Les Jones

Gerald Ford

"Any government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take everything you have."
- Gerald Ford

Jane's Law

Jane's Law: The devotees of the party in power are smug and arrogant. The devotees of the party out of power are insane. - Megan McCardle

That seems to be the pattern. In the Clinton years we had militias, Timothy McVeigh, and theories about black helicopters. Now he have the Bushitler and Cheneyburton memes. More here.

The Shouting Points Memo

The shouting points memo: a guide to modern political discourse. Via Jeff Jarvis.

You are not just wrong, you and those like you are intellectually insufficient and morally suspect. Why do you hate our country? Think of the children. God said to tell you that he is not pleased.

Stop interrupting me while I'm shouting. Feel the crushing weight of my arguments, which are built on logic and constructed from facts that are sturdy and sound. You just whine about how you feel.

Your information is flawed because it came from a source I know to be aligned with the forces of darkness. I am able to parse the media and edit what I see for bias and spin, while you are a gullible sap who believes everything you see on the TV or read in that wholly discredited rag you just quoted.

You speak in cliches, slogans and sound bites. I speak in pithy phrases and time-tested words of wisdom. You call names, I tell it like it is. You are vulgar, I am colorful.

My candidate is a hero. Yours is a zero. One cannot compare the youthful hijinks of my guy with the youthful wantonness of yours. My guy makes mistakes, yours commits sins of the worst kind. And likes it. My guy was misquoted, or simply misspoke, while your guy was caught on tape saying exactly what I expected him to say.

Read the whole thing.

Virginia Postrel's Rule for Predicting Elections

Postrel's Rule: The party that hates America always loses.

Here's what I wrote after the 1998 midterm elections:

I told you so. The party that hates America will lose. The party that imagines no positive future, offers no "vision thing," will lose. The party that thinks it is better than the American people, that makes large segments of the voting public believe they are its enemy, that convinces people it wants the government to boss them around and destroy the things they love, will lose.

On November 3, that party was Republican. The GOP went down to humiliating defeat, losing close race after close race, plus many that weren't supposed to be close. The party lost its solid grip on the South and collapsed in California. It managed to lose seats in the House, an extraordinary result that even Democratic pundits failed to predict.

And it deserved to lose. Republicans sold out their economic base, invested all their hopes in scandals involving a president not on the ballot, and ran as the party of scolds, pork, and gloom. No wonder their voters stayed home.

Fast forward to the 2004 election:

Back during this summer's Democratic convention I blogged that "now it's the hard-core Democrats who think the country is going to hell--but at least they blame the administration, not the general public." Post-election, alas, they blame their fellow Americans. And when voters feel hated, they respond by voting in droves for the other guy. (Just ask Pete Wilson.)

First Man Knocked Out of the 2008 Election: Bill Frist

Jim Geraghty explains why even Republicans don't like Frist. Besides, even if he ran and won his party's nomination he'd lose the election because of William Burton's Rule for picking presidential winners: "See who looks most like a funeral director, and bet against him."

Heck, that picture to the right looks like a funeral director's convention.

The Essence of Politics

Via Kevin Baker.

Post-election, a Scene from "So Long and Thanks for All the Fish"

"On (the robot's) world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people.”

"Odd," said Arthur, "I thought you said it was a democracy."

"I did," said Ford, "It is."

"So," said Arthur, hoping he wasn't sounding ridiculously obtuse, "why don"t the people get rid of the lizards?"

"It honestly doesn't occur to them," said Ford. "They've all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they've voted in more or less approximates to the government they want."

"You mean they actually vote for the lizards?"

"Oh yes," said Ford with a shrug, "of course."

"But," said Arthur, going for the big one again, "why?"

"Because if they didn't vote for a lizard," said Ford, "the wrong lizard might get in."
 -- Douglas Adams

I Didn't Know That

Kevin Drum:

FILIBUSTERS....I wonder how many Americans understand that you can't pass legislation in America with 50% of the votes in Congress? How many of them understand that, outside of budget resolutions, you need 60 votes in the Senate? That a filibuster isn't a matter of Jimmy Stewart talking himself ragged for hours on end, but of merely declaring an intention to filibuster? And that this is done for all but the most routine matters? With the result that the 60-vote minimum is no longer reserved for occasional high-profile issues, but has been institutionalized for virtually all legislation of any consequence?

I figure maybe 2%. What's your guess?

The 10 Phases of a Political Scandal

Rex Hammock:

Over the years, I’ve watched these things, and I think I’ve broken the code on the news flow of political scandals. It doesn’t matter what the politician does — accept bribes, shoplifts or, well, just fill in the blank:

1. Politician _______s.
2. Rumors circulate that politician ________s.
3. Politician denies rumors.
5. Politician caught _____ing.
6. Politician says, “I did not _____, it was a misunderstanding.”
7. Politician blames media and bloggers.
8. Past partners, victims or witnesses show up to prove politician _______s all the time.
9. Politician admits he’s __________ed.
10. Politician apologizes to his family and to those who trusted him, blames it on alcohol and enters rehab.

"One death is a tragedy. A million deaths is a statistic"

I've heard that saying many times. It has the ring of truth to it - knowing intellectually tha Hitler killed millions of Jews doesn't have the same emotional impact as reading The Diary of Anne Frank. It turns out there's empirical proof of the aphorism.

In the 1960s, the economist Thomas Schelling performed research demonstrating that people are more likely to be moved by single victims than by statistics. In 2005, the psychologists Deborah A. Small, George Loewenstein, and Paul Slovic found the limits of human compassion to be even more irrational and constrained. In their study, students at a university in Pennsylvania were paid five dollars to complete questionnaires on technology. Enclosed with the questionnaire was a seemingly unrelated letter soliciting donations to a hunger relief organization in Africa.

The study's first conclusion was what the researchers had expected: people are more compassionate when they are told about a specific victim. When respondents were asked to donate money to help feed a seven-year-old African girl named Rokia, they contributed more than twice what they did when just confronted with general statistics on hunger.

But then things got surprising. When Rokia was presented with the statistics, the donations fell by nearly half. Worse still, when the authors asked one set of subjects to perform mathematical calculations and the other set of subjects to describe their feelings when they heard the word "baby," the subjects who'd done math gave only about half as much to Rokia as the ones who'd thought about babies. Apparently, just thinking analytically makes us stingier. The authors of the study concluded that "calculative thought lessens the appeal of an identifiable victim."

Frederic Bastiat

"Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
 -- Frederic Bastiat

Everything You Need to Know About Mass Transit

Matt Welch in the LA Times: Confessions of a Lapsed Transit Enthusiast:

In the beginning, I backed my words with shoe leather. Honest.

Despite all the well-researched data reasonable people keep churning out, I've long been an enthusiast for publicly financed transit, particularly the least-flexible, most-expensive variety: digging billion-dollar tunnels under a famously sprawling and NIMBY-tastic county. I know and respect most of the arguments, but I also love the ride and the galvanizing effect the Metro seems to have had on transforming neighborhoods, particularly my backyard of Hollywood along the Red Line. Besides, name a great city that doesn't have a subway.

[...]

Once I got the old T-bird running, I began to take the car in the morning whenever I needed to be somewhere not exactly on the Red Line after work — the movies, a friend's house, band practice.

This is where the rubber meets the road on all transit debates, and it's why there'll never be a lack of stories about how almost none of the region's public officials who have the most effect on transportation actually take the damned bus. People who can take their cars will take their cars, particularly if they're in a hurry or need to make multiple stops. As Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa explained his non-transit commuting to The Times in November 2006, "I'd like to do more, but my problem is I have to go all over the city. It's very tough because of my schedule." Sure. And it turns out many of us have hectic schedules as well.

At any given time, roughly 72% of the commentary about transit is based on the Invisible Rabbit of transit-oriented development and "sustainable growth": That what we really need to do is to "get people out of their cars." City observers — who I would bet out-drive the parents of public-school kids by a ratio of at least 2 to 1 — are perpetually surprised that their fellow car owners insist on using them, no matter how close they live to the spiffy new urban village. The following paragraph, from a June 30 Times story on the subject, needs to be seared on the forehead of every urban planner south of the Tehachapis:

But there is little research to back up the rosy predictions. Among the few academic studies of the subject, one that looked at buildings in the Los Angeles area showed that transit-based development successfully weaned relatively few residents from their cars. It also found that, over time, no more people in the buildings studied were taking transit 10 years after a project opened than when it was first built.

In the meantime, transit should be seen — and supported — for what is: A way for poorer people to get around until they become rich enough to buy a car.

Yep. Mass transit doesn't go everywhere you need to go when you want to go, it's slow, and you have to live your life on someone else's schedule. Once people can afford a car they buy a car so they can have more freedom.

I agree with Welch that cities should have public transit for the poor, disabled, and elderly, but it's fantasyland to think that most people in most cities will use them.

I've ridden subways or trains in New York, Chicago, Boston, Atlanta, D.C., New Orleans, and San Francisco. For those cities rail makes sense, which is why they already have it, but outside of the nation's 50 or so largest cities rail is generally uneconomical (emphasis mine):

There are just two problems with mass transit. Nobody uses it, and it costs like hell. Only 4% of Americans take public transportation to work. Even in cities they don't do it. Less than 25% of commuters in the New York metropolitan area use public transportation. Elsewhere it's far less--9.5% in San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose, 1.8% in Dallas-Fort Worth. As for total travel in urban parts of America--all the comings and goings for work, school, shopping, etc.--1.7 % of those trips are made on mass transit.

Then there is the cost, which is--obviously--$52 billion. Less obviously, there's all the money spent locally keeping local mass transit systems operating. The Heritage Foundation says, "There isn't a single light rail transit system in America in which fares paid by the passengers cover the cost of their own rides." Heritage cites the Minneapolis "Hiawatha" light rail line, soon to be completed with $107 million from the transportation bill. Heritage estimates that the total expense for each ride on the Hiawatha will be $19. Commuting to work will cost $8,550 a year. If the commuter is earning minimum wage, this leaves about $1,000 a year for food, shelter and clothing. Or, if the city picks up the tab, it could have leased a BMW X-5 SUV for the commuter at about the same price.

Compared to rail, buses are more economical, more flexible in terms of changing capacity and routes to respond to growth and population movement, and don't require expensive and disruptive construction projects..

"The Humanitarian with the Guillotine"

A 1943 essay by Isabel Paterson, via Smallest Minority:

When a humanitarian wishes to see to it that everyone has a quart of milk, it is evident that he hasn't got the milk, and cannot produce it himself, or why should he be merely wishing? Further, if he did have a sufficient quantity of milk to bestow a quart on everyone, as long as his proposed beneficiaries can and do produce milk for themselves, they would say no, thank you. Then how is the humanitarian to contrive that he shall have all the milk to distribute, and that everyone else shall be in want of milk?

There is only one way, and that is by the use of the political power in its fullest extension. Hence the humanitarian feels the utmost gratification when he visits or hears of a country in which everyone is restricted to ration cards. Where subsistence is doled out, the desideratum has been achieved, of general want and a superior power to "relieve" it. The humanitarian in theory is the terrorist in action.

When it was written the massacres in Germany and the USSR were well underway, and would later be expanded on in China, Cambodia, and elsewhere.

There's been a discussion over at Instapundit's about a subset of professional humanitarians who want to save the world (by their definition) and be well paid for it. Paterson has something interesting to say about that:

The great religions, which are also great intellectual systems, have always recognized the conditions of the natural order. They enjoin charity, benevolence, as a moral obligation, to be met out of the producer's surplus. That is, they make it secondary to production, for the inescapable reason that without production there could be nothing to give. Consequently they prescribe the most severe rule, to be embraced only voluntarily, for those who wish to devote their lives wholly to works of charity, from contributions. Always this is regarded as a special vocation, because it could not be a general way of life. Since the almoner must obtain the funds or goods he distributes from the producers, he has no authority to command; he must ask. When he subtracts his own livelihood from such alms, he must take no more than bare subsistence. In proof of his vocation, he must even forego the happiness of family life, if he were to receive the formal religious sanction. Never was he to derive comfort for himself from the misery of others.

The Bizarre Reaction to Private Fire Insurance in California

So some people in the recent California blazes had private fire protection to supplement the government fire protection. The homeowners did this at their own expense, and either they or the company they contracted with had their own stores of chemical fire retardant independent of public fire hydrants and fire trucks. No funds were extracted from the public coffers, and arguably this freed up firefighting resources to save other homes. Yet some people are vehemently opposed to the idea. Matt Welch surveys the negative reactions to this seemingly positive development:

You would think that the cheap availability of potent fire retardant, and the creation of supplementary firefighting capability — with costs borne entirely by the homeowners who choose to live in fire zones, instead of everyday taxpayers — would be a cause for at least mild enthusiasm. Instead, it was greeted with howls of class warfare.

Liberal journalist/historian Rick Perlstein called it "a sickening indication about how the conservative mania for privatization is beginning to create two Americas: One that is protected from fires, and one that is not." (Never mind that no one within shouting distance of power or influence is calling for the privatization of fire departments.) In an L.A. Times article filled with such loaded phrases as "mansions of the moneyed," lefty social critic Naomi Klein decried supplemental fire insurance as "disaster apartheid." (Never mind that apartheid was imposed by a federal government on unwilling victims based on race, whereas paid-for emergency assistance imposes nothing negative — and can even lead to positive outcomes, such as a saved house — on the comparative have-nots in this case, most of whom are affluent homeowners who can certainly afford $995 for a tub of Phos-Chek.)

Nation contributor Chris Hayes warned that the trend reflected a desire to go back to the dark days of the 19th century, when "most fire-fighting was done by private companies," even though no one had suggested such a thing. MSN moneyblogger Jon Markman referred to the emergency response units as (shudder) "independent fire militias." Local lefty blogger Bob Morris maintained that they were "just like Blackwater ... with their heavily armed guards in the aftermath of Katrina." (Blackwater was contracted by the Department of Homeland Security; AIG's fire teams were not.) A blogger at Byzantine Ruins made the bizarre claim that the supplemental Phos-Chek sprayers were "wast[ing] firefighting resources."

It seems like another symptom of what Isabel Paterson described, with a certain segment of so-called humanitarians who aren't happy unless all want is created by and satisfied by a centrally-controlled government, and anyone who can take care of themselves is considered a cheat or worse.

Harvard Study Finds Liberal Media Bias

Investor's Business Daily - Even Harvard Finds The Media Biased:

Just like so many reports before it, a joint survey by the Project for Excellence in Journalism and Harvard's Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy — hardly a bastion of conservative orthodoxy — found that in covering the current presidential race, the media are sympathetic to Democrats and hostile to Republicans.

Democrats are not only favored in the tone of the coverage. They get more coverage period. This is particularly evident on morning news shows, which "produced almost twice as many stories (51% to 27%) focused on Democratic candidates than on Republicans."

The most flagrant bias, however, was found in newspapers. In reviewing front-page coverage in 11 newspapers, the study found the tone positive in nearly six times as many stories about Democrats as it was negative.

U.S. Presidents Have Nothing to do with Constitutional Amendments

Ace has a good point:

[D]o these people realize the president has no role in the amendment process? He does not need to sign a proposed amendment, nor can he veto it; it's entirely up to Congress and then (after securing 2/3rds support) the state legislatures (3/4ths of them)?

Damned good point, especially after the way Bush 41 made noise about a flag-burning amendment and Bush 43 made noise about a gay marriage amendment.

Here's Article V of the Constitution, which provides for amendments:

The Congress, whenever two thirds of both houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose amendments to this Constitution, or, on the application of the legislatures of two thirds of the several states, shall call a convention for proposing amendments, which, in either case, shall be valid to all intents and purposes, as part of this Constitution, when ratified by the legislatures of three fourths of the several states, or by conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other mode of ratification may be proposed by the Congress; provided that no amendment which may be made prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any manner affect the first and fourth clauses in the ninth section of the first article; and that no state, without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate.

The president isn't even mentioned.

Voltaire

"Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities."
-- Voltaire

C.S. Lewis

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
  - C.S. Lewis

Trust Cues, or, We're All Big F***ing Whores Now

Mark Steyn:

Randi Rhodes agrees with Hillary Clinton and Geraldine Ferraro on everything - abortion, health care, climate change, you name it. Yet the first is "a f***ing whore" and the second is "David Duke in drag" merely because they disagree on which Democratic senator would make the best president. The people applying these deranged epithets to the Clintons are in large part the very same people who spent the Nineties applying equally deranged epithets to anyone who disagreed with the Clintons.

There's something rather heartening about this for those of us on the right who've been on the receiving end of the left's vehemence: Apparently there really is nothing personal about it. You can be a chickenhawk warmonger racist homophobe mysogynist Bush shill or a pro-feminist pro-gay pro-black icon of progressive politics for a generation, but, if you cross the likes of Randi Rhodes, you're all the same and you merit the same four-letter words and KKK slurs. The left's Discoursometer is like one of those shower units where the slightest nudge turns it to scalding.

The best way to understand some people's politics is to realize that their politics are more like gang signs than position statements arrived at by careful consideration of the facts. And like the man said, it's hard to reason someone out of a belief they didn't reason themselves into.

Arnold Kling treated the subject well in his piece on trust cues:

This raises the possibility that political beliefs serve primarily as trust cues. For example, those who favor an increase in the minimum wage are sending trust cues to people on the Left, and those who oppose an increase in the minimum wage are sending trust cues to people on the Right.

The actual consequences of raising the minimum wage are rarely discussed. In other words, political debates often ignore what I call Type C arguments (from empiricism) and turn instead to type M arguments, which accuse one's opponent of belonging to an outcast group. The reason for this is that people are not trying to persuade each other rationally. Instead, they are using trust cues to indicate that failure to agree implies excommunication from the group.

And this, on actual science vs. trust cues:

What is odd is that an association of academics should find it productive to take an "official position" on anything. I do not need an "official position" of physicists to convince me of the law of gravity. I do not believe in the laws of supply and demand because they are the "official position" of the American Economic Association (to my knowledge, the AEA has never stated an official position in favor of them). A book or article that reports observations and analysis is a scientific statement. An "official position" is a trust cue.

Gene Rayburn Channels Ronald Reagan