Deinonychus antirrhopus

...simply stay in bed all year. First there is Kevin's reaction to Noam Scheiber's public musing about torture. Mr. Scheiber writes the following on his website,

That said, it does complicate the practical and moral calculus considerably if the only way we could have caught Saddam was through these means--or at least some milder variant of them. Again, I'm not saying it would have been justified--or even forgiveable--even in that case. But the question does seem highly relevant to the analysis of the situation--if for no other reason than it forces people think through precisely what their opposition to torture is. Yet, strangely, very little of the coverage of the scandal--as far as I can tell--has attempted to answer it.

(Note: Kevin omits the last sentence. I'm not sure it if changes the context of those sentences, but seems a trifle different in implication from what Kevin copied.) Kevein's response was this,

Now, I don't blame Noam Scheiber for a second for writing this. Public musings of this nature are exactly what blogs are for. But dammit — can it really be that in the year 2004 my fellow countrymen are seriously debating whether or not torture is OK as long as it extracts useful information? Have we really sunk to that level of barbarism?

I don't blame him...but I really do. That Noam guy is a real barbarian. What a dick.

Lets ignore that what Mr. Scheiber is actually writing about is why people aren't discussing their opposition to torture. Actually, I don't think it is so simple as: Torture is anywhere and everywhere bad. For example, suppose you have one of the guys who knows where a biological weapon is about to be used. Should you just Mirandize him and that's that? Once he calls for his lawyer you just wait for the tragedy to occur? Yet suddenly Kevin is a black-and-white guy. Things are either right, or wrong. Funny isn't it how this is one of the things people harp on Bush about.

Then Kevin goes off on Glenn Reynolds.

Instapundit. He's been posting like a madman, as though he's decided to take on the task of bucking up the flagging morale of his fellow war supporters singlehandedly. 35 posts yesterday and 17 so far today! And this is one happy world he lives in: things in Iraq are going splendidly, all the problems you hear about are mere inventions of the liberal media, Nick Berg is still topping Google searches, the press is paying way too much attention to all that Abu Ghraib stuff, and the insurgency in Fallujah is well under control.

There were two articles linked by Glenn that I read. One pointed out a new strategy on the Marine's part in Fallujah of helping to rebuild Mosques. The other was on what a disaster the Fallujah operations were from a public relations standpoint. Not exactly a happy dappy world that Kevin is painting.

Kevin, go pop a couple of pills and get some sleep. Your normally limited cognitive abilities have become too impaired by lack of sleep.

Yep, that is the opening of this article. What is wrong with that? Well how about the recession lasted only 9 months.

Could a little inflation be a good thing?

After years of recession, the economy is growing, causing prices to rise. But instead of viewing price increases with alarm, the monetary gurus at the Federal Reserve are singing a new tune -- that a touch of inflation isn't so bad.

The National Bureau of Economic Research, dated the start of the recession as March 2001, and the end as November 2001.

What media bias? Well, okay this could be chalked up as just plain old vanilla ignorance.

Well okay, not really fact checking them, but pointing out a glaring omission. In their current article, the guys at Spinsanity take Media Matters for America (headed up by a self-admitted liar) to task, fail to mention that there is currently some issue about back dating the start date of the last recession.

This Washington Post article points out that there is some evidence that suggests moving the start date into November or December of 2000 which would definitely put the start of the recession during the Clinton Administration. This isn't something new either. It has been around since December of 2003.

Even before the revisions, the GDP data showed that the economy hit a brick wall in the summer of 2000, after the stock market bubble burst.

Here is an article from Forbes on this as well. This idea is well known and should be in the Spinsanity article...why isn't it? Maybe a slight Leftward bias at Spinsanity?

Sean has the 12th edition up over at the American Mind. One I found rather funny is the Onion story...uh picture...whatever about "Who Is John Kerry?"

My new post at Debunkers is up. I guess it is that time of the decade when the Moonbat better known as Paul Ehrlich comes out with a new book predicting the end of the world again. You know like how it ended back in the 1980's, the 1990's and...what...the world didn't end. Oh. Oh well, maybe this time we'll all die.

It isn't being reported in the major media outlets because it is for the most part boring stuff. But this article points to some recent positive developments.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers reported April 21 that a newly restored transmission line from Al Haditha to Baghdad allows the additional generation of 350 megawatts of electrical power from the Al Haditha Dam to the capital city. The dam — on the Euphrates River about 125 miles west-northwest of Baghdad — was transmitting electricity at levels far below its generating capacity due to damaged transmission lines. The Corps of Engineers said the original 400 kilovolt transmission lines had been damaged due to looting following liberation, although foreign reports indicated coalition forces attacked the dam in April 2003.

The $56.7 million project, financed with money obtained largely from the sale of Iraqi oil, represents the single highest addition to the renewed electrical system since the liberation of Iraq last year, according to the Corps of Engineers.

Here in Southern California, that much electricity would be enough to power around 350,000 households.

Here is another article about the improvements to Iraq's electrical grid.

The corps has replaced more than 700 electrical towers throughout Iraq, Roberts said. The goal is to restore 6,000 megawatts to the national grid by June 1. About 4,500 megawatts are currently on the national grid.

If they achieve that goal there would be enough power for over 10 million households. Obviously some of that power would go towards commerical uses such as the oil pumping and so forth, but it does represent some improvements in one area of Iraq.

When he arrived at the U.S.-military-run compound in central Baghdad called the "Green Zone," Roberts dealt with daily blackouts. Before he left Iraq, power outages happened about once a week.

This article while noting that the pace of improvements to Iraq's infrastructure are behind the initial time table are still making some progress.

• repairing major airports,
  
• refurbish 1,000 schools,
  
• electricity generation should hit 6,000 megawatts by June,
  
• southern Iraq actually has a surplus of electricity,
  
• the Sweetwater Canal, which brings drinkable water to Basra, has been dredged, and pumps have been replaced,
  
• half the phone lines knocked out during the war have been reconnected.

Again, while things are taking longer than initially expected to get done, they are still getting done.

Kevin Drum has a post on the successes and failures of conservativism, but what caught my eye was this part of the post,

"Middle America" likes tax cuts — even though they don't pay much in income taxes and no one ever suggests cutting payroll taxes — because they're convinced their taxes are shipped directly to inner city welfare queens and they want it stopped.

My question is what is "Middle America"? Where exactly does it fall in the income distribution (or is it geographical as in literally the middle of the country)? Here is this distribution of tax payers in 2001,

Income Percentile	Number of Returns	AGI ($000,000s)	Total Income Taxes Paid ($000,000s)	Groups % of AGI	Groups % of Taxes Paid	Income Split	Average Tax Rate
Top 1%	1,288	$1,094,296	$300,898	17.5%	33.9%	Above $292,913	27.5%
Top 5%	6,441	$1,996,492	$472,823	32.0%	53.3%	Above $127,904	23.7%
Top 10%	12,882	$2,690,589	$576,163	43.1%	64.9%	Above $92,754	21.4%
Top 25%	32,204	$4,071,034	$736,053	65.2%	82.9%	Above $56,085	18.1%
Top 50%	64,409	$5,379,286	$852,642	86.2%	96.1%	Above $28,528	15.9%
Bottom 50%	64,409	$861,750	$35,040	13.8%	3.9%	Below $28,528	4.1%

--Source

If we count "Middle America" as those Americans who are in the top 50% of income earners and below the to 10% then the amount of taxes that they pay is indeed pretty large. They pay a little over 31% of the taxes. I don't know but 1/3rd strikes me as a decent sized proportion. The average adjusted gross income is $52,180 and the minimum income necessary to get into this catagory is $28,528 while the maximum is $92,754. That strikes me as pretty "Middle America" in terms of income.

If this is the case, then Kevin's claim is quite simply wrong.

THis is a followup to my post about the activist judge ordering all Kansas public schools closed by June 30. Yesterday, the KS Supreme Court put it on hold.

The Kansas Supreme Court on Wednesday blocked a lower court order that would have closed the state's public schools this fall if legislators failed to fix the state's school financing system.

The Supreme Court's one-paragraph order stayed "all further proceedings" in a school finance lawsuit against the state until the high court rules on the lawsuit.

Nathan Newman applauds the new proposal by Arnold Schwarzenegger to have 75% of punitive damages from civil court cases go to the government. The problem is that with large punitive damages there is a perverse incentive to sue more frequently and to go after the "deep pockets" irrespective of whether or not they bear any liability or not. This kind of an effect is called a perverse incentive because there is now an incentive to do something that is perverse in the sense that it doesn't benefit anybody.

For example, suppose a person goes to an amusement park and does something incredibly dumb and gets injured. Then because the amusement park is owned by a large corporation the idiot sues for a large sum of money in punitive as well as non-punitive damages. If he wins, Nathan's argument is that the rest of us are made better off because now the amusement park will...will...what? Bar idiots from entering? Unlikely? Close the ride in question? I fail to see how that benefits non-idiots. Raise prices to try and recover at least part of the damages? Yes, in this specific example punitive damages are a wonderful thing [/sarcasm].

While the effect that Nathan notes is indeed good, i.e., punishing malfeasant corporations, there is the down side in that large punitive damage awards can create incentives to sue when such actions are not warranted. As is typical with Nathan he simply looks at only the good outcomes, ignores the bad outcomes, and provides zip in terms of any sort of empirical evidence. Ideally we'd like to get just the good effects and not the perverse effects. How to do this? How about burning the money from punitive damages? If nobody can get that money they have no incentive to sue in the hopes of striking it rich via a lawsuit. Further, we still get the good effects in that the malfeasant corporation is punished.

What is the problem with giving the money to the government? Punitive damages become a profit/revenue center for government. Now the government will have an incentive to increase the not only the number of lawsuits seeking punitive damages, but increasing the size of the punitive damages. Here is Nathan outlining the very problem himself,

And guess what, if punitive damages go to the government, you might actually see state agencies and attorneys generals bring more lawsuits, since they would suddenly become revenue sectors of the government.

I am all for lots of plaintiff lawyers suing on behalf of victims and giving them lots of incentives to do so, but using punitive damages is the wrong way.

Bottom line: lawsuits good, more lawsuits even better. Nevermind that there is very little that is actually productive in terms of lawsuits. Lawsuits produce virtually nothing. Can you drive a lawsuit? Can you eat a lawsuit? Will a lawsuit perform your triple bipass operation? No, no, and no. Now lawsuits can have a beneficial effect in that they can address wrongs, and enforce contracts and so on. Lawsuits and courts are a necessary part of a health and functioning market economy. However, the idea that more lawsuits is always better is just plain...idiotic.

Daniel Drezner has a post that points to some research noting that education graduate schools are rather weak academically. My first response was, "Gee, really? Who'd a thunk it?!?!"

I like this part of the post:

Linda Darling-Hammond, an education professor at Stanford University who has led the charge for tighter regulation and higher standards for teaching, blasted the paper as showing "very poor scholarship."

Course outlines are inadequate to assess what is actually taught, she said, calling the standards Mr. Steiner used to evaluate each of the four types of courses either personal or politically motivated.

"We need systematic studies," she complained, "rather than diatribes that come at the problems ideologically."

David F. Labaree, an education professor at Stanford and author of the forthcoming book The Trouble With Ed Schools, agreed that course outlines are not a good guide to what is actually taught. They are "more an ideological portrait of a course than actual substance," he said.--emphasis added by Prof. Drezner

Well, if course outlines aren't a good indicator of what is going to be covered, how can students know before hand if a course will offer what they need? Sounds like the instructors at education schools need to take a course on writing accurate course outlines. Also, this sounds like a nice attempt to make the problem unmeasurable. If course outlines are no good, then what should be used? How about the text book? Oh, no I guess that wouldn't work either as the same argument would work. Oh...how about asking the students! Yeah, we all know how wonderful polls work.

When I was in graduate school, the course outlines were almost always a good predictors. In my second semester of macro theory we covered precisely those articles listed in the course outline. We didn't cover in class the additional articles, but the idea was the student would read those articles as homework/outside of class.

It is this kind of stupid thing that makes the education graduate programs look so bad. The course outline says one thing, then the professor decides to teach things not on the syllabus. What a load of Barvo Sierra. No wonder education schools are considered a joke.

Robert has been blogging for two years now. And like many of us, Robert has become a hit junkie, a sitemeteroholic, and..dare I say it...yes a link whore (trust me, I know all the signs of a link whore...being one myself). And Robert would like to get to 500,000 unique visitors before his anniversary. So help feed Robert's addiction and think of it as his anniversary gift. Go to his site, and if you have a blog toss him a link.

A caller on Rush Limbaugh was decrying the fact that gay couples in MA are getting married starting today. His reasoning (paraphrased) was "This is propoganda fodder for terrorists since radical Islam considers homosexuality a capital offense." Hence, the US shouldn't allow gay marriage. Surprisingly guest-host Roger Hedgecock didn't call him on the irrationality of that statement.

We allow women to work outside the home, drive cars, etc., all of which are forbidden under the strict Islam espoused by the terrorists. So we shouldn't allow that because it might be propoganda for terrorists?

Come on, they hate America because of what we are, not what we do. Our freedoms are a threat to their power, period.

John Kerry has been claiming that he will add 10 million jobs to the economy in the first four years he is in office. This claim is based on a memo to the Kerry campaign from Harvard economists Lawrence Katz. But what is the basis for this claim of 10 million new jobs? Nothing. This article at FoxNews points out that there is zero economic theory behind the numbers. Here is the key part of the memo,

The average U.S. unemployment rate for 1999-2000 was 4.1 percent. If we restore sound economic policies as Senator Kerry has proposed that we do, then we could re-ignite the innovative and job-creating potential of the U.S. economy and experience such labor market conditions again. Bureau of Labor Statistics projections of labor force growth combined with the historical relationship between employment growth in the household and establishment (payroll) surveys imply that a decline in the unemployment rate to 4.1 percent in January 2009 would result in the creation of over 10 million net new jobs (as measured by the establishment survey) over four years (from January 2005 to January 2009).

Notice what this is saying: if we get back to 4.1% then there will be 10 million new jobs. If we get back to 4.1% is not linked to any policies. The "analysis" is purely statistical in nature in that it assumes that achievement of the goal then calculates the number of jobs achieving that goal will add. There is no analysis as to whether or not Kerry's economic policies will achieve the goal of 4.1% unemployment.

If we look at the historical employment data since 1948 we see that the periods where unemployment is less than 4.1% are indeed rare. There have been five periods where the unemployment rate has been below 4.1% (or close to it). In terms of the number of months with an unemployment rate below 4.1%, we find that only 17% of the 676 months since 1948 have unemployment rates that low. If we look at only the last 25 years we see an even more stark picture. The average unemployment rate is 6.2% and there is only one period with an unemployment rate below 4.1% and that was during the dotcom bubble...hardly something we should consider good policy. The bottom line is that unemployment levels such as 4.1% are the exception not the rule, and that they are generally unsustainable.

If we look at the Annual Report of the Council of Economic Advisors from 1999 we see that even they did not anticipate driving unemployment that low.

Although the NAIRU is an indicator of the risk of inflation, estimates of the NAIRU have a wide band of uncertainty and should be used carefully in formulating policy. The NAIRU implicit in the Administration’s forecast has drifted down in recent years and is now within a range centered on 5.3 percent.--emphasis added (page 24)

What level of unemployment was the Clinton Administration forecasting in 1999? How does 5.3 grab you? Don't believe me, well here is table 2-5 from the report. What about the 2000 report you ask. Well what about it? They still realize that the low unemployment rates are not sustainable. The forecasts never go below 4.6% and bounce up to 5% in 2004 and up to 5.2% in 2005.

Sure there could be 10 million jobs added over the four years of 2005 to 2008, but there is little reason to think this is going to happen. But who knows, oil prices could plummet, gasoline prices could likewise decline, and the economy could take off in 2004. Of course, these events would have absolutely nothing to do with John Kerry. Kerry's claim that his policies will ad 10 million jobs in four years doesn't even pass the giggle test.

Bush's poll numbers are looking really weak right now, but does this mean that he'll lose in November? Well, not if the Fair model for presidential elections is right. This model has been surprisingly accurate in predicting presidential elections since 1960 and with Ray Fair's numbers, Bush will win with 58.74% of the vote. According to the Fair model, if the inflation rate jumps to 10% (never going to happen) and the real per capita growth in GDP is -0.5% for the first 3 quarters of 2004, then Kerry has a 50/50 chance.

Of course this depends on whether or not you still believe in Clinton's mantra of: Its the economy stupid. I don't think Kerry has forgotten the mantra which is why he is working overtime to portary the economy as being bad, weak, and so forth. The problem is that the economy isn't all that bad. Sure unemployment is higher than it was at the end of Clinton's term, but that level of unemployment was exceptionally low. Will there be enough discontent over a 5.6% rate of unemployment for things to go Kerry's way? I doubt it, back in 1992 the unemployment level was 2% points higher and Clinton had the benefit of Perot syphoning off support from Bush. In 1996 the unemployment rate was about where it is now. Also, growth in personal consumption expenditures in 1996 are very similar to what they are now.

And lastly there have been two months of decent jobs growth in the establishment survey. While it may not be super hot job growth if it continues it will make Kerry's job all that much harder. Unless people figure that a change is needed for foreign policy and that this trumps the economy as an election issue, Kerry has a very, very tough election in front of him.

Thanks to Don Luskin and Steve Antler for the link to the Fair election model.

Pretty good movie, methinks. Lots and lots of action, and despite the R rating, it wasn't as gory as I expected.

It was also a nice change, in that it wasn't a standard good vs. evil summer action movie. Except for Agamemnon (who was one-dimensionally despicable), the major characters on both sides were pretty sympathetic:

Menelaus -- wife ran off at the first opportunity.
Achilles -- glory hound, but loyal to his friends and family.
Odysseus -- Smart honorable man stuck in a bad situation because he can't afford to have Aggie as an enemy.
Helen -- Stuck in a loveless marriage and trying to find a way out.

Priam -- old king who loves his country and his family
Paris -- young fool willing to risk everything for love.
Hector -- reluctant warrior who would rather stay at home raising his son and learning how to pronounce his wife's name.

I do have to admit that it was a bit of a stretch to see Orlando Bloom playing an extremely earnest character who was in love with someone else's wife, and was highly skilled with a bow.

It also looked like Brad Pitt, Orlando Bloom, and Eric Banna might have spent a little time at the gym.

We've been getting lots of hits here the past two days (3,500+ so far). The vast majority have been looking for information on Nick Berg. I guess it was luck that has this site placed so high on the search engines, but the media are idiots for not going with this story vs. Abu Ghraib, at least if you are looking at ratings.

CNN.com is still running with Abu Ghraib. Samething at the Washington Post website. And same with the New York Times. No wonder people are coming to my site and others...bloggers appear to be the only people still talking about it. The media people are idiots by and large.

Update: Here are various news outlets and the main items on their front page:

• Los Angelest Times: Abu Ghraib
  
• Rueters: Abu Ghraib and the PPI
  
• ABC News: Rumsfeld with a smaller story on Berg
  
• CBS News: Nick Berg and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi
  
• Fox News: Nick Berg and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi

Looks like some of them are catching on.

Update II: CNN.com switched to Berg as well.

The other day on the Larry Elder Show (which I listen too on my way home) Larry and a caller got onto the topic of legalizing drugs. The caller wanted to know what Larry would think if drugs were legalized and heroin epidemic erupted. Larry tried to point out that this idea is patently silly by pointing out that that caller isn't about to run out and shoot up heroin if it becomes legal why should others do so.

The idea can be seen much more easily I think with a picture. The demand for heroin is highly inelastic. That is, price doesn't have that much effect on demand. The demand curve would look something like graph over on the left. The demand in that picture is much more inelastic in that even with a large decrease in price the increase in quantity is small. So the idea that there could be an epidemic is pretty unlikely. This argument is extremely weak.

The caller then went on to the argument that he didn't want to get hit by a drug user who is intoxicated and behind the wheel of a car. Well, nobody is arguing to make driving under the influence legal, so this is a strawman argument. Further, alcohol use is far more prevelent than drug use and there is no calls for banning booze. In fact, most people immediately start pointing out prohibition, but don't realize we have prohibition right now. Drug use is currently prohibited. Also, getting into an accident with a intoxicated drug user is far less likely to lead to fatalities than getting shot in the head. One of the costs of drug prohibition is that it is on the blackmarket and is a revenue source for street gangs. Since it is a blackmarket, one cannot go to the legal system for contract disputes, and other disputes. Instead disputes will be settled by the gangs and usually invovle violence that can and does spill over into the local neighborhood.

The decriminalization of drugs would remove a revenue source from street gangs, which in turn would reduce crime and save money in terms of law enforcment. The cost of increased usage for drugs like heroin would be minimal due to the inelastic nature of these drugs.

Update: I went to the online economic working paper archive to see what kind of research has been done on such drugs as heroin and usage. Shocking there is only one paper. Here is the abstract (I bought the paper and read the whole thing),

The purpose of this paper is to estimate the effects of heroin prices, cocaine prices and marijuana decriminalization on the demand for these three drugs, respectively. There are few prior empirical studies in this area because data have been difficult to acquire. This paper makes use of newly available data on drug prices and is the first to link these data to a sample of 49,802 individuals from the National Household Survey of Drug Abuse. The new drug price data comes from the Drug Enforcement Agency. The results provide empirical evidence that drug use is more price responsive than has been previously thought. The results show that the participation price elasticity for heroin is about -.90 to -.80 and that the participation price elasticity for cocaine is about - .55 to -.36. Marijuana decriminalization was also found to increase the probability of marijuana participation by about 4 to 6 percent. The price elasticity for heroin is estimated at about -1.80 to -1.60 and for cocaine at about -1.10 to -.72. It is estimated that legalization would lead to about a 100 percent increase in the quantity of heroin consumed and about a 50 percent increase in the quantity of cocaine consumed.

The short version of the abstract is: I'm wrong.

The longer answer is that with the price participation elasticities they are reporting a 60% decrease in the price of heroin due to legalization means a 54% increase in participation. Given that price elasticities are about twice the price participation elasticites for opium and marijuana, this means a 60% decrease would mean around a 100% increase in consumption. These are some pretty big increases to be offset by lowering crime.

The one thing that is slightly weird with this study is that heroin seems to have higher elasticities than cocaine which strikes me as being counter-intuitive.

Over at Debunkers.org I have a new post on global warming. Specifically I look at the load of Bravo Sierra Gore was shovelling in his Moveon.org speech.

The Producer Price Index (PPI) rose by 0.7 percent in April. This increase is the largest in the last 13 months (maybe longer). I am pretty sure this will count in as a checkmark in the Fed's list of reasons for raising interest rates sooner rather than later.

Morton Kondrake had the right reaction.

"Look at those monsters standing there five of them and they cut the guy's head off, they sawed his head off, shouting God is great. Now that is what we are dealing with, that is the kind of people who will run the world if we do not win this war on terrorism. And it is being fought in Iraq and we have got to win and that is it. Full stop. There is just no losing this thing or else the world will be run by monsters."

My theory right now. with the little information we have? Nick Berg knew something (Photos? What?), was in hiding, and was lured out to be executed by people on our side who are going to cynically exploit this beheading.

So the BFEE went for a "twofer" - kill the whistleblower before he can blow it and use the film to gain points for the BFEE.... two for one.

Update -- name correction

Judge Orders Kansas Schools Closed by June 30.

A Kansas district judge on Tuesday ordered public schools to close, beginning June 30, until the state's flawed school finance law can be overhauled.

Shawnee County District Judge Terry Bullock, who had declared the school finance law unconstitutional on Dec. 2, ordered the expenditure of school dollars to be halted at the end of next month.

His order, unprecedented in Kansas, applies not only to state education spending but also to additional property tax levies authorized by local school boards and local sales tax money collected for education in Johnson and Saline counties.

On December 2, 2003, this Court entered a Preliminary Interim Order holding that the Kansas school funding scheme, as it then existed, was unconstitutional in violation of Article 6 of the Kansas Constitution and the Equal Protection Clauses of both the Kansas and United States Constitutions. At the request of Defendant State Board of Education, the Court withheld final judgment and gave the legislative and executive branches an opportunity to craft remedial legislation. Specifically, the Court provided the State a grace period encompassing the entire 2004 legislative session in which to repair the constitutional violations in the funding scheme. Unfortunately, during that just-concluded legislative session, the legislative and executive branches failed to utilize the time provided by the Court and none of the adjudicated constitutional defects in the school funding scheme were addressed and none corrected. The Legislature has now adjourned and left the capital. Only formal sine die adjournment remains. Accordingly, with considerable regret and after much deliberation, the Court can find no reason to further delay and is now prepared to announce its remedy ruling in this matter.

The gist of the ruling is that the current funding scheme for public schools is both inadequate and unequitable.

1. Inadequate. A commission empaneled by the State Board of Education concluded that the schools are approximately $1 billion underfunded.

2. Unequitable. Evidence presented to the court showed a per child spending disparity ranging from $5,655.95 to $16,968.49.

Number 1 bothers me a little, because it seems to me that the judge is ordering the legislature to raise taxes. Theoretically, they could cut spending elsewhere, but come on, how likely is that?

Number 2 really pisses me off. The spending disparity arrises because some of the wealthier school districts choose to raise property taxes to provide additional funding for the local schools. The ruling includes a list of requirements for a new funding scheme to pass constitutional muster, including the following:

...the Legislature must also ensure that each and every child is treated equally. Accordingly, any per pupil differences in funding must be justified by actual differing costs necessary to provide a suitable and equal education for that child.

{snip}

This new funding plan must not contain:
a. Wealth-based, local funding options which cause per pupil funding disparities;

e. Special local or other funding authority benefitting only some children;

g. Unequalized “local” funding options, which by their nature are more available to wealthy districts both politically and in the revenues generated;

h. Any revenue source which requires local approval, thus creating inequities between places and children.

I live in one of the best school districts in the state, probably in the top 10 percent in the country. I don't have any children myself, but I do own property, and the value of that property is influenced by the high quality school system. According to this judge's ruling, my school district can't increase its funding even if they want to. The fact that children in my school district get an excellent education somehow is detrimental to other students in the state.

Don't get me wrong, I despise the State Legislature as much as the next person, but this judge's ruling is overreaching. It also seems that the judge is a little miffed at the legislature's attitude:

To paraphrase Aesop: The mountain labored and brought forth nothing at all. In fact, rather than attack the problem, the Legislature chose instead to attack the Court. From the outset, legislative leaders openly declared their defiance of the Court and refused to meaningfully address the many constitutional violations within the present funding scheme, all of which were created by the Legislature itself. To this very day, those legislative leaders continue to disregard this Court’s factual findings, premised largely on the State’s own records and other uncontroverted evidence. They likewise continue to ignore the fact that this Court did not act alone, but was in fact operating under a mandate handed down by the Kansas Supreme Court in this very case. Accordingly, the mocking and disrespect shown this Court must be understood to be directed at the State’s entire judicial branch of government.

Update

Here is Article 6, the Kansas Constitution's section on public education. Section 6b is the pertinent paragraph about financing public schools:

The legislature shall make suitable provision for finance of the educational interests of the state. No tuition shall be charged for attendance at any public school to pupils required by law to attend such school, except such fees or supplemental charges as may be authorized by law. The legislature may authorize the state board of regents to establish tuition, fees and charges at institutions under its supervision.

We might as well disband our local school boards, since this ruling seems to me to make them unnecessary.

A video was released on a militant islamic websitie supposedly showing the beheading of an American.

The video showed five men wearing headscarves and black ski masks, standing over a bound man in an orange jumpsuit — similar to a prisoner's uniform — who identified himself as Nick Berg, a U.S. contractor whose body was found on a highway overpass in Baghdad on Saturday.

"My name is Nick Berg, my father's name is Michael, my mother's name is Susan," the man said on the video. "I have a brother and sister, David and Sarah. I live in ... Philadelphia."

After reading a statement, the men were seen pulling the man to his side and putting a large knife to his neck. A scream sounded as the men cut his head off, shouting "Allahu Akbar!" — "God is great." They then held the head out before the camera.

Now for those who are clamoring for the full disclosure of all the pictures and videos of the Iraqi prisoners...do you favor releasing this video? If not, how do you explain your hypocrisy? If Nick Berg and his family have some sort of claim to dignity and privacy, doesn't this hold for the Iraqi prisoners?

"I knew he was decapitated before. That manner is preferable to a long and torturous death. But I didn't want it to become public," Michael Berg said.

Never fear, American media to the rescue. Not only will it be made public it will be flogged to death. Parts of the video might even end up on CNN¹, CBS, and other networks.
_____
¹Yep, looks like CNN is showing parts of the video.

RealClearPolitics has a bit about Teddy Kennedy entitled Oxygen Thief.

[from Kennedy's speech in the Senate]
"On March 19, 2004, President Bush asked, 'Who would prefer that Saddam's torture chambers still be open?

"Shamefully, we now learn that Saddam's torture chambers reopened under new management: U.S. management."

What sort of dysfunctional moral compass must one have to make such a comparison?

Read this now.

Over into the battlement the humvee went and out the door Brian Chontosh bailed, carrying an M16 and a Beretta and 228 years of Marine Corps pride.

And he ran down the trench.

With its mortars and riflemen, machineguns and grenadiers.

The site Debunkers.org, a site dedicated to debunking junk science, has started a group blog. I also have my first post up on how the U.S. is misunderstood on global climate change policy.

This newswire article highlights how corporate profits are growing at a rate of 30%. Also, revenues are growing, so profit increases are not just due to increases in productivity and redcutions in costs.

Tim Worstall has an interesting piece on the oil issue raised by Paul Krugman (or should I say popularized). I recommend reading the whole thing, but if you don't have time here is the final words,

What we will have to do is adapt. And that adaptation won't be that horrible, it'll just mean the US getting a little more like parts of Europe in one respect. No, civilisation won't collapse, we won't all become cheese eating surrender monkeys, won't have to sign over our guns nor give up free speech. It'll just be the normal rules of economics, a market system allowing individuals to substitute one set of goods for another in response to changing relative prices.
So, Paul, why didn't you tell your readers what will happen, instead of your doom laden pronouncements? I mean, you used to be a pretty good economist, certainly up there in the list of likely Nobel nominees. What happened ?

Don't release them. That is what I hope. I hope that our government decides to stand firm and not release anymore pictures. Why? Because to do so subjects the people in the pictures and videos to further shame and humiliation. Nope, it isn't enough that you had to engage in homoerotic acts for the cameras, we need to broadcast them around the world. It is too bad you were abused and photographed, but we want to make sure billions of people see you being abused by circulating the photos.

Of cours I have no doubt that our media will do everything they can to get their grubby hands on the pictures and videos and release them (appropriately edited of course so we don't see anything like genitals or buttocks...heaven forbid!). After all, gotta give the public the titillation they need...demand! And who cares it is only a bunch of pictures of Iraqi's (i.e., brown people).

The Hubbert curve is one of the main things that doom & gloomers hang their hats on. The Hubbert curve was put forward by M. King Hubbert and he predicted that (contiguous) U.S. production would peak in the 1960's based on production of 150 billion barrels of oil, and the 1970's based on 200 billion barrels of oil. The actual peak was in 1970.

Based on the success of this model, some have been using it to forecast the peak in world production. Depending on which prediction you look at the peak will occur in either 2010 or 2020...or somewhere around there...give or take a few years.

My problem with this kind of model is that it is ad-hoc. An ad-hoc model is one where you note that the model fits some observed phenomenon, but you don't really get into what is going on with regards to the phenomenon. The best example I know of comes from economics with the Phillips curve. The Phillips curve postulated a trade-off between inflation and unemployment: as inflation rose, unemployment fell. This appeared to be a stable relationship and this curve worked its way into setting macroeconomic policy. Then in the 1970's something happened. Stagflation, there was both high inflation and high unemployment. The problem was all those people looking at the Phillips curve forgot their basic microeconomic theory which says that consumers do not suffer from money illusion (double prices and income and consumers wont change their behavior). That is what inflation does on average though. The Phillips curve was the result of people being fooled. When they figured out what was going on, the Phillips curve stopped being so stable.

So what is wrong with the Hubbert curve? Well at left is the "theoretical" Hubbert curve. This curve is derived by differentiation the logistic curve (function). It looks alot like the normal distribution that one might find in a statistics book. The idea is that production first ramps up, peaks, then declines. Nothing too shocking. The problem is when we look at workd production and current forecasts "based" on this curve,

Sure doesn't look like a Hubbert curve does it? In fact, you'd have to use 2 such curves that overlap to actually get a decent fit. What happened in the 1970's and 1980's? Looks like we not only hit the peak for the (contiguous) U.S. but also the world! What happened was the price went up...alot. To get the price to go up, OPEC curtailed production. Ooops. So much for the simple Hubbert curve. There is no way in heaven, earth or hell that the Hubbert curve could have predicted this kind of an event. A model should be judged on its ability to predict. While the Hubbert curve has had one success it has also had a failure.

So, lets suppose that the price continues to rise here in the U.S. for gasoline due to things like NIMBYism, environmental activism, and the turmoil in the middle east. Suppose the price actually gets up to $3 or even $4/gallon? What then? Another decline in production?

While a high price of oil means that producers want to produce a great deal, the high price also means that consumers want to consume a great deal less. This is where I think the Hubbert curve falls down. It fails to take into account the political and economic part of the phenomenon.

I asked somebody once about this problem of more than one peak. The answer was a methodological nightmare. The response was a blithe, "Well you can use more than one curve." Clearly this person thought such a response would put me in my place. I responded with, "Well how do you know before hand how many curves to use? Strikes me as a fine example of post hoc reasoning." I am still waiting for a response.

In short, should we believe the Hubbert curve predictions? I don't think so. This doesn't mean we wont reach a peak in production though. We undoubtedly will, just like we have reached peaks in many other goods, such as

• broadswords,
  
• buggy whips,
  
• whale oil,
  
• covered wagons, and
  
• flint tipped spears.
  

Oil production will undoubtedly peak. When will it peak is another matter entirely. Given the Hubbert curves complete inability to factor in politicial and economice effects, I don't think it should be considered a reliable model in predicting the peak.

Update: Some people in comments have argued that my take on this is wrong because the government might try to keep prices low. The problem with this hypothesis is it is contradicted by the chart. When the price is low, production is high.

Suppose for example the government were to subsidize the production of oil to keep the price of oil low. This would indeed keep the price low, but only by increasing the amount of oil on the market; i.e., it would increase production as well.

Other suggestions as to what the government might do usually depend making more available. The problem is we just don't see this in the data. Why is there a flat during the late 80's and 90's, and also during that time prices were fairly low in real terms.

This idea that the government which manages to simply lose billions of dollars every year suddenly becomes very adept when keeping oil prices low does not pass the giggle test. When prices sored in the late 70's early 80's, the government's response was outright stupid: price controls. Yes, I'm barely old enough to remember that you could only buy gas on certain days depending on your license plate number.

Is "unpatriotic" becoming the new "Nazi"? Are we going to have a new variant to Godwin's Law, but with unpatriotic being the subject vs. Nazi, Hitler, or fascist? I think so. For example, we have Kerry and his Benedict Arnold CEO's. There is Mrs. Kerry's questioning of President Bush's and Vice President Cheney's patriotism. We have Sen. McCain using the "U" word. And the number of times that "patriotism attacks" is used by one side to smear the other side are so prevalant that nobody could catalog them all.¹

It has become almost the insult de jure, when you can't find something suitably nasty to say about somebody, call them an unpatriotic scumbag, Benedict Arnold, traitor, and so forth. It is funny that many on the Left decry this the most, but at the sametime will often attack the patriotism of others.
_____
¹A "patriotism attack" is where an individual, group, etc. claims that the other side is attacking their patriotism (which may or may not be true) and this can then be used to justify attacking the other side's patriotism (example 1, example 2, example 3).