RUNNING A STATE THE RIGHT WAY

Glenn Reynolds (of Instapundit) talks to Gov. Rick Perry of Texas. It's long, but worthwhile.

DO AS I SAY, NOT AS I DO

It’s much easier to raise taxes if you don’t pay them.

Taxes are for little people.

A RATIONALE FOR SMALL GOVERNMENT

Mark Steyn: [B]ig government more or less guarantees rule by creeps and misfits. It's just a question of how well they disguise it.

Government of the weird, by the weird, for the weird ...

TAKE THAT BOTTOM RUNG OFF THE LADDER

Welcome to the latest chapter of America's minimum-wage folly.

Those who press for a higher minimum wage often claim that making entry-level jobs more expensive won't reduce the number of entry-level jobs. Were the government to compel a 41 percent increase in the price of gasoline or movie tickets or steel, every rational observer would expect a drop in the demand for gasoline, movie tickets, or steel. Yet when it comes to the minimum wage, politicians and journalists somehow persuade themselves that making workers more expensive won't reduce the demand for workers.

The laws of supply and demand are not optional. Try as it might, Congress simply can't repeal them.

Minimum-wage laws don't make low- and unskilled Americans more productive, more experienced, or more desirable. They merely make them more expensive.

THE FINAL WORD ON "GATES-GATE"

Sometimes it isn't racism.

A black president, a black governor and a black mayor all agree with a black Harvard professor that he was racially profiled by a white-Latino-black police team headed by a cop who teaches courses in how to avoid racial profiling.

In the 1960s, the great English satirist Peter Simple invented the Prejudometer, which simply by being pointed at any individual could calculate degrees of racism to the nearest prejudon, "the internationally recognized scientific unit of racial prejudice."

Mr. Gates seems to go around with his Prejudometer permanently cranked up to 11.

It's arrogance - and stupidity.

THE WEST’S PROBLEM

Why poor countries won’t commit to binding emissions cuts.

[T]here is a perfectly good reason developing countries are unwilling to act on climate change: What they are being asked to do is more awful than climate change’s implications–even if one accepts all the alarmist predictions.

Rather than engage with the issues, eco-pundits are grasping for all kinds of fanciful pseudo-scientific theories to explain why the idea of binding emissions cuts are leaving the rest of the world cold. But this psychologizing only exposes the inability of climate activists to take seriously the rational case for inaction.

[T]he choice for developing countries is between mass death due to the consequences of an overheated planet sometime in the distant future, and mass suicide due to imposed instant starvation right now. Is it any surprise that they are reluctant to jump on the global-warming bandwagon?

If and when climate change promises to claim more casualties than poverty and starvation, the world will begin heeding the eco-warrior calls. Until then, global warming is eco-warrior hot air.

Via Instapundit.

DISPARATE IMPACT

Thomas Sowell on "disparate impact":

Much of the backlog of cases in our over-burdened courts has been created by the courts themselves, with adventurous judicial "interpretations" of laws that leave a large gray area of uncertainty around even the most plainly written legislation.

Nowhere is this more true than in civil rights cases.

At the heart of much of this legal complexity and moral angst is a judge-made theory that a "disparate impact" of any job requirement on different groups is evidence of discrimination.

That is why courts split along ideological fault lines in cases like the New Haven firefighters' case, where the crucial facts are not even in dispute. The only real dispute is over whether a test is automatically biased if different groups pass it at different rates. Apparently the groups themselves cannot possibly be different, according to "disparate impact" theory. Sowell again:

It is not that judges are incapable of seeing through the intellectual flaw in the "disparate impact" dogma. But that dogma is too central to efforts at social engineering to be given up for the sake of mere logic or facts.

Life isn't fair. Deal with it.

THE “GATES-GATE” AFFAIR

After a week of reporting and commenting (here and here), it seems to me that this is just another case of the liberal “elite” insisting that the rules don’t apply to themselves, and that anyone daring to think otherwise is de facto racist, homophobe, redneck, christianist, (insert your own term of approbation).

Note the posturing from Lawrence Bobo (W.E.B. Du Bois Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard University) and close friend of Henry Louis “Skip” Gates:

Skip is one of the most readily recognized black men in America .....

Well, um, let’s see. By Lawrence Bobo, perhaps ... but for me, the following come to mind more easily: Barack Obama (President), Colin Powell (retired Army general), Walter Williams (economist & columnist), Thomas Sowell (economist & columnist), Jesse Jackson (civil rights advocate), Al Sharpton (civil rights advocate), Roland Burris (Illinois senator), Juan Williams (NPR correspondent and Fox commentator), J. C. Watts (former congressman from Oklahoma), Andrew Young (former UN ambassador), Douglas Wilder (former Virginia governor), Michael Steele (RNC national chairman), Clarence Thomas (Supreme Court justice), Armstrong Williams (political commentator), Deval Patrick (governor of Massachusetts), Charles Rangel (New York congressman) ... and I’ve avoided sports, entertainment, and women.

Even before the charge were (sic) dropped Tuesday .... I knew in my bones that this situation was about the level of deference from a black male that a white cop expects. I say this even though I did not see the events themselves unfold.

In other words, “I don’t need no stinking facts.” ‘Nuff said.

It’s past time for former New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s “benign neglect”.

WEST VIRGINIA REVISITED

We took another overnight trip to West Virginia, intending to make Charleston and look around southand west. Never made it; there's just too much to see in an overnight trip. The first photo was taken just after entering WV along Interstate 64 near Lewisburg.



The next two pictures were taken at Sandstone Falls in the New River Gorge National River near Beckley. We spent several hours driving up and down the New river marveling at the sights. Sandstone falls is just one of many along the river.





This picture was taken at a dam along the Kanawha River near the campus of West Virginia University Institute of Technology. The power plant is a small, old - and still functioning - hydroelectric plant.

I didn't take pictures of the campus, which is unique to all the colleges I've ever visited. It's essentially a strip mall, with one side fronting the tracks for the coal trains that regularly pass by, and the other side backed against the mountains. In the middle sits a small community college dedicated to technology education.



This waterfall was along the Gauley River at a switchback in the road we were traveling.



West Virginia is a beautiful state, one of the prettiest I've ever visited in terms of density of scenic beauty per mile traveled. Nevertheless, it is a very poor state, as is seen in these photos. These are not campgrounds; they are peoples' homes, a mix of trailers and ramshackle cabins. The first is an area called "Boohoo Bottom" by the residents, which at least shows some sense of humor ....



"Memory Lane" - several trailers, and just down the road, a rather nice house that looked more like a medieval castle than a home.



The combination of beauty and poverty reminded me of an article I read several weeks ago. Christina Davidson of Atlantic Monthly visited Pocahontas County for a “Recession Road Trip,” and wrote, “Taking Comfort in Small Joys.”

We don't have foreclosure here because most people own their homes and have always owned their homes. Most people have jobs, and if they lose one, it probably didn't pay much anyway. We don't have much bankruptcy because most people know their limits. We don't have the expenses of people in the cities. I always sewed and made all my kids' clothes--I have five. I always cut their hair myself. We never bought what we didn't need. That's just how we live.

Don Surber was not amused.

This romantic nonsense about becoming more like West Virginia is dangerous to America.

“Valuable recession lessons can be gleaned from the West Virginia experience: Never buy what you don’t need,” wrote Davidson.

Nice.

Romantic.

Nuts.

If poverty is so good, then why do we have anti-poverty programs? Using her logic, we should have pro-poverty programs.

Although I'm sympathetic toward the Atlantic Monthly article - we could certainly learn about life and living from West Virginia - Surber is more nearly correct.

Far from being a pleasant experience, poverty leads to depression, anxiety and misery.

Which leads to my final photo - medical care in an impoverished state.

FROM THE EMAIL

Here’s a (forwarded) email I received recently. Supposedly it recounts the experience of a senior level Chrysler employee.

Monday morning I attended a breakfast meeting where the speaker/guest was David E. Cole, Chairman of the Center for Automotive Research (CAR), an Engineer with 40+ years automotive experience, full Professor at the Univ. of Michigan.

You have all likely heard CAR quoted, or referred to in the auto industry news lately. Mr. Cole told many stories of the difficulty of working with the folks that the Obama administration has sent to save the auto industry.

There have been many meetings where this very experienced automotive expert has had to listen to a newcomer to the industry; someone with zero manufacturing experience, zero auto industry experience, zero business experience, zero finance experience, zero engineering experience, and apparently zero brains tell them how to run their business.

Mr. Cole's favorite story is as follows: There was a team of Obama people speaking to Mr. Cole. They were explaining to Mr. Cole that the auto companies needed to make a car that was electric and liquid natural gas (LNG) with enough combined fuel to go 500 miles, so we wouldn't "need" so many gas stations (A whole other topic). They were quoting BTU's of LNG and battery life they had looked up on some website.

Mr. Cole explained that to do this you would need a trunk FULL of batteries, and a LNG tank as big as a car to make that happen. And that there were problems related to the laws of physics that prevented them from...

The Obama person interrupted and said (quoting): "These laws of physics? Whose rules are those? We need to change that (while others wrote down the name of the law so they could look it up). We have the Congress, and the administration. We can repeal that law, amend it, or use an executive order to get rid of that problem. That's why we are here, to fix these sort of issues."

The contents of the email are almost certainly fabricated (I didn’t check Snopes) but given the Obama administration’s demonstrated competence, it wouldn’t surprise me if it were true.

FUN WITH NUMBERS

In a post on basic math skills and the ability to understand current events, Tom Blumer is convinced many of today's high school — and college — graduates don't have them. Here is an example from recent news:

Problem: President Obama claims that his health care plan will cost $1 trillion over 10 years while reducing the number of Americans without health insurance from 46 million to 30 million. If all of this comes to pass, how much will taxpayers shell out for the average newly insured person per year, even if the expected drop in the number of uninsured occurs immediately?

Answer: $6,250 ($1 trillion ÷ 10 ÷ the 16 million alleged reduction in the uninsured).

Blumer asks some interesting questions based on the numbers:

[H]ealth insurance costs are high, but any pre-Medicare single person without major health issues should be able to get gold-plated coverage for far less than $6,250. The result also implies that the government will be shelling out an absurd $25,000 for a family of four. Where is all that money going to go? And how in the world can the Obama plan claim to be reducing costs?

This is one example of four; taken together, they are an indictment of ... something. The Obama administration? Literacy? Math skills? Critical thinking? Journalism? Common sense? All of the above?

Read Blumer’s post (and the following comments) and decide for yourself.

BADLY WOUNDED

About two weeks ago, on July 9, I posted the Obama Approval Index showing President Obama's approval ratings since his inauguration. Here's today's index from Rasmussen Reports.



On July 9, Obama's approval index had just gone negative; today it crossed the double-digit mark. Moreover, his popularity with likely voters has gone below 50%. (49% approve; 51% disapprove).



The shift toward disapproval appears to continue with those voters strongly approving President Obama's performance becoming less approving; those who are somewhat approving becoming somewhat disapproving; and so on.

The middle, those likely voters not holding a strong opinion, remains about a third of the survey population, but is showing evidence of a slight decline as attitudes harden. Since the inauguration, strong approvals have declined from 44% to 29%, a 15 point drop, while strong disapprovals have risen from 16% to 40%, a 24 point gain.

The Obama administration is in trouble.

DUH!

As a decision-making aid, PowerPoint is a poor tool.

And the sun rises in the east ....

FIX MEDICARE FIRST

"Since 1970, spending on Medicare and Medicaid has risen eightfold versus defense spending and has tripled versus federal spending as a whole. It’s clear what’s driving the deficit bus."

"President Barack Obama's Council of Economic Advisers issued a report earlier this month estimating that as much as 30 percent of Medicare spending is unnecessary for improving health outcomes. Given such opportunities for easy savings within government, and Medicare's weighty influence in the broader system (many private insurers set payments by adding a percentage to Medicare's rates), it would make sense to reform Medicare first, see what works and what doesn't, and then apply the lessons of that process later to any system-wide fix."

Unfortunately, my mother and I become the “experimentees.” Given my current experience with Medicare, that’s not an experience to which I look forward. Especially in a political environment unwilling to consider options beyond a "one-size-fits-all" single-payer system.

ON DIVERSITY

In an editorial (Firefighters and Race), the New York Times argued that the Supreme Court decision in favor of the New Haven firemen has "dealt a blow to diversity in the American workplace." But the Times purity on diversity is in question.

It seems the "American workplace" (to use the Times description) that is the New Haven fire department has a higher percentage of minorities than the American workplace that is ... yes indeed ... the New York Times editorial board its very self. To be quite specific:

• The New Haven fire department, according to press accounts, is 43% black and Latino. Or, if you prefer the term of art, 43% of the fire department is "minority."

• The New York Times editorial board, according to the information provided by The New York Times, is -- wait for it -- 12% black and Latino. Or, again, 12 % "minority" if you prefer the term.

• The New York Times Op-Ed page team of columnists, an elite group of which Ms. Dowd is a star, is 19% black and, again according to the Times listing of its Op-Ed page columnists, 0% Latino.

That's right. At the core of the beating intellectual heart of the left-wing establishment where such things are studied with the detail of Talmudic scholars, the New Haven fire department is doing more than three times better on race than the very liberal elites who have set themselves up as its sniffy critics.

If you like verbal evisceration, read the whole thing.

Maureen Dowd is a bonus.

WHY GREEN ENERGY FLOPS

In the comments to an earlier post, William asks "Is there a way to encourage consumption of green energy without subsidies?" To which I will add "or carbon taxes?"

It's an excellent question, and one worth an extended response. Here goes.

First, let's toss out the term "green energy." It's an emotionally laden, nonsensical, worthless piece of political correctness. Generally speaking, "green" is used for "renewable energy" sources (wind, solar, tides) and the term itself is emotionally loaded. Look, coal and oil are also renewable - go to any landfill and smell the methane emitted by rotting waste. It's just that the renewal time is, shall we say, a bit too long.

Now on to alternative energy sources. Can we encourage the consumption of energy from alternative sources without taxes (e.g., cap & trade) or subsidies? The short answer is (a) no, and (b) it's foolish (read as stupid) to try. The reason is that tax or subsidy - either one - removes the incentive to further develop the technology.

Why would I, as a solar cell manufacturer, try to improve my product if I'm making a healthy (subsidized) profit and my competitors - coal and oil - are taxed (by cap & trade) away from competing with me?

No, the only possible outcome, in either event, is to further delay development - and that's the one thing we don't need.

Now, let's move on to the three other topics that really needs discussion if one is to fully understand the "green energy" dilemma: density, storage and distribution.

Density. Of the three major alternative energy sources - solar, wind, and tides, all are diffuse, meaning that the collector must be quite large for each unit of energy collected. Coal and oil are quite dense by comparison. Take solar power for an example - I don't consider it likely that west Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and Nevada will take kindly to being covered with solar collectors for the convenience of the other 43 connected states. Wind power? The same is true; wind turbines can't even be installed offshore in Massachusetts for fear of interrupting the view from Hyannisport. (I'll put a wind turbine in my back yard for personal use. Ed: Good luck at the zoning office.)

Storage. Coal, oil, and natural gas can easily be stored until needed. Solar, wind, and tides are intermittent, and storage isn't easy. Which is why the electric automobile is unlikely to ever be more than a niche machine. Battery technology today simply can't give a 300 mile range (20 mpg on a 15 gallon tank) and refueling takes a bit longer than 5 minutes at the pump. Scaling storage to megajoule and higher capacities is an engineering challenge, to say the least.

Distribution. Without a doubt, energy distribution is the most significant problem facing alternative energies. Any alternative, to be economical, will have to either have to have the source sited near the consumers (e.g., in or near the cities), or will have to take advantage of existing distribution systems; that is, transmission lines and oil/gas pipelines. Austin's GreenChoice program (referred to in the earlier post) is in trouble partly because of its distribution problems, and as I noted above, I don't think it too likely that west Texans are going to be very happy with high-voltage power lines running through their back yards to keep Austin liberals' air conditioners running on summer evenings.

All that said, none of the problems noted above are insoluble. They can - and will - be solved, just not easily or quickly, and subsidies/taxes won't speed the solution.

As a final point, let me say that in my view, there are two promising alternative energies.

The first is nuclear; put pebble-bed nuclear reactors in the center of every major city (What? Surely you're kidding. Ed: I'd suggest every college campus, starting with Harvard) and solve the electrical distribution problem. (But it's in my back yard! Ed: Yep; that's the point - if you want the energy, pay the price yourself.)

The second alternative is biomass for transportation fuel. The distribution system is already in place; as is flex-fuel technology for incorporation into new vehicles (and for that matter, retrofitting isn't hard). The only unsolved problem is that of avoiding use of existing farm land and food plants (like corn) for the biomass - and that's already being worked.

INTIMIDATION WORKS

Just ask Obama (GM and the auto industry, AIG and the financial sector, Fairness Doctrine and the media, California and the remaining 49 (56?) states).

The question is, will it work for cap-and-trade and healthcare?

TRANQUILITY BASE HERE

The Eagle has landed.


Tranquility Base shortly after the landing.

HERE MEN FROM THE PLANET EARTH
FIRST SET FOOT UPON THE MOON
JULY 1969 A.D.
WE CAME IN PEACE FOR ALL MANKIND

On July 20, 1969, my wife and I were newly married, living in Hawaii. We watched the landing in our darkened living room, sitting on the floor next to a tiny (5-1/2 inch screen), transistorized black-and-white television. To see the landing as we saw it, go here.

[Note: QuickTime required; link here.]

GREEN ENERGY FLOPS

From the Austin [TX] American-Statesman, "For the past decade, Austin's ambition to become the world's clean-energy capital has been best exemplified by one effort: GreenChoice, a program that sells electricity generated entirely from renewable sources such as wind.

Now the nationally renowned program is struggling to find buyers — the latest allotment is 99 percent unsold after seven months on the market — and Austin Energy is looking for ways to bring down the rising costs."

Instapundit comments: "See, environmentalism is mostly about posturing — it’s not actually about sacrificing."

How many members of the city council who voted for the GreenChoice program actually participate?

AFTERTHOUGHT:

I am astounded that liberals fail to understand that subsidizing green energy - wind and solar - is entirely self-defeating. While it's true that subsidies increase consumption, they do not - repeat, not - cut costs. Moreover, with a subsidy, there is absolutely no incentive for a manufacturer to reduce cost or improve efficiency in order to remain competitive.

All the city of Austin is achieving with its GreenChoice program is to delaying the time before solar and wind power become competitive.

CHANGE YOU CAN BELIEVE IN

Seen on US 15-501 near Durham, NC.