related issues based on sound public policy, the best available science, and efficient management." The agency's FY2011 budget -- which begins in October -- calls for just under 100,000 full time employees (though there's one less now than last week).

The number of people working the land has dropped for decades, reflecting aging and automation of the sector. According to 2009 data in a May 14, 2010, Bureau of Labor Statistics release, actual agriculture "production" work employed only 12,480 full-time workers (of course there were other other agricultural industry jobs in construction, sales, management, hunting/fishing, etc.).

A decade ago, there was one Department of Agriculture employee for every four full-time farmers. It's now about one to eight.

[NOfP correction, July 23rd: Opps--I reversed the numbers. It was about 4 USDA employees per full-time farmer; now it's 8 USDA employees per full-time farmer. In other words, it's getting worse, not better.]

The Department spends most its allocated funds on farm subsidies. Everyone understands that this is inefficient waste. President Bush tried to cut farm subsidies--and failed.

What a waste--but, I give up, I guess.

The ringing in my ears is too loud for anything more than a post-a-day.

From the June 19th Daily Express (U.K.):

Britain faces years of blackouts and soaring electricity bills because of the drive toward green power, a leading energy expert warned last night.

A growing obsession with global warming and "renewable" sources threatens the stability of our supply.

Derek Birkett, a former Grid Control Engineer who has a lifetime’s experience in electricity supply throughout Britain, warned that the cost of the crisis could match that of the recent banking collapse.

And he claimed that renewable energy expectations were now nothing more than "dangerous illusions" which would hit consumers hard in the pocket.

"We are going to pay a very heavy price for the fact there has been a catalogue of neglect by the former Government which has focused on renewable energy sources," Mr Birkett said.

"We need a mix of sources and this takes time. Renewables have the problem of being intermittent, particularly wind, and we need more back-up capacity. By having all our sources in one basket we are risking disruption.

"There is a lot of over-enthusiasm by governments to push global warming, which makes me very suspicious." Less than five per cent of our energy comes from renewable sources but the "disproportionate" cost of implementing green technology runs into many millions of pounds, he said.

(via CCNet (subscription only))

While growth in government spending under Obama has contributed to a counter-cyclical rise in Washington DC employment, Cuba's moving the other way:

At a state project to refurbish a decaying building in Old Havana, one worker paints a wall white while two others watch. A fourth sleeps in a wheelbarrow positioned in a sliver of shade nearby and two more smoke and chat on the curb.

President Raul Castro has startled the nation lately by saying about one in five Cuban workers may be redundant. At the work site on Obispo street, those numbers run in reverse.

It's a common sight in communist Cuba. Here, nearly everyone works for the state and official unemployment is minuscule, but pay is so low that Cubans like to joke that "the state pretends to pay us and we pretend to work."

Now, facing a severe budget deficit, the government has hinted at restructuring or trimming its bloated work force. Such talk is causing tension, however, in a country where guaranteed employment was a building block of the 1959 revolution that swept Fidel Castro to power.

Details are sketchy on how and when such pruning would take place. Still, acknowledgment that cuts are needed has come from Raul Castro himself.

"We know that there are hundreds of thousands of unnecessary workers on the budget and labor books, and some analysts calculate that the excess of jobs has surpassed 1 million," said Castro, who replaced his ailing brother Fidel as president nearly four years ago. Cuba's work force totals 5.1 million, in a population of 11.2 million.

In his nationally televised speech in April, Castro also had harsh words for those who do little to deserve their salaries

.

Remember "reconcilliation"? That's how the Dems passed some laws without 60 votes in the Senate. Well the good news is that it's off the table next year:

Recognizing that Democrats would be reluctant to record "yes" votes for a budget that would augment the deficit, the House leadership opted to deem as passed a "budget enforcement resolution" instead, just before the July 4 recess. While the distinction between an enforcement resolution and a full budget is largely technical, there is one crucial difference: Under the enforcement resolution, Democrats can no longer use a parliamentary tactic known as budget reconciliation next year -- a process Democrats had hoped might allow them to pass key pieces of legislation, such as a jobs bill, with 51 votes in the Senate, as opposed to the usual 60 needed to overcome a filibuster.

Under the arcane rules of the Senate, budget reconciliation can only be used if it was written into the budget rules passed the previous year. With no full budget, there can be no reconciliation. As a consequence, Democrats lose a valuable tool for passing budget-related items on a majority-rules vote.

Whatever the loss to fiscal accountability, it will be a useful check on Obama's 2011 spending--since Republicans are unlikely to take the Senate in November.

No posts today.

And I've been struggling over the past two weeks with the onset of tinnitus that was the product of a root canal. It's turned blog writing -- not to mention work, life, etc. -- into a nightmare.

Matt Ridley on doomsayers:

By the time I was 21 years old I realized that nobody had ever said anything optimistic to me -- in a lecture, a television program or even a conversation in a bar -- about the future of the planet and its people, at least not that I could recall. Doom was certain.

The next two decades were just as bad: acid rain was going to devastate forests, the loss of the ozone layer was going to fry us, gender-bending chemicals were going to decimate sperm counts, swine flu, bird flu and Ebola virus were going to wipe us all out. In 1992, the United Nations Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro opened its agenda for the twenty-first century with the words "Humanity stands at a defining moment in history. We are confronted with a perpetuation of disparities between and within nations, a worsening of poverty, hunger, ill health and illiteracy, and the continuing deterioration of the ecosystems on which we depend for our well-being."

By then I had begun to notice that this terrible future was not all that bad. In fact every single one of the dooms I had been threatened with had proved either false or exaggerated. The population explosion was slowing down, famine had largely been conquered (except in war-torn tyrannies), India was exporting food, cancer rates were falling not rising (adjusted for age), the Sahel was greening, the climate was warming, oil was abundant, air pollution was falling fast, nuclear disarmament was proceeding apace, forests were thriving, sperm counts had not fallen. And above all, prosperity and freedom were advancing at the expense of poverty and tyranny.

I began to pay attention and a few years ago I started to research a book on the subject. I was astounded by what I discovered. Global per capita income, corrected for inflation, had trebled in my lifetime, life expectancy had increased by one third, child mortality had fallen by two-thirds, the population growth rate had halved. More people had got out of poverty than in all of human history before. When I was born, 36% of Americans had air conditioning. Today 79% of Americans below the poverty line had air conditioning. The emissions of pollutants from a car were down by 98%. The time you had to work on the average wage to buy an hour of artificial light to read by was down from 8 seconds to half a second.

Not only are human beings wealthier, they are also healthier, wiser, happier, more tolerant, less violent, more equal. Check it out -- the data is clear. Yet if anything the pessimists had only grown more certain, shrill and apocalyptic. We were facing the "end of nature", the "coming anarchy", a "stolen future", our "final century" and a climate catastrophe. Why, I began to wonder did the failure of previous predictions have so little impact on this litany?

I soon found out. Like others who have tried to draw attention to improving living standards -- notably Julian Simon and Bjorn Lomborg -- I am beginning to be subjected to a sustained campaign of vilification by the pessimists. They distort my argument, impugn my motives and attack me for saying things I never said. They say I think the world is perfect when I could not be clearer that I advocate progress precisely because we should be ambitious to put right so much that is still wrong. They say that I am a conservative, when it is the reactionary mistrust of change that I am attacking. They say that I am defending the rich, when it is the enrichment of the poor that I argue for. They say that I am complacent, when the opposite is true. I knew this would happen, and I take it as a back-handed compliment, but the ferocity is still startling. They are desperate to shut down the debate rather than have it.

I now see at firsthand how I avoided hearing any good news when I was young. Where are the pressure groups that have an interest in telling the good news? They do not exist. By contrast, the behemoths of bad news, such as Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and WWF, spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year and doom is their best fund-raiser. Where is the news media's interest in checking out how pessimists' predictions panned out before? There is none. By my count, Lester Brown has now predicted a turning point in the rise of agricultural yields six times since 1974, and been wrong each time. Paul Ehrlich has been predicting mass starvation and mass cancer for 40 years. He still predicts that "the world is coming to a turning point".

Ah, that phrase again. I call it turning-point-itis. It's rarely far from the lips of the prophets of doom. They are convinced that they stand on the hinge of history, the inflexion point where the roller coaster starts to go downhill.

Agreed.

(via Coyote Blog)

When their lips move:

U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein on the Nomination of Miguel Estrada, February 10, 2003:

Miguel Estrada has never been a judge. So we have no record of judicial decision-making to examine. This is not dispositive in itself, but it is the first area where we find no record to help us in our decision.

U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein on the opening of hearings on Elena Kagan, June 28, 2010:

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) called Kagan's lack of judicial experience "refreshing."

(via Patterico)

Arthur Laffer in the Wall Street Journal:

[W]hen it comes to higher unemployment benefits or any other stimulus spending, the resources given to the unemployed have to be taken from someone else. There isn't a "tooth fairy," or as my former colleague Milton Friedman repeated time and again, "there ain't no such thing as a free lunch." The government doesn't create resources. It redistributes them. For everyone who is given something there is someone who has that something taken away.

While the unemployed may spend more as a result of higher unemployment benefits, those people from whom the resources are taken will spend less. In an economy, the income effects from a transfer payment always sum to zero. Quite simply, there is no stimulus from higher unemployment benefits. . .

Not only will increased unemployment benefits not stimulate the economy, they will at the same time lower the incentives for people to work by reducing the amount people are paid for working and increasing the amount people are paid for not working. It's pretty basic economics.

(via Carpe Diem)

As reported by ABC News:

Airlines appear now to be canceling more flights rather than risk multi-million dollar fines for keeping passengers stuck on the tarmac for three hours or more.

While passengers won't be trapped in hot, crowded jets for hours on end, they might be stuck waiting in terminals even longer, and getting to their destination hours, maybe even days later.

Only five domestic flights in May waited on the tarmac for more than three hours, according to new data from the Department of Transportation. That's down from 34 planes last May.

At the same time, airlines chose to cancel more flights. Last May, there were 4,792 flight cancelations. This May, that figure jumped to 6,716 flights, according to the DOT.

Airlines protested the new DOT tarmac rule, saying it would have unintended consequences including the cancelation of more flights, ultimately getting passengers to their destinations later.

"There's a much larger number of cancelations than we've ever seen before," said Darryl Jenkins, an airline consultant who also runs the website The Airline Zone.

Jenkins said it is taking 17 to 18 hours on average to rebook passengers on those canceled flights.

Expect something similar from the Financial Reform law (passed yesterday by the Senate).

(via TigerHawk)

April 29, 2010:

U.N. Elects Iran to Commission on Women's Rights

July 10, 2010:

Iran human rights chief defends stoning sentence

As Power Line's John Hinderaker concludes, "For the United Nations to appoint a committee that pretends to harmonize Western notions of dignity and equality with Iranian notions of subjection and sadism is a species of insanity."

The President plumped for Obamacare in part because covering the uninsured supposedly would save taxpayer funds used to subsidize emergency room treatment:

[T]hose of us with health insurance are also paying a hidden and growing tax for those without it -- about $1,000 per year that pays for somebody else's emergency room and charitable care.

Massachusetts, of course, has universal health insurance coverage--which hasn't cut healthcare costs or wait times. Nor has it reduced reliance on emergency rooms:

The number of people visiting hospital emergency rooms has climbed in Massachusetts, despite the enactment of nearly universal health insurance that some hoped would reduce expensive emergency department use.

According to state data released last week, emergency room visits rose by 9 percent from 2004 to 2008, to about 3 million visits a year. [NOfP note: the figure represents growth above population change.]

When the Legislature passed the insurance law in 2006, officials hoped it would increase access to primary care doctors for the uninsured, which would improve their health and lessen their reliance on emergency rooms for the flu, sprains, and other urgent care. Residents began enrolling in state-subsidized insurance plans in October 2006; everyone was required to have coverage by July 1, 2007.

But, according to a report from the Division of Health Care Finance and Policy, expanded coverage may have contributed to the rise in emergency room visits, as newly insured residents entered the health care system and could not find a primary care doctor or get a last-minute appointment with their physician.

So why was Obama wrong? According to the National Center for Policy Analysis' John Goodman, the reason is that government-run insurance systems encourage more emergency room use than private insurance:

A common myth is the belief that the uninsured use the emergency room a lot more than people with private health insurance. Yet as the figure shows, the percent of uninsured going to hospital emergency rooms every year is not much higher than for those with private insurance. (And after adjusting for health status, there is no difference in the average number of visits.) Medicaid enrollees, on the other hand, visit emergency rooms significantly more often than either the insured or the uninsured.



Why is that? The main reason appears to be that Medicaid fees are so low that patients have difficulty finding private practitioners who will see them. Often, the emergency room turns out to be the only place they can access care. Studies show that even the uninsured have an easier time making doctors' appointments than Medicaid enrollees.

Perhaps next time, Democrats will "read the bill" first. Or Republicans will repeal it.

(via Critical Condition)

From the Daily Mail (U.K.):

Brussels has fined Britain more than £150million [$225 million] for failing to display the EU flag on a string of projects part-funded by Europe.

Several schemes were also penalised for failing to use the flag on their letterheads.

As Harry Phibbs says in the same paper:

Communities Secretary Eric Pickles, rapidly emerging as one of the most effective cabinet ministers, has called for the "needless bureaucracy" of European Regional Development Fund to be lifted.

Certainly the rule book show just how seriously the EU takes itself. "The image of the EU flag should only be increased or reduced in size proportionally," it says. "It should never be squeezed or stretched. The correct proportions are 1.5 horizontal to 1 vertical."

There is a requirement that "On billboards and commemorative plaques, the acknowledgment of European Union funding MUST constitute a minimum of 25 per cent of the total area." There is also a warning that "The European Union logo works best on a white background. However, if it appears on a non-white ground then a white border should be placed around it."

And there are even special sections on colour schemes and logo orientation. To avoid the fine you must ensure that the EU flag is on writing paper, compliments slips and business cards. On and on it goes. Page after page of requirements from the EU's Logo Police.

Imagine if the EU showed this level of concern for combating fraud. It seems they are less pernickety about their own accounts than they are about flag waving. It can't get its auditors to sign off its accounts because its finances are so dodgy.

The Bruges Group think tank estimate that the real cost of EU membership is £56billion a year -- over £100,000 a minute. This is calculated by including the cost of all the regulations -- of which, I suppose, flag waving compliance is only a modest example.

Why are lefties only patriotic about do-little organizations like the U.N. and E.U.?

(via Wolf Howling)

As reported in the July 8th HealthDay News:

Inhaled anesthetics used to put patients to sleep during surgery contribute to global climate change, according to a new study.

Researchers determined that the use of these anesthetics by a busy hospital can contribute as much to climate change as the emissions from 100 to 1,200 cars a year, depending on the type of anesthetic used, said University of California anesthesiologist Dr. Susan M. Ryan and fellow study author Claus J. Nielsen, a computer scientist at the University of Oslo in Norway.

The three major inhaled anesthetics used for surgery -- sevoflurane, isoflurane, and desflurane -- are recognized greenhouse gases, but their contribution to climate change has received little attention because they're considered medically necessary and are used in relatively small amounts.

These anesthetics undergo very little metabolic change in the body, the researchers noted. When they're exhaled by patients, they're almost exactly the same as they were when administered by anesthetist. The anesthetics "usually are vented out of the building as medical waste gases," the study authors wrote in a news release. "Most of the organic anesthetic gases remain for a long time in the atmosphere where they have the potential to act as greenhouse gases."

Desflurane has a 10-year "lifetime" in the atmosphere, compared with 3.6 years for isoflurane and 1.2 years for sevoflurane. When they factored in the flow rates at which the different anesthetics are given, the researchers calculated that desflurane has about 26 times the global warming potential as sevoflurane and 13 times the potential of isoflurane.

Using desflurane for one hour is equivalent to 235 to 470 miles of driving, according to the study.

(via Planet Gore)

Andrew McCarthy on National Review Online:

Ibrahim Mahmoud al-Qosi, a 50-year-old jihadist who helped move al-Qaeda’s operations from his native Sudan to Afghanistan, served for years as bin Laden’s bodyguard, driver, and cook. On Wednesday, he pled guilty to terrorism charges. Notably, the plea was entered in a military commission -- a centerpiece of the Bush-Cheney counterterrorism approach that Sen. Barack Obama condemned on the 2008 campaign trail, much to the delight of the transnational Left. Qosi’s plea was doubly significant because material support to terrorism was included among the charges to which he admitted guilt.

President Obama has come grudgingly to accept military commissions, just as he now accepts the detention of enemy combatants without trial, the continuing operation of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, the preservation of state secrets, and aggressive national-security surveillance. That's what happens when you transition from hopey-change candidate to accountable commander-in-chief.

Arizona chose to enter the immigration enforcement business via statute. Led by a lawyer who previously represented Gitmo terrorists, Obama's Justice Department has sued to block enforcement, claiming that Arizona's law is preempted by Federal immigration law (the DoJ suit is not grounded on alleged racial profiling). The argument isn't frivolous, and courts will have to decide whether Arizona's law frustrates the purposes or conflicts with Federal law. See generally Crosby v. National Foreign Trade Council, 530 U.S. 363, 373-77 (2000) (Massachusetts law barring state entities from buying goods or services from companies doing business with Burma preempted).

When addressing the Arizona law, courts may want to look at Rhode Island, which -- via an Executive Order, not legislation -- has a similar policy:

In 2008, Governor Donald L. Carcieri, a Republican, issued an executive order mandating immigration checks on all new state workers and ordering State Police to assist federal immigration officials.

Sitting in his office in an old farmhouse off a country highway, Doherty said the State Police had collaborated with federal immigration officials before, but the relationship has become more formal in recent years. In 2007, he said, he trained all state troopers in how to deal with noncitizens because of widespread confusion and because Congress did not resolve the issue of illegal immigration. Troopers learned to notify consulates when noncitizens are arrested, how to recognize different forms of identification, and how to deal with different cultures.

Rhode Island police work with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE:

"There are police chiefs throughout New England who hide from the issue . . . and I’m not hiding from it," said Colonel Brendan P. Doherty, the towering commander of the Rhode Island State Police. "I would feel that I’m derelict in my duties to look the other way." . . .

By some accounts, having states collaborate more closely with ICE could improve public safety. ICE has repeatedly urged police departments to take advantage of its Law Enforcement Support Center in Vermont, a 24-hour network. . .

Bruce Foucart, special agent in charge of ICE in New England, said the center helps police verify the identities of immigrants who are suspected, arrested, or convicted of crimes, and aids ICE by informing them about people who are here illegally. The federal agency can then decide whether to detain an immigrant for deportation or release them pending a hearing in immigration court.

"Does that make for good public safety? Yes," Foucart said. "How do you know who it is until you check him through the [center]?"

Early this year, the First Circuit Court of Appeals considered a suit (Estrada v. Rhode Island, No. 09-1149 (1st Cir. Feb. 4, 2010)) against a Rhode Island state trooper. After stopping a van for an illegal lane change, the policeman queried the passengers about citizenship:

Plaintiffs do not contest the validity of the traffic stop, nor do they argue that it was unlawful for Officer Chabot to request identification from all the passengers in the van, a question our Circuit has not conclusively decided.  Instead, Plaintiffs argue that Officer Chabot's inquiry into their immigration status and subsequent call to ICE prolonged the traffic stop, converting it into an unlawful seizure in violation of the Fourth Amendment.

We cannot say, however, that it was clear as a matter of law that Officer Chabot's brief line of questioning, nor the three minutes it took for him to receive a response from ICE, unreasonably prolonged the stop such that independent reasonable suspicion was necessary to support his inquiry into Plaintiffs' immigration status.   The traffic stop at issue took place a year after the Supreme Court's decision in Muehler v. Mena, 544 U.S. 93 (2005). In that case, the Court held that a police officer does not need independent reasonable suspicion to question an individual about her immigration status during the execution of a search warrant, but that such inquiry constitutes "mere police questioning" so long as the detention was not prolonged by the questioning.  Id. at 101.

Other courts have held that questioning that extends the length of detention "by only a brief time" does not "make the custody itself unreasonable." . . . In a more recent case, we rejected a defendant's argument that "police must limit a traffic citation stop to the narrow purpose of immediately preparing and issuing a citation."  United States v. Dunbar, 553 F.3d 48, 56 (1st Cir. 2009) (finding that a delay of twelve minutes while officer prepared a traffic warning and questioned car's passenger about her itinerary did not unreasonably delay the stop).

We also note that by the time Officer Chabot asked about Plaintiffs' immigration status, he knew that:  (1) Plaintiffs were headed to work;  (2) most were unable to produce any identification, and of the four who did, two could produce only identifications issued by the Guatemalan consulate; and (3) they spoke little English.  Officer Chabot also testified that passengers, of whom he requests documentation as a matter of routine, are able to produce valid identification more than 99 percent of the time.  All of these facts combined may well have sufficiently heightened his suspicions for him to believe that he could shift his inquiry from the traffic stop to investigating other potential criminal activity.

Conclusion: Given that Arizona's requirement of "reasonable suspicion" is less intrusive than Federal law, it will be interesting to see how the 9th Circuit will reason this frustrates Federal policy. After all, Arizona didn't enact its own immigration law--it's simply aiding enforcement of Federal law. And it seems to be working.

Further, concern for illegal immigration isn't limited to places populated by geriatric Republicans, but is exhibited in the "bluest" of States--without, apparently, hamstringing its police or overtaxing the Feds (as the DoJ claims Arizona's law does). As Ed Morriessy says:

Well, that’s different from what Arizona is doing because, well, um . . . Arizona's racist, or something. In fact, Rhode Island does exactly what Arizona belatedly decided to do, which is to get serious about immigration control and enforcing the law. The only difference is that Rhode Island began doing it before Barack Obama needed a distraction from a hugely unpopular ObamaCare bill and thought a fight over immigration would bolster Democrats in the midterms.

Does that "make for good public safety?" Ask ICE special agent Bruce Foucart.

(via reader OBH)

The latest James Carville/Stan Greenberg poll has "generic" Republicans up 48 to 42 percent over "generic Democrats." Fine, but the election's months away. I was more alarmed that 55 percent of likely voters thought the word "socialist" described Barack Obama either "very well" or "well" (see page 11).

So it's not just me--the electorate voted for a socialist. And they like it (or, at least, many do).

(via National Review's Campaign Spot, Wizbang)

Singer Jimmy Buffett blames Bush for the Gulf oil spill:

To me it was more about eight years of bad policy before (Obama) got there that let this happen. It was Dracula running the blood bank in terms of oil and leases. I think that has more to do with it than how the president reacted to it.

Uh, Jimmy, Obama's drilling safety policies are identical to Bush's. And aside from the persistence of BDS, Buffett's explanation ignores who spilled the oil: British Petroleum. Could the omission be because the largest recipient of campaign contributions from BP's PAC and employees was Barack Obama?

Day of rest.

It's been just over 100 days since the Dems passed Obamacare. Though many progressives opposed the final healthcare reform law as insufficiently radical, the President hailed it as "Another stone. . . laid in the foundation of the American dream."

How is it affecting the rest of us? Not good, according to a study by Senators Tom Coburn (R-OK) and John Barrasso (R-WY), both physicians. Among the documented and hyperlinked findings:

• Promise: Barack Obama repeatedly assured Americans that they could keep their health plan if they like it.
  
  Reality: The Departments of Treasury, Labor and Health and Human Services estimate "that 66 percent of small employer plans and 45 percent of large employer plans will relinquish their grandfather status by the end of 2013." 75 Fed. Reg. No. 116, page 34552 (June 17, 2010), cited in Coburn/Barrasso at 2. See also ABC News.



• Promise: President Obama assured voters that Obamacare would not fund health care for illegal immigrants (though he cited that fact to support immigration reform that would legitimize illegals).
  
  Reality: Illegal aliens are bared from receiving the health insurance subsidies Obamacare establishes. But, concomitantly, the approximately 9 million illegals in America (see pages 5-6) cannot be penalized for non-compliance with the mandate to purchase insurance (page 26)--but still qualify for uncompensated care in hospitals, paid, ultimately, by taxpayers. And, in any event, about half of all illegal aliens are in the workplace with fraudulent documents, suggesting that some will qualify for insurance subsidies.



• Promise: The President vowed to cover the uninsured.
  
  Reality: Obamacare does so by forcing millions onto Medicaid, at a cost of nearly $400 billion in the first decade. That's not reform--because Medicare spending is out-of-control and its performance often is appalling, cited in Coburn/Barrasso at 12-16. The net result is to shift costs to those covered by private insurance. Which means higher taxes.

Conclusion: Expect to pay much more than advertised. The good news: Much of Obamacare hasn't yet taken effect. So there's still time to repeal it.

Global warming partisans defend the 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) despite its errors. So the recent review by the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency is more of the same. The Economist magazine -- which still favors carbon cuts -- describes and charts the Dutch results:

For everyone else it was the glaciers: for the Dutch it was the flooding. Last January errors in the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) hit the headlines. The chapter on Asia in the report by the IPC's second working group, charged with looking at the impact of climate change and adapting to it, mistakenly claimed that the Himalayan glaciers would be gone by 2035. This contradicted some reasonably basic physics, had not been predicted by the glacier specialists in the first working group (which deals with the natural science of past and future climate change) and was unsupported by any evidence. There was a report from the 1990s which said something similar about all the world's non-polar glaciers, but it gave the date as 2350. Then there was a crucial typo and some shoddy referencing. Nevertheless the IPCC’s chair, Rajendra Pachauri, had lashed out at people bringing the criticism up, accusing them of "voodoo science". He then had to eat his words, and set up, with Ban Ki-moon, a panel to look into ways the IPCC might be improved.

Inspired by this to look for other errors, a journalist for a Dutch newspaper spotted that the chapter on Europe gave a figure for the area of the Netherlands below sea level that was much too large. The area at risk of flooding by the sea had been conflated with that at risk of flooding by the Rhine and the Meuse rivers. . .

The auditors found one new error which they deemed major: a statement about the frequency of turbulence in South African fishing waters which had been translated directly into a statement about the productivity of the fisheries. The IPCC has indicated it will produce an erratum for this, and for a number of other errors all concerned deemed minor. But the PBL also identified seven statements, which, while not errors, it thought were deserving of comment (for which read criticism).



Perhaps the most striking relates to Africa. The table in the summary for policymakers reads: "By 2020, in some countries, yields from rain-fed agriculture could be reduced by up to 50%." The evidence on which this is based says only that yields during years in which there are droughts could be reduced by 50%. Furthermore, the relevant reference applies only for Morocco--and it cites as its source an earlier paper that the PBL says no one, including the IPCC authors, now seems able to find.

Other criticisms turn on a tendency to generalise. Research showing decreased yields of millet, groundnuts and cowpeas in Niger becomes a claim that crop yields are decreasing in the Sahel, the strip that separates the Sahara from the savannah in Africa, rather than that the yields of some crops are decreasing in some parts of the Sahel. The results of research on cattle in Argentina are applied to livestock (which would include pigs, chickens, llamas and the rest) throughout South America. The expert authors do not provide a compelling reason for their claim that fresh water availability will decline overall in south, east and southeast Asia, or that the balance of climate-related effects on the health of Europeans will be negative.

A report from a British panel prompted the New York Times to declare that climate alarmist scientists had been "cleared," despite the fact that it "was the University of East Anglia that commissioned a paid investigation to uncover corruption and (un)scientific malfeasance at -- wait for it! -- the University of East Anglia's own Climate Research Unit!"

Which shows the degree (hah!) to which lefties remain wedded to warming.

UPDATE: below

The Dems are about to pass the Financial Reform legislation (HR 4173)--the House passed the amended conference version on June 30th. It's supposed to reduce the risks of future credit crunches--though it does nothing to fix Fannie and Freddie, which were at the core of the melt-down. Instead, it adds a bunch of costly new requirements, overseen mainly by the same regulators that failed last time--which will hurt both banks and job growth--paid for by at least $11 billion of TARP funds, i.e., taxpayers.

Even worse, along the way, Congressional Democrats tossed in provisions to please their progressive constituency, says economist Diana Furchtgott-Roth on RealClearMarkets:

I was searching the bill for a provision about derivatives. What did I find but Section 342, which declares that race and gender employment ratios, if not quotas, must be observed by private financial institutions that do business with the government. In a major power grab, the new law inserts race and gender quotas into America's financial industry.

In addition to this bill's well-publicized plans to establish over a dozen new financial regulatory offices, Section 342 sets up at least 20 Offices of Minority and Women Inclusion. This has had no coverage by the news media and has large implications.

The Treasury, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the 12 Federal Reserve regional banks, the Board of Governors of the Fed, the National Credit Union Administration, the Comptroller of the Currency, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. . .all would get their own Office of Minority and Women Inclusion.

Each office would have its own director and staff to develop policies promoting equal employment opportunities and racial, ethnic, and gender diversity of not just the agency's workforce, but also the workforces of its contractors and sub-contractors. . .

Lest there be any narrow interpretation of Congress's intent, either by agencies or eventually by the courts, the bill specifies that the "fair" employment test shall apply to "financial institutions, investment banking firms, mortgage banking firms, asset management firms, brokers, dealers, financial services entities, underwriters, accountants, investment consultants and providers of legal services." . . .

With the new financial regulation law, the federal government is moving from outlawing discrimination to setting up a system of quotas. Ultimately, the only way that financial firms doing business with the government would be able to comply with the law is by showing that a certain percentage of their workforce is female or minority.

The new Offices of Women and Minorities represent a major change in employment law by imposing gender and racial quotas on the financial industry. The issue deserves careful debate -- rather than a few pages slipped into the financial regulation bill.

So, the about-to-pass Financial Reform legislation's not just a bad law about banking. It's a quota bill. Courtesy of our community-organizer-in-chief.

MORE:

Carl Horowitz at Townhall:

If the Senate approves the measure -- it is set to begin debate shortly -- Congress once more will have made clear that it views institutional safety and soundness as a lesser priority than achievement of demographic "diversity" among borrowers.

(via reader Doug)

A fly falls into a cup of coffee and. . . The Italian -- throws the cup, breaks it, and walks away in a fit of rage. The German -- carefully washes the cup, sterilizes it and makes a new cup of coffee. The Frenchman -- takes out the fly, and drinks the coffee. The Chinese -- eats the fly and throws away the coffee. The Russian -- drinks the coffee with the fly, since it was extra with no charge. The Israeli -- sells the coffee to the Frenchman, sells the fly to the Chinese, sells the cup to the Italian, drinks a cup of tea, and uses the extra money to invent a device that prevents flies from falling into coffee. The Palestinian Arab -- blames the Israeli for the fly falling into his coffee, protests the act of aggression to the UN, takes a loan from the European Union to buy a new cup of coffee, uses the money to purchase explosives and then blows up the coffee house where the Italian, the Frenchman, the Chinese, the German and the Russian are all trying to explain to the Israeli that he should give away his cup of tea to the Palestinian Arab.

(via reader Raul)

President Obama wants the rich to pay more taxes. So does Obama supporter Warren Buffett, arguing that the wealthy are undertaxed.

I've repeatedly disagreed. So here's the latest update from the Congressional Budget Office, with 2007 data:

The federal tax system is progressive--that is, average tax rates generally rise with income. Households in the bottom fifth of the income distribution paid 4.0 percent of their income in federal taxes, the middle quintile paid 14.3 percent, and the highest quintile paid 25.1 percent. Average rates continued to rise within the top quintile: The top 1 percent faced an average rate of 29.5 percent.


source: CBO Graphics

Higher-income groups earn a disproportionate share of pretax income and pay a disproportionate share of federal taxes. In 2007, the highest quintile earned 55.9 percent of pretax income and paid 68.9 percent of federal taxes; the top 1 percent of households earned 19.4 percent of income and paid 28.1 percent of taxes. The share of taxes paid by high-income groups exceeded their share of income because average tax rates rise with income. In all other quintiles, the share of federal taxes was less than the income share. The bottom quintile earned 4.0 percent of income and paid 0.8 percent of taxes, and the middle quintile earned 13.1 percent of income and paid 9.2 percent of taxes.



source: CBO Graphics

I'm not saying this proves my point -- "undertaxed" is opinion. But the data don't make the Dems' case either.

(via Tax Prof Blog)

I haven't caught up yet--so posting will be light this week.

• Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah, when meeting with French Defense Minister Hervé Morin on June 5th, as reported in a Le Figaro blog (automatic translation):

  There are two countries in the world that do not deserve to exist: Iran and Israel.

• Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah, when meeting with President Obama on June 29th, as reported in a White House "Readout":

  President Obama and King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud met today and . . . expressed their hope that proximity talks between Israelis and Palestinians will lead to the resumption of direct talks with the aim of two states living side-by-side in peace and security.

• Note: this isn't the first time President Obama bowed to King Abdullah then denied it. But lefties give this President a pass for policies and postures pilloried under Bush.

(via reader Marc via Foreign Policy Passport)

Independence day--two days of independence from blogging. Check back on Tuesday.

Ghana native, and president of the Free Africa Foundation, George B.N. Ayittey ranks "the worst the worst" dictators in Foreign Policy magazine:

Although all dictators are bad in their own way, there's one insidious aspect of despotism that is most infuriating and galling to me: the disturbing frequency with which many despots, as in Kyrgyzstan, began their careers as erstwhile "freedom fighters" who were supposed to have liberated their people. . .

I call these revolutionaries-turned-tyrants "crocodile liberators," joining the ranks of other fine specimens: the Swiss bank socialists who force the people to pay for economic losses while stashing personal gains abroad, the quack revolutionaries who betray the ideals that brought them to power, and the briefcase bandits who simply pillage and steal. Here's my list of the world's worst dictators. I have ranked them based on ignoble qualities of perfidy, cultural betrayal, and economic devastation. If this account of their evils makes you cringe, just imagine living under their rule.

The top (worst) five on his list:

1) Kim Jong Il of North Korea (16 years in power)

2) Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe (30 years)

3) Than Shwe of Burma (18 years)

4) Omar Hassan al-Bashir of Sudan (21 years)

5) Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov of Turkmenistan (4 years)

Read the whole thing for the remaining despots and Ayittey's colorful descriptions.

(via reader Marc)

Terrorists have suicide belts, but progressives have academic articles, like the one University of Buffalo professor Ernest Sternberg published in the Winter 2010 Orbis, the Foreign Policy Research Institute's journal of world affairs. It's called "Purifying the World: What the New Radical Ideology Stands For," and it's both silly and scary:

Though a mouthful, world purificationism would do well in expressing what the movement wants. It wants to achieve a grand historical vision: the anticipated defeat of imperial capitalist power in favor of a global network of beneficent culture-communities, which will empower themselves through grassroots participatory democracy, and maintain consistency across movements through the rectifying power of NGOs, thereby bringing into being a new era of global social justice and sustainable development, in which the diverse communities can harmoniously share an earth that has been saved from destruction and remade pristine. . .

As for the movement’s proponents, they think of their cause as the anti-globalization (or "alter-globalization" or "no-borders") movement, eco-socialism, grass-roots globalism, global resistance, global justice movement, global intifada, transnational activism, protest networks, movement of movements, peace and justice movement, and coalition of the oppressed. . .

The new ideology is most clearly identified by what it opposes. Its enemy is the global monolith called Empire, which exerts systemic domination over human lives, mainly from the United States. Empire does so by means of economic liberalism, militarism, multinational corporations, corporate media, and technologies of surveillance, in cahoots with, or under the thrall of, Empire’s most sinister manifestation, namely Zionism. . .

Convinced that they have this unique mission, they must motivate hatred of opponents. They carry out or at least legitimize ruthless violence. And they assert the privilege to shape life’s purpose and meaning for millions. "Their ultimate goal," Gentile writes, "is to create a new civilization along expansionist lines beyond the Nation-State."

As Andrew Thomas observes at American Thinker, purificationism would produce profoundly totalitarian rule unaccountable to any electorate. Every belief and behavior would be tolerated--except conservatism, capitalism, and faith (though Islam might be a welcome ally).

It's easy to dismiss purificationism as the values of "Avatar" morphed from movie to manifesto: change the Smurf blue to "green." But such legislated self-loathing presumes everyone a victim; infants without the free will to be assigned blame or the responsibility to better one's self or society.

This truly would be the end of civilization--and to progressives, seemingly a feature not a bug. Which is why all remaining adults should oppose it.

(via Maggie's Farm)