Deinonychus antirrhopus

In the comments to this post, Kimmit makes the following comment.

Further, even if one is not racist, one can have opinions which end up being antiblack. It is both my opinion and the African-American community's consensus that opposition to Affirmative Action laws is a position which disadvantages the African-American community.

There are a couple of problems with this view, IMO. The first problem is that it rests on a logical fallacy. If 90% of the population has an unfavorable view of homosexuals does this mean that the view is some how valid? I would hope not.

Now one could point to things like college admissions and the removal of affirmative action laws as support for the claim of being anti-Black. It is true that when race was no longer used as a factor in California that number of Black students admitted to state universities declined. However, is this anti-Black? It certainly puts some students at a disadvantage in terms of admissions, but what about such issues as graduation rates, secondary expenditures for tutoring and remedial courses? This issue is in part about how the state is going to allocate part of its resources for higher education. Given the number of state universities the decision is to not let the market mechanism do all the allocation. There are at least two dimensions here. How best to make use of these resources from the state’s stand point, and how the individual can best to make use of these resources.

Now one reason (probably the major reason) that there was a decline is that under-prepared students either were rejected or decided to apply elsewhere. So is it fair to say that supporting a policy that does not encourage under-prepared students to apply to a given university is anti-whatever-group-those-students-belongs-to? Not only does allowing for the admission of under-prepared students mean that there will likely be a prepared student who is denied, but later on the under-prepared students will continue to suck more resources than the prepared students.

Granted, getting a degree from a good university might have some impact on one’s income stream. But does that mean that under-prepared students should be admitted? What about a policy that addresses the preparedness issue of various groups of students? I have heard that many inner-city blacks like the idea of school vouchers. Yet the Democrats are opposed to vouchers. I could be cynical and say it is due only to the fact that the teachers unions are a big Democratic constituency and the Democrats are pandering to that constituency…at the expense of the Black constituency. Are we to conclude that Democrats are now anti-Black and by inference so is Kimmitt?

Further, it is but a short step from saying somebody supports a policy that is anti-Black to racist. And when things are looking desperate, might not this “card” be used to help gain an electoral advantage and further fan the racial flames in this country? Could we conclude that such actions are polarizing, insulting and bad for race relations, and are ultimately anti-Black? After all you start hurling around the term racism and people get angry and defensive. When they get angry and defensive they tend to dig in on their positions and regard their opponent as somebody who is arguing in good faith, but who is now being deceptive and malicious.

And one last fly in this anti-Black ointment we have here. When the use of race was no longer allowed, the number of students going to state universities such as U.C. Berkeley who were Asian went up dramatically. Are we to conclude that the Affirmative Action laws are anti-Asian and that supporters of such laws are also anti-Asian? Suddenly things aren’t so clear cut no are they? Well at least I don’t think they are.

Also, in the comments (same post in fact) was this

Finally (and this one really bothers me), why is it so terrible that a person would moderate their views in the presence of less-than-fully-confirming evidence? I know, I know, "flip-flopper" and all that, but who would you prefer to deal with, someone who has opinions but is capable of changing them when presented with an opposition (or, in my case, since no actual opposing argument was presented, failing to adequately justify the opinion to myself), or someone who holds to their opinions independent of discussion or evidence?

The issue isn’t simply somebody who can change their mind due to the data, but somebody who changes their mind because it is politically easy. For example (and sticking with the above theme), it could have been easy to side with the segregationists back in the 1950’s and 60’s. In the South, politically it was the “easy” thing to do. However, it was not the right thing to do. So changing one’s mind because of new data is indeed a desirable trait, but changing one’s mind simply because it is convenient is not.

Anyways, I thought these two comments were interesting enough to warrant an actual blog post vs. simply responding in comments.

Well I finally got around to upgrading my MT setup and also installed MT-Blacklist. I am also going to be going back through all the old posts and closing the comments and deleting any spam that Blacklist missed.

Anyhow, if you suddenly find you can't post anymore it is possible you have somehow be inadverently added to the blacklist so send me an e-mail and I'll take care of it (e.g., I noticed that gnxp.com somehow got incorporated into the list which would have banned a rather prolific poster).

I've blogged on this before (although with gasoline prices not crude oil prices...but the point is basically the same). Lynne Keisling has blogged on this before. Now it is Prof. Bainbridge who is blogging on this.

Note to all Journalists: Before you proclaim something a record high, adjust for inflation you nimrods.

Sheesh.

Via Kevin Drum we have this article on Kerry's response to the Swift Boat Veterans.

What is interesting is that Kerry's response is basically an ad hominem argument.

Kerry said the ads, aired by the group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, are funded by a Republican contributor from Texas.

"They're a front for the Bush campaign. And the fact that the president won't denounce them tells you everything you need to know -- he wants them to do his dirty work," he told a cheering crowd at a meeting of the International Association of Fire Fighters in Boston.

"Of course, the president keeps telling people he would never question my service to our country. Instead, he watches as a Republican-funded attack group does just that. Well, if he wants to have a debate about our service in Vietnam, here is my answer: Bring it on!" Kerry challenged.

Instead of responding to the claims, Kerry ignores those and instead attacks the group as a Republican Front. Why isn't Kerry releasing his military record and his personal journal to help clear this issue up? Wasn't that one of Kevin's war cries during the Bush/AWOL controversy?

...to silly putty. Both Kevin Drum and Matthew Yglesias don't seem to understand Alex Tabarrok's point.

Today, I begin teaching the Economic Foundations of Law in the GMU Law School. To illustrate the importance of economics for the study of law I begin with a simple example due to David Friedman. There is in the law what is called "a nonwaivable warranty of habitability," which is a fancy way of saying that a dwelling must have certain features such as heating, hot water, sometimes even air conditioning, whether or not such terms are in the lease and even if the lease explicitly excludes such terms. I ask my students who is made better off and who is made worse off by a legal doctrine that says tenants must have hot water? Invariably, the students answer that the doctrine makes tenants better off and landlords worse off. But is this so? Think about it and then read the extension for more.

Kevin and Matthew apparently don't see that the example is a classroom exercise meant to illustrate a larger point. The point is actually simple, but one many people seem not to appreciate in real life. Here is the point,

The point is that laws sometimes prohibit people from arriving at their preferred outcome and instead force them to an outcome preferred by those who pass the law and have nothing much at stake in said outcome.

In fact, Kevin's rejoinder is incorporated in Tabarrok's post...Kevin just isn't bright enough to see it.

Reductio ad absurdum is a childish game. The fact that a minimum wage of $100/hour is ridiculous doesn't mean that a minimum wage of $7/hour is ridiculous. This is why God gave us brains: to make judgments about how far to take things and how to balance competing interests against each other. Insisting on a minimum level of habitability is partly an economic decision — which explains why color TVs aren't mandated — but partly a matter of both convenience and simple human decency — which explains why hot water and lack of cockroaches are.

For example, what is the actual marginal cost of providing hot water to a tenant? Maybe a few dollars a month at most (the tenant will likely pay his own gas bill) if that. Hence the cost is so low that requiring it hardly results in a major loss for either the tenant or the landlord. But getting carried away with the habitability laws can lead to bad outcomes. Which is precisely Kevin's point and Alex's.

Kimmitt, who is supposedly a graduate student in economics either didn't understand the lesson or didn't finish the post. He concludes this about Prof. Tabarrok,

All this guy is doing is falsely indoctrinating his students into believing that all regulations are stupidly taking the place of private negotiation, by retreating into a fantasy world where negotiations, externalities, informational asymmetries, et cetera do not exist.

This is quite wrong by simply reading the last paragraph of Tabarrok's post,

The lesson here is that a contract is multi-dimensional so if the government changes one dimension of a contract the other dimensions will adjust towards offsetting that change.

In other words, Tabarrok is using a simple example to illustrate a larger point. That larger point is that doing something legally to one dimension of contracts will affect the other dimensions to offset that the potentially negative impacts of the law.

The only thing absurd about Tabarrok's post is the response from the Lefties.

Update: Alex Tabarrok as posted another post on the "Hot Water" issue. I like how he sums it up very, very nicely,

Now suppose that instead of being required to rebate the $50 the landlords are required to spend the money on shoes for the tenants. Now both tenants and landlords are almost certainly worse off since the tenants would almost certainly have used the rebate to buy something other than shoes. The hot water example hardly differs.

Indeed. This is why I prefer cash vs. presents on holidays and my birthday. When a person tries to buy me a gift they have to guess what I want, and chances are they will guess wrong (although this doens't mean I wont like the gift). Cash on the other hand allows me to purchase exactly what I want.

Update: This is also a good take on Alex's posts. It is unbelievable that so many people simply got it wrong...and badly wrong at that. And no, Daniel Davies argument about monopoly power doesn't work either. Passing the law to require an ammentiy does not change the monopolists bargaining power at all.

This article asks why aren't more oil refineries being built? Here is the simple answer: If you are it isn't good for profits. We saw this with the California energy crisis. People would ask, "Why would an independent electricity provider take a plant off-line, wouldn't that company be losing money?" Yeah, they'd be losing some money on lost sales. However, if such a closure resulted in a large enough increase in the price then the profits on that firm's remaining generation capacity would more than make up for the losses.

Here is an example with some simple numbers. The demand is 420 MW and there are 5 plants (one company owns two) each with a 100 MW combined cycle gas fired generator. One plant also has a peaker unit (basically a jet engine nailed to the floor for making electricity) for 20 MW (this facility is one of the two owned by one company). Total capacity is 520 MW. Now the way the market would work is that is that the Price Exchange would take bids from the various companies for electricity with the highest bidder necessary to "clear the market" setting the overall price. Now if I owned the company with two plants and the peaker, I'd convienently have one of my 100 MW plants suffer an "unplanned outage". Now to clear the market the Power Exchange will have to take my bid from my peaker unit. Peaker units are notoriously expensive. So now instead of getting say $50/MW for a total revenue of $600 (remember 120 MW); I get $2400 because it costs $200/MW to run the peaker.

Thus you get a quadrupling of the price. Similarly with gasoline refineries. If by closing one refinery I can raise my profits on my remaining refineries to offset the losses I'd be stupid not too shut down one of my refineries. Throw in that nice wonderful barrier to entry caused by NIMBYism, environmental regulations and other things and bingo! No more refineries being built.

In reacting to Jonah Goldberg's blog post on Bush and Clinton hatred, Kevin writes the following slop,

Tell you what, Jonah. As soon as the most popular liberal editorial page in the country accuses George Bush of murdering one of his aides, maybe I'll give your argument a hearing. And as soon as one of the most influential liberal interest groups in the country starts distributing hundreds of thousands of videos suggesting that George Bush ran a coke ring out of Austin, then I'll really perk up. And when Senate Democrats spend $70 million investigating the Valerie Plame affair — compared to the current $0 — and end up bringing impeachment charges against George Bush, then you'll have me. You'll really have me.

Let's see we have the following,

1. Murder
2. Drug running,
3. A special prosecutor/investigation
4. Impeachement.

Until these conditions are meet the far Left isn't nearly as loony as the far Right was during the Clinton years. Well, lets see what we have,

1. The LIHOP (Let It Happen On Purprose) and MIHOP (Made It Happen on Purpose--yeah its redundant, but that is what it is called) theories about 9/11.
2. Going to war in Iraq simply to get oil.
3. How about the Cheney Energy Task for silliness? Valerie Plame could turn ugly. And then there is Kevin's own personal obsession with Bush's military record...or lack there of.
4. Guess we'll have to re-elect Bush to see about impeachment proceedings.

Gee...3 out of 4 seems pretty good to me. Especially when you consider that the first three for Bush strike me as being far more horrendous than Clinton's first three.

Now I suppose this doesn't mean the Loony Left is worse than the Ridiculous Right, but I'd say they are both whacked in their collective heads. That Kevin doesn't see this suggests that he is seriously out of touch with reality...or as Kevin might say, "unserious". But this really isn't news is it. Kevin being "unserious"...he has turned being unserious into a paying gig.

The National Association for Business Economics has polled 172 economists and the leading threat to the economy according to the poll is terrorism.

"If you don't have a secure economy, you can't have a healthy, growing economy," said Duncan Meldrum, association president and chief economist with Air Products and Chemicals. "The next President should put this at the top of his list of priorities."

I think this is something that using this in the election would be a smart strategy. It brings together both the issue of defense and economic policy. For example, the fears of terrorist attacks on oil producing infrastructure has been one of the factors driving up oil prices. The higher oil prices have in turn been acting like a break on the economy in the past few months.

For Kerry it would necessitate a shift in rhetoric though. Kerry's big focus has been on first responders here inside the U.S. Now there is nothing wrong with this, but it does nothing to address the possibilities of attacks on oil producing infrastructure in the Mid-East. In fact, it could increase the chances of attacks in the Mid-East. If the terrorists see it becoming more and more difficult to attack the U.S. directly, they might shift tactics and attack indirectly.

My lack of blogging has been due to a sudden rather large increase in work demands. Fortunately I was able to finish all of my work late yesterday afternoon. So blogging should return to normal starting today.

Kevin Drum linked to this article at the Washington Post and thought the title, "Tax Burdens Shift to the Middle" was reasonable. And they even present some data couresy of the CBO. And admittedly it doesn't look all that good. The "middle class" is indeed picking up more of the burden for spending when measures as a percentage of federal tax liabilities. However, one thing I learned over the past couple of years of blogging, when dealing with the media or Kevin Drum always check the source. When dealing with both this advice goes double. So I got the report from the CBO (you can look at the pdf here). Here is a handy chart of the total effective tax rates, effective federal income tax rates, and share of federal tax liabilities (i.e., I am giving you more information than either Kevin or the Washington Post).

In other words, while the "middle classes" share of federal tax liabilities have gone up, the effective tax rates have gone down. Measuring one's tax burden is not easy. There is no simple rule of thumb. There are the notions of horizontal and vertical equity, as well as looking at lifetime vs. annual income. Keep this in mind when reading about the tax cuts.

Regarding the Kerry-Cambodia imbroglio I found this interesting comment,

"John Kerry was in the Navy, his superiors recommended him for medals, he was honorably discharged. Let it go," John A. Brieden III, national commander of the American Legion, told UPI in summing up his organization's position on the issue. "George Bush was in the National Guard. He was honorably discharged. Let it go."

While my inclination is to agree with Brieden the problem is two fold.

1. The Democrats don't seem to want to let go of the Bush-AWOL story.
2. Kerry has made his service in Vietnam the centerpiece of his campaign, complete with his comment that he is "reporting for duty".

Of course, there is also the blatant re-writing of history on this one,

The Kerry campaign responded, initially, that Kerry had always said he was “near” Cambodia.

Then a campaign aide said Kerry had been in the Mekong Delta “between” Vietnam and next-door Cambodia — a geographical zone not found on maps, which show the Mekong river running from Cambodia to Vietnam.

And not only is it a re-writing of history, but geography as well.

Michael Meehan, a Kerry campaign adviser, told ABC Television: “The Mekong Delta consists of the border between Cambodia and Vietnam, so on Christmas Eve in 1968, he was in fact on patrol ... in the Mekong Delta between Cambodia and Vietnam. He was ambushed, they fired back, he was fired upon from both sides, from the Cambodian side of the border and the Vietnam side during that day in 1968.”

Of course those on the Left who were all over the Bush-AWOL story wont touch this.

So let me get this straight. Kerry did go to Cambodia — even though that was supposedly impossible,...--emphasis in the original

Uhhhm as far as I know nobody said it was impossible that Kerry was ever in Cambodia. The statements were in response to Kerry's claims about being in Cambodia in December around Christmas. These are now false, and the new story was it was in January and Feburary. A shift in the story like this with regards to Bush-AWOL would have produced much blogging on some sites.

....he did take CIA guys in — even though that was supposedly absurd...--emphasis in the original

Again, this is a deliberate distortion. The claims by Kerry were for December and those have now proven false, and the Kerry team has completely re-trenched. My question is, why aren't we seeing Kerry's military records. Why aren't these diaries being made available to the public? Wasn't this the kind of demands we had with Bush-AWOL?

...and he did get a hat from one of them — even though that was supposedly a sign of mental instability.--emphasis in the original

To quote the master of snark, "They aren't even pretending to be serious anymore are they?"

Considering that he's mentioned this story only twice, most recently 18 years ago, and it turns out that his only crime is to have tarted it up with a bit of holiday pathos,...

Yes, but if Bush had done it he should be impeached. Puh-lease.

I have to disagree with this idea of Kevin's,

What Saletan doesn't get is that this is exactly right. Forget the details about whether stem cell therapy is good for Alzheimers, or whether embryonic stem cells are better or worse than adult stem cells. None of that is what really matters.

What really matters is that all of these details ought to be left up to scientists, not to administration ideologues. Let scientists decide what to investigate and when. If they go down a blind alley, funding will dry up and they'll go somewhere else. That's how science works.

First a caveat: I am in favor of allowing more research into the benefits of stem cells, and I disagree with Bush's policy on this topic.

However, I don't think we should let scientists research whatever they want to. Scientists are generally fine people, but there is the issue of ethics. For example, when does one stop collecting data on something? This isn't that big of an issue in something like economics which is largely observational, but with regards to medical practices it is indeed important. Here is an example from one of my stats books,

The story concerned a surgical technique designed to clear clogged neck arteries leading to the brain that was found to be effective in preventing strokes in patients suffering from a severe case of blockage. The research team was lead by Dr. Henry J.M. Barnett of the John P. Robarts Research Institute in London, Ontario. Patients, all of whom had symptoms suggestive of blockage, were randomly split into two groups: 331 patients were to be treated with aspirin and the anticoagulant warfarin, and 328 patients underwent the surgical technique known as carotoid endarerectomy. In the first group 26 percent of the patients had a subsequent stroke compared to only 9 percent in the second group. The length of the initial experiment was terminated early because preliminary results indicated that "the patients receiving surgery were doing so well that it would be unethical to continue to endorse conventional medical therapy."--Source: Intermediat Statistics and Econometrics, by Dale Poirier, page 232.

The point is that there are ethical considerations in science and I am not sure that scientists alone should be the ones to determine what is ethical and what is not ethical.

Kevin does say we should have "complete discussion" of the moral elements of things like stem cell research, but in reality Kevin does not want such a debate.

As for the moral arguments, let's insist on a full and complete discussion of those too — without the usual shilly shallying and prevaricating. The idea that a 1-week old embryo is a human being has always struck me as depressing: a nihilistically mechanical view of humanity in which DNA + miscellaneous chemicals = human life.

This is indeed one point of view, but it is only one point of view. I am in favor of keeping abortion legal. I am in favor of it because I don't know the status of a 1 week old fetus. It does seem a stretch to conclude that a 1 week old fetus is identical in terms of being human as a 1 week old baby or a 25 year old woman. It is my uncertainty on this issue that keeps me from removing the decision to have an abortion or not from a pregnant woman. However, this very same uncertainty makes me a bit squeamish about harvesting 1 week embryos so that we can destroy them for the stem cells. Kevin's insistence on an either/or approach to this problem is logically indefensible, IMO. He should be ashamed of himself.

The California Supreme Court ruled today on same sex marriages and concluded that the San Francisco mayor overstepped his legal authority.

Update: From the article it looks like the Court wanted to look at a very narrow issue--i.e., did the mayor overstep his legal authority. It didn't tackle the tougher question of the constitutionality of denying homosexuals the right to marry.

The court picked only the peripheral issue to ponder: whether Newsom had the authority to do what he did. Justices simultaneously welcomed the city to file a challenge to the constitutionality of California's marriage laws in the lower courts. Several such lawsuits were filed, and a hearing is scheduled next month.

Update II: Where else to go for information on this? The Volokh Conspiracy should be your first stop.

The second to last paragraph may be controversial, and probably should be: There's a good argument that all government officials should have an independent duty to follow the state and federal Constitutions as they understand them -- at least absent a clear court order to the contrary -- and not just do what they think (rightly or wrongly) is unconstitutional simply because no court has yet held it unconstitutional. On the other hand, the California Constitution does have a special provision on this point (art. III, sec. 3.5) that supports the California Supreme Court's position if one treats a mayor as an "administrative agency," "An administrative agency, including an administrative agency created by the Constitution or an initiative statute, has no power: (a) To declare a statute unenforceable, or refuse to enforce a statute, on the basis of its being unconstitutional unless an appellate court has made a determination that such statute is unconstitutional. . . ."

The introdcution to the ruling is also there, so check it out.

This Rueters article sur has the smell of a gross distortion. As you know Bush has nominated Porter Goss to head the C.I.A. Mikey was quick to release some comments from Goss,

A day after Bush picked Goss for the top U.S. spy job, Moore on Wednesday released an excerpt from a March 3 interview in which the 65-year-old former House of Representatives intelligence chief recounts his lack of qualifications for employment as a modern CIA staffer.

"I don't have the language skills. I, you know, my language skills were romance languages and stuff. We're looking for Arabists today. I don't have the cultural background probably," Goss is quoted in an interview transcript.

"And I certainly don't have the technical skills, uh, as my children remind me every day: 'Dad you got to get better on your computer.' Uh, so, the things that you need to have, I don't have."

My big screaming question is, are Goss' comments about getting a job at the CIA as a field agent, or to run the agency? Surely they don't expect Goss to be translating Pashtun or Farsi. If that is what is expected of the head of the C.I.A. then this country is toast as our leaders (both Democrats and Republicans) are morons.

So yeah, I don't think a man of Goss' age and current background could get a job at the C.I.A. as a spook. Hell I'd be damned worried if they were hiring men like him. As for his being able to run the C.I.A., he seems more than qualified.

As for Michael Moore, he remains an inveterate liar.

What's next, running with scissors?

Caption contest anyone?

Kerry (muttering to himself): "Now, the left, now the right, now the left, now the right..."

UPDATE:

For political balance, we have this photo.

Remember Mary Ann Knowles? No? Well she was mentioned in Kerry's speech. Kerry talked about how Knowles had to work each day during her chemotherapy out of fear of losing he health care. Well this nice story turns out to be false.

Aren't views like this supposed to make liberals have nightmares? Guess not.

President Bush could have settled this matter in a flash a long time ago and spared the country a destructive exploration of the limits of journalistic confidences before the law. He still could.

Scooter Libby, the vice president's chief of staff, has now freed at least two journalists from their obligation of confidentiality to him. Presumably, in at least those two cases, he has nothing to hide.

There must be others still relying on a confidence who do have something to hide.

President Bush could make it known either implicitly or explicitly that he wants to get to the bottom of this mystery and that anyone who is asked should free journalists in the way Libby has. If they don't feel they can do so -- which is certainly their right, working in the White House doesn't mean you lose your right to defend yourself -- they should take a leave of absence from their job or quit.

Only if you have something to hide should you be worried. Granted they always have the out of taking a leave of absence or quiting...but hey can't we say the same thing about a U.S. citizen? You always have the option to leave the country.

When I mentioned this possibility some time ago, many readers said this was wrong as it compromised the rights of possible targets of prosecution. But I don't think that's a problem here. Everyone has a right to defend themselves in a criminal probe. But there's no constitutional right to work at the White House.

The problem is that this is where the two intersect. Saying you aren't going to give such a release of confidentiality would be seen by the likes of Josh Marshall as an admission of guilt. Marshall is being a hypocrite, IMO.

In this post, I was complaining that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is not really a free market environmentalist. What he is the standard environmentalist who believes the Tragedy of the Commons is some sort of economic law, that a large scale government response is the solution, and the best thing to do is vote for candidates that support this view.

Part of the problem with this kind of view is that it puts things into the political world. This basically means rent seeking. Environmentalists are seeking rents (i.e., seeking benefits via the political process vs. the market process). Large firms are also engaged in rent seeking, but in the "opposite direction". All of this rent seeking is wasteful activity. Valuable resources are being directed to haggling over who gets what, vs. productive activities.

Further, the one-size-fits-all approach inevitably gives way to the one-size-fits-all-but-here-is-a-complex-myriad-of-exceptions. This too is bad in that it takes an army of attorneys to figure out how to operate within the boundaries of the regulations. This will raise the costs of doing business in that market and will inevitably push firms out.

Now some might say, "But that is a good thing, those firms obviously were the ones who were the (worst) polluters. Not necessarily true. These are the firms that were not able to cover the costs of figuring out the regulations, not the worst polluters. Now it could very well be that they are the worst polluters, but this outcome is more luck than anything else.

For example, suppose we have two firms. Firm ABC, Inc. produces a product and emits 10 "units" of pollution. Firm XYZ, Inc. produces another product and emits 2 "units" of pollution. ABC, Inc. has enough profits/revenue to pay for the legal resources to ensure it can go right on emitting 10 units of pollution. XYZ, Inc. on the other hand does not and ends up getting sued by River Guardians an environmentalist group that sues XYZ for not having the right permits. XYZ shuts down. Granted there is a decrease in pollution, but what if a revision to property rights would have resulted in ABC reducing its effluent by 50% and allow XYZ to stay in business.

The point of this hypothetical is to show that large scale government regulations don't always have the best outcome. In fact, it might make it worse.

In 1990 Elinor Ostrom published an influential book, Governing the Commons, suggesting that Hardin's analysis did not apply generally, since local communities often had ways of self-organtization and self-governing to prevent over exploitation of the commons, and that government policy often exacerbated rather than ameliorated the problem by undermining the social connections on which local regulation was based.--Source: Game Theory Evolving by Herbert Gintis (page 257)

Further, this idea that we elect politicians that cater to one set of special interest groups (environmentalists) can lead to the very outcome that Kennedy is railing against. When the other part is in power it might listen to a different set of special interest groups. Further, it isn't at all clear that the Democrats will be dramatically better. For example, the Democrats like being power (just as the Republicans like being in power). To stay in power they might sacrifice some of the goals of the environmentalists to appease other special interest groups (like consumers who also tend to be voters). People like electricity for example and higher bills because of increased reliance on expensive alternative sources might not sit well with the voters. So just as Republicans are often out comassioned by the Democrats and thus lead Republicans to adopt more "compassionate" and expensive social spending programs, the Democrats might move more towards providing the electorate with cheap power. Government intervention can be a double edged sword, and Kennedy isn't bright enough to have figured that out.

Kennedy also complains that unfettered capitalism leads to corporations capturing the government. However, I have to wonder about this given that prior to the progressive movement in the early 1900's there was very little government to capture. The progressive movement created the more intrusive government that industry could use. With a minimal government, then the government's impact is lessened, IMO. For example, the some of the first uses of the anti-trust laws (the Sherman Anti-Trust Act) were against labor unions not the trusts they were supposedly designed to bust.

Kennedy is also opposed to most forms of fossil fuels and nuclear energy. It should make one wonder what will replace natural gas and coal for producing electricity? Solar, wind, and geothermal? Forget it. There is no way to get the amount of electricity needed out of those sources. Nuclear energy has many benefits over fossil fuels such as low emissions. The problem of nuclear waste while a problem isn't insurmountable. So what form of energy is acceptable to Kennedy and will allow the U.S. to meet its current and future needs?

Kris Kobach won the Republican primary, and will face incumbent Dennis Moore in the general election.

This should be fun, a (what passes for these days) conservative Democrat who voted for the Iraq war and maintains a healthy distance from JFKerry vs. a Republican who thinks GWB is too liberal.

I hope they come to talk at church again this year.

Via Matthew Hoy comes this account of what Kerry did when he (and others heard about the WTC attacks).

I was in the Capitol. We’d just had a meeting—we’d just come into a leadership meeting in Tom Daschle’s office, looking out at the Capitol. And as I came in, Barbara Boxer and Harry Reid were standing there, and we watched the second plane come in to the building. And we shortly thereafter sat down at the table and then we just realized nobody could think, and then boom, right behind us, we saw the cloud of explosion at the Pentagon. And then word came from the White House, they were evacuating, and we were to evacuate, and so we immediately began the evacuation.

Time spent sitting there looking at each other: 40 minutes.

Now granted Kerry is only a U.S. Senator and not the President of the United States, but sitting around looking at colleagues for 40 minutes seems to compare rather badly to Bush's 7 minutes. Would Bush getting up excusing himself 7 minutes earlier have made any difference? Unlikly. Should this be an issue? Well I guess, but considering the complaint is coming from the Democratic Party's nominee who can't seem to make it to intelligence briefings about terrorism it seems comparing Kerry to Bush is only fair game.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has been hawking his new book, Crimes Against Nature: How George W. Bush and His Corporate Pals Are Plundering the Country and Hijacking Our Democracy, which according to the Grist appears to the environmentalists version of Fahrenheit 9/11.

What caught my eye the most in that interview was Kennedy's attempt to dress himself as a "free marketeer". The fact is that Kennedy is nothing of the sort, not even close. Kennedy has this to say about himself,

Grist: So is the culprit free-market capitalism?

Kennedy: No! The best thing that could happen to the environment is free-market capitalism. In a true free-market economy, you can't make yourself rich without making your neighbors rich and without enriching your community. In a true free-market economy, you get efficiencies and efficiency means the elimination of waste. Waste is pollution. So in true free-market capitalism, you eliminate pollution and you properly value our natural resources so you won't cut them down. What polluters do is escape the discipline of the free market. You show me a polluter, I'll show you a subsidy -- a fat cat who's using political clout to escape the discipline of the free market.

Grist: So you're saying free-market economies have to be controlled by regulations and strong central government?

Kennedy: Laissez-faire capitalism does not work, particularly in the commons. Individuals pursuing their own self-interest will devour the commons very quickly. That's the economic law -- the tragedy of the commons. You have to force companies to internalize costs. All of the federal environmental laws are designed to restore free-market capitalism in America in this regard.--bold in the original

Now it should be obvious that Kennedy has basically contradicted himself. Further, Kennedy is also prevaricating when he talks about both the tragedy of the commons as well as firms internalizing costs.

First, there is no law in economics that says a common resources has to result in the tragedy of the commons scenario. In fact, there are instances where common resources are managed just fine with little or no government internvention. This is the whole point behind the book, Governing the Commons : The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. The book's description:

The governance of natural resources used by many individuals in common is an issue of increasing concern to policy analysts. Both state control and privatization of resources have been advocated, but neither the state nor the market have been uniformly successful in solving common pool resource problems. After critiquing the foundations of policy analysis as applied to natural resources, Elinor Ostrom here provides a unique body of empirical data to explore conditions under which common pool resource problems have been satisfactorily or unsatisfactorily solved. Dr. Ostrom first describes three models most frequently used as the foundation for recommending state or market solutions. She then outlines theoretical and empirical alternatives to these models in order to illustrate the diversity of possible solutions. In the following chapters she uses institutional analysis to examine different ways--both successful and unsuccessful--of governing the commons. In contrast to the proposition of the tragedy of the commons argument, common pool problems sometimes are solved by voluntary organizations rather than by a coercive state. Among the cases considered are communal tenure in meadows and forests, irrigation communities and other water rights, and fisheries.--emphasis added

So we can see right here that not only is Kennedy contradicting himself, but is also clueless. He has an outdated mode of thinking on these kinds of problems. We can see this with later statements in his interview. Here are some examples (please click on the link and read the entire thing so you can be sure of the context),

Industry wants us reading those books that say "50 things you can do to help the environment" because it distracts you from what you ought to be doing, which is joining an environmental group and voting for politicians who support the environment and fighting against the lobbyists on Capitol Hill. I mean, you can go out and buy a car that gets 40 miles per gallon, but it's not going to change the planet. What's going to change the planet is if we have somebody standing up to the auto-industry lobbyists on Capitol Hill to pass standards that require that every car in this country gets 40 mpg.

But consumers buying Priuses is not going to change the globe nearly as much as a law that says you cannot market a car in this country unless it gets 40 mpg. And that's going to happen on Capitol Hill.

Above all, government has a role, which is to say: There's a limited amount of fish out there. It's a shared resource and we're not going to let corporations exploit it in a way that's going to destroy it. We're going to use science and our regulatory authority to make sure that there is sustainable yield.

But government has to say to the automobile industry: Of course they want it, but you've got to make 40 mpg. And if we had that law, within a year, Detroit would be producing SUVs that have the same performance and the same comfort and safety as the ones they're making today.

If your choice is to buy a Prius or go work for a politician who is going to implement the CAFE standards, you better work for the politician. The most important thing you can do is participate in the political process. Support the environmental groups that wage legal action and lobby for these bills.

There you have it. The most important thing is a big government response. No it isn't sufficient to have a tax on SUVs if they are imposing an externality on those without SUVs, we need to have a nationwide standard that forces everybody into the same outcome. It doesn't matter if you literally need an SUV for some completely valid reason...you will drive a 40 MPG vehicle or...who knows, Kennedy might want to make SUV driving a capital offense.

Further, it is not clear that the best way for firms to internalize costs is to force them to meet a uniform standard. There are alternatives to simply enacting a regulatory standard. For example, when the polluting activity is highly inelastic it might be a good idea to resurt to a standard, but when elastic a per unit tax. Even this kind of subtlety seems completely lost on the addle-brained Kennedy. He sees regulation as a hammer and all environmental problems as nails.

It is too bad that a boob like Kennedy is getting so much press. I was watching him on CNN and it was almost painful to watch. He was actually comparing running power plants that burn coal to bank robbery. To him the former were as bad as the latter. The fact that power plants, even if they are polluting and in violation of government standards, produce something useful was completely lost on the lunkhead. Bank robbery as far as I know has nothing at all about that is socially beneficial. For many being able to have electricity is a "good thing". Sure it would be better to have that electricity without the pollution, but the pollution does not negate the social benefits of electricity. And needless to say the simpleton interviewing him let it slide right on by her as if it made perfect sense.

So if you are going to buy a book about common resource problems buy Governing the Commons. It is written by people who actually know things about common resource problems as opposed to an elitist know-nothing.

Lately with the high gasoline prices the local radio talk show pundits have been going on about how much we need to be drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). They say this as, if it would somehow magically lower oil prices. While it might have some effect, this notion points to a lack of economic understanding on the part of these pundits.

Let us suppose that drilling in ANWR is allowed. Why would we expect a big drop in oil prices here in the U.S.? Suppose this were true, that the oil companies can sell the oil in the U.S. at a price of say $25/barrel or they can sell on the world market at a price of say, $43/barrel. Which would these oil companies rather do? Sell on the world market.

Thus, the U.S. would still have to pay the current high price. Now of course, the increase in supply, ceteris paribus, would mean a decrease in the price, but how much? Five dollars? That would seem rather large to me and that still wouldn't make a big dent in the price. Considering that the Saudi's have much more oil and are already increasing production and the price is still staying high it seems the idea of drilling in ANWR wont do much.

Also, we have to factor in the time component as well. How long will it take for anything in ANWR to come on-line? One year...two? So the effect over the next few months would likely be minimal at best.