The Glass Closet: Supreme Court Nominee Edition

The opacity of Elena Kagan's sexuality is becoming a hotter topic than the inscrutability of her legal point of view. I admit, when I first saw a picture of her, I thought it: obviously a lesbian. Since my gaydar, however impressive, is hardly scientific, we only have Kagan's word to go by. Which means we know nothing.

Does it matter if she is? As a credential for the job, obviously no. Only her ideas matter in that regard. But Andrew Sullivan (someone whom I rarely agree with) makes a good point:

[Kagan's sexuality] is no more of an empirical question than whether she is Jewish. We know she is Jewish, and it is a fact simply and rightly put in the public square. If she were to hide her Jewishness, it would seem rightly odd, bizarre, anachronistic, even arguably self-critical or self-loathing. And yet we have been told by many that she is gay ... and no one will ask directly if this is true and no one in the administration will tell us definitively.

Kagan's sexuality, whatever it may be, is hers to reveal. She's is under no obligation to out herself. Likewise, the press has every right to investigate the matter, however unseemly that investigation will surely be. This apparent contradiction reveals the untenability of hiding who you are. It's nobody's business, but why keep it a secret? It's easy to invoke privacy -- why should it matter?! -- but the invocation itself implies shame.

And that is the real shame.

Saved by the Market

Writing to the Washington Post, Don Boudreaux explains why Chile's death toll was a fraction of Haiti's:

You report that experts give much of the credit for the relatively low death toll of Chile’s recent earthquake to “the nation’s enactment and enforcement of stringent building codes” – codes that were largely absent in Haiti (“Chile reels in aftermath of quake, emergency workers provide aid,” March 1).

With a market-oriented economy, per-capita income in Chile is more than ten times higher than is per-capita income in Haiti. One result is that Chileans demand and can afford better-constructed buildings – buildings designed by more-skilled architects, made of stronger materials, and erected (and maintained) by better-trained and more highly specialized workers.

Chile has – and enforces – tough building codes because it can afford them. Building codes of equal stringency in Haiti would be dead letters because Haitians simply cannot afford the level of safety that Chileans now enjoy.

Credit Chile’s low death toll not to what its politicians do, but rather to what they don’t do: meddle excessively in the market.

Tragedy In the Atlantic

Spiegel Online recounts the harrowing final four minutes of Air France Flight 477, from Rio to Paris, which bellyflopped into the Atlantic last June:

Flying through thunderclouds over the Atlantic, more and more ice was hurled at the aircraft. In the process, it knocked out other, far more important, sensors: the pencil-shaped airspeed gauges known as pitot tubes.

One alarm after another lit up the cockpit monitors. One after another, the autopilot, the automatic engine control system, and the flight computers shut themselves off. "It was like the plane was having a stroke," says Gérard Arnoux, the head of the French pilots union SPAF.

The final minutes of flight AF 447 had begun. Four minutes after the airspeed indicator failed, the plane plunged into the ocean, killing all 228 people on board.

The article underscores how catastrophe, however unlikely, can result from the failure of a single instrument, in this case the craft's pitot tubes. I've become a skittish flier in recent years, largely due to a stomach-churning flight I took from New York to DC a couple of years ago. The article hardly calms my nerves, but it's a darkly fascinating read nonetheless.

Ayn, Everywhere

Just in case you missed it, Ayn Rand is everywhere.

(HT Tyler Cowan)

A Shift in Opinion?

Bad news for the Dems. From USA Today:

In a survey of 1,000 adults taken Tuesday, 34% say demonstrations at the hometown sessions have made them more sympathetic to the protesters' views; 21% say they are less sympathetic.

Independents by 2-to-1, 35%-16%, say they are more sympathetic to the protesters now.

The findings are unwelcome news for President Obama and Democratic congressional leaders, who have scrambled to respond to the protests and in some cases even to be heard. From Pennsylvania to Texas, those who oppose plans to overhaul the health care system have asked aggressive questions and staged noisy demonstrations.

Just for the Sake of Accuracy

While I disagree with the content of Obama's speech, I'm not a complete curmudgeon. It's great to see people reacting with such giddy optimism. Whether it's blind optimism or not has yet to be seen. Still, the joy that is being expressed is a fundamentally American reaction, that things can and will get better.

So -- for all of you out there celebrating, far be it for me to begrudge you your moment. I'm happy that you are happy. Here's hoping there is something to be happy about.

"A New Era of Responsibility"

President Obama has just finished his Inaugural Address. My snap judgment: if the content of the speech was not just grandiose pablum, it seems he is modeling his presidency after FDR's. When you cut through the fluff, there are some frightening passages in there:

Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age.

Read: free-markets have failed. What is this new age he is referring to? Your guess is as good as mine, but we can be sure that it doesn't involve more freedom.

These are the indicators of crisis, subject to data and statistics. Less measurable but no less profound is a sapping of confidence across our land — a nagging fear that America's decline is inevitable, and that the next generation must lower its sights.

True, but the wellspring of this collective neurosis has mainly been left-of-center media outlets like the New York Times.

For everywhere we look, there is work to be done. The state of the economy calls for action, bold and swift, and we will act — not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth.

Read: interventionism. Hardly a "bold" and "new foundation," interventionism is the stale status quo that, except for a brief period of time in England and America, has dominated human history.

Now, there are some who question the scale of our ambitions — who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans. Their memories are short. For they have forgotten what this country has already done; what free men and women can achieve when imagination is joined to common purpose, and necessity to courage.

I guess this is addressed to persons like me. The problem is not "too many big plans," but economic planning, as such. I'm not sure what he is referring to with the "short memories" remark, probably the New Deal. (Which, by the way, most economists think prolonged the Great Depression.)

What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them — that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply.

Obama smears those who disagree with him by calling them "cynics." He says, "the political arguments of the past no longer apply." Because the debate is over? Because Obama has been proved right?

The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works — whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified.

So much for the end of "the era of big government." As if it ever ended.

Nor is the question before us whether the market is a force for good or ill. Its power to generate wealth and expand freedom is unmatched, but this crisis has reminded us that without a watchful eye, the market can spin out of control — and that a nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous. The success of our economy has always depended not just on the size of our gross domestic product, but on the reach of our prosperity; on our ability to extend opportunity to every willing heart — not out of charity, but because it is the surest route to our common good.

There's all you need to know about Obama's economics: regulation, intervention, spending, redistribution. The only way you can achieve these goals is through taxation or by firing up the printing presses. Obama's invoking of the "common good" is telling: as a student of history, he knows that the "common good" has been used as the justification for the greatest evils.

What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility — a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task.

Here's the payoff: sacrifice and duty, the ethics of altruism and deontolgy. Obama is getting us ready for the pain.

This is the meaning of our liberty and our creed — why men and women and children of every race and every faith can join in celebration across this magnificent mall, and why a man whose father less than sixty years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath.

Obama turns it around here, and claims that sacrifice and liberty are corollaries. They are not. It is unfortunate that he included that line in an otherwise poignant moment in his speech.

Rhetorically, the address was a patchwork that nodded to Bartlett's: Washington's Farewell, Lincoln's Second, Roosevelt's First, and King's "I Have a Dream" ("let it be said by our children's children"). As such, it lacked an identity of its own. It was self-conscious and disjointed.

It wasn't all bad, though. As I mentioned above, the speech was poignant when it acknowledged the history of the moment. Also of note, Obama mentioned that we are a nation of "Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus — and non-believers." [Italics mine.] Talk about a historic moment. His tribute to "the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things" seemed perfunctory, but it was still nice to hear. As was this hawkish passage:

We will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense, and for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you.

The fawning media have been expecting a "masterpiece" from Obama. I suspect their reactions won't deviate too far from their expectations. For those of us who still love liberty, we have to wait and see if Obama's words were those of empty grandeur, or of warning.

Nationalization: Before and After

Two articles from the New York Times this week provided an eloquent before and after look at nationalization. First, an article on the possible nationalization of many large US banks:

Last fall, as Federal Reserve and Treasury Department officials rode to the rescue of one financial institution after another, they took great pains to avoid doing anything that smacked of nationalizing banks.

They may no longer have that luxury. With two of the nation’s largest banks buckling under yet another round of huge losses, the incoming administration of Barack Obama and the Federal Reserve are suddenly dealing with banks that are “too big to fail” and yet unable to function as the sinking economy erodes their capital.

What sort of results can we expect when the government nationalizes an industry? Remarkably, the NYT reported on that this week, too:

President Hugo Chávez, buffeted by falling oil prices that threaten to damage his efforts to establish a Socialist-inspired state, is quietly courting Western oil companies once again.

Until recently, Mr. Chávez had pushed foreign oil companies here into a corner by nationalizing their oil fields, raiding their offices with tax authorities and imposing a series of royalties increases.

But faced with the plunge in prices and a decline in domestic production, senior officials have begun soliciting bids from some of the largest Western oil companies in recent weeks — including Chevron, Royal Dutch/Shell and Total of France — promising them access to some of the world’s largest petroleum reserves, according to energy executives and industry consultants here.

Venezuela may have little choice but to form new ventures with foreign oil companies. Nationalizations in other sectors, like agriculture and steel manufacturing, are fueling capital flight, leaving Venezuela reliant on oil for about 93 percent of its export revenue in 2008, up from 69 percent in 1998 when Mr. Chávez was first elected.

UPDATE: David Rothkopf shares the schadenfreude:

Meanwhile, in other Latin American news: Venezuela's Hugo Chavez seems to have lost a little of his bravura recently with reports in the papers today that as his reserves of fuck you money dwindle due to declining oil prices, he is offering the oil companies he once screwed the chance to come back to Venezuela. Bienvenido a Caracas, mis amigos, all is forgiven...er, please forgive me. Now if only we could harness the power of those oil companies to really deliver a lesson. Imagine for a moment a different world, in which big multinationals committed to a program of not investing in countries that were not dependable democracies or showed disregard for the rule of law. Think of the countries that would be squeezed, forced to change. Now that would really be the power to change the world. Meantime watch: slowly but surely Chavez's chutzpah-laden outreach will bear fruit...as long as there is a safe profit to be made...and he will more than likely be propped up by some of the same people he once abused.

[HT: Andrew Sullivan]

From "Butterstick" to Lard Ass

The Washington Post reports on the National Zoo's shortage of bamboo:

The zoo this morning is issuing a public appeal for bamboo to feed its famous giant pandas. For a combination of reasons, the zoo's supply of the crunchy green stalks are critically low, and zoo officials said they might not have enough to last the winter.

One problem is that the zoo now has three more or less adult-sized giant pandas -- the main consumers of its bamboo. At 160 pounds, 3-year-old Tai Shan is no longer a cub, and his parents, 275-pound Tian Tian and 250-pound Mei Xiang, are ravenous grown-ups. They scarf up bamboo 12 to 14 hours a day, consuming some 1,400 pounds of the stuff a week.

Passing the Onus

In an article about a controversial London ad campaign (see right), Christian activist Stephen Green is quoted as saying the following:

"I believe the ad breaks the Advertising Code, unless the advertisers hold evidence that God probably does not exist."

Mr Green has challenged the adverts on grounds of "truthfulness" and "substantiation", suggesting that there is not "a shred of supporting evidence" that there is probably no God.

Perhaps Green could explain how one can show evidence of a nonexistent. Still, I'm sure that if the question were turned around on him (as the onus for the existence of a God is on he who is claiming the hypothesis to be factual), he would have a "shred of evidence."

HT: Matt Briner.

Oil Meets Water: Obama at GMU

Obama outlined his economic plan at my alma mater yesterday. That our incoming president presented his statist economic "remedies" at the current bastion of free market economic thought is more than ironic. Here is Pete Boetke, a former professor of mine, on the speech:

The speech was important for Obama because he is setting expectations. Don't blame his administration for the economic situation and don't even blame his administration for the economic situation 3 years from now because the situation is that dire caused by the "do nothingism" philosophy of old ideas on the economy and government. Government must be an active player in the economy, and seen as the corrective to our social ills. We have sunk into such a deep hole, in fact, that ONLY government can get us out. If our economic situation is anything other than grave in the coming years, it will be because of the bold and pro-active steps his administration will have taken. All praise go to the articulate and intelligent leader. Who, let me remind you, is pragmatic and open to discussion, but you better get onboard quickly with these policy initiatives or we are going to be in a living hell.

I really don't see how as an economist in the tradition of Adam Smith, JB Say, L. Mises, F.A. Hayek, Milton Friedman, and James Buchanan can see ANYTHING positive in Obama's speech. That it was delivered at GMU is as ironic as it is disturbing.

Here's Russ Roberts, another professor of GMU Econ:

As I type these words, President-elect Obama is here on the Fairfax campus of George Mason University giving a major economics address. Read Eric Sweeney writes:

That whirring sound you hear is George Mason spinning in his grave as Obama speaks at GMU!

I'd be curious to know why he's speaking here. The speech is invitation only. I was told it will be attended by "dignitaries--governors and mayors, politicians." Maybe they should call them undignataries. Having coffee this morning in the student center, Michael Bloomberg, mayor of New York, was one table over. He did not have his hand out but I'm sure he's been practicing, getting ready for the Obama administration. I resisted the urge to ask him about this disgraceful behavior.

Professor Alex Tabbarok isn't so concerned:

Overall, my view is that the Obama fiscal stimulus plan is evolving in a sensible direction. As promised, he is a pragmatist who is listening to a wide variety of well-qualified, centrist economists.

Do note that I am evaluating Obama relative to what we can expect given the situation and our current politics and also relative to say the New Deal.

Damn Yankees

The Washington Post (not the Onion, mind you) is reporting on the hard feelings being felt by some Virginians about bridge closings on Inauguration Day. Some of these people believe the reason why the Secret Service is only closing Virginia bridges (and not Maryland routes) is because of some residual ill will from...the Civil War:

"I think that shutting Virginia off from the party is all just an old Civil War snub," Rocky Semmes wrote on a community e-mail list. "The Yankees are no quicker to forget the past than are any of the dyed-in-the-wool Rebels."

Officials said the decision had nothing to do with the Virginia's Confederate past. It didn't even have anything to do with the cultural tension between the perceived conservative Old Dominion and the lefty Free State. In fact, the idea for shutting down the bridges to personal cars came from Virginia's own Department of Transportation, local governments and the Virginia State Police.

"This was not a North-South vengeance thing or anything like that. We're not bringing out Lee's Army," said Corinne Geller, a spokeswoman for the Virginia State Police. "It's really about geography. There's a river. The only way across is a bridge. And once you cross the 14th Street Bridge, within a stoplight or two, you're going to be inside the security zone. There's nowhere for you to go."

"It does seem a little over the top to shut down all the bridges from Virginia into the city," Alexandria resident Paul Connolly said. "It's a bit of a symbolic snub to the bluest corner of the state that our president-elect fought so hard to win. We even have two Democrat senators now, and our governor is going to chair the DNC. Harumph!"

Cacographers and Dyslexics Open a Mall in China

An entire mall of knock-offs is opening in China. Via the Mirror: sad, and hilarious, photos below:

HT: Tyler Cowan.

Paging Surgeon General Gupta

This is a change I can believe in:

President-elect Barack Obama has offered the job of surgeon general to Dr. Sanjay Gupta, the neurosurgeon and correspondent for CNN and CBS, according to two sources with knowledge of the situation.

Gupta has told administration officials that he wants the job, and the final vetting process is under way. He has asked for a few days to figure out the financial and logistical details of moving his family from Atlanta to Washington but is expected to accept the offer.

Freedom (by Default)

Potheads of Massachusetts, rejoice!

The Boston Globe reports on the inability of police departments in Massachusetts to enforce a new law that decriminalizes the possession of small amounts of marijuana:

"We're just basically not enforcing it right now," said Mark R. Laverdure, chief of police in Clinton, a Central Massachusetts town of about 8,000 residents, who said the law was so poorly written that it cannot be enforced. "You'll probably have a lot of officers that, unless there's a caller complaining about it, won't even bother with it. They probably handled a lot of it informally before and probably more so now."

Andrew J. Sluckis Jr., chief of police in Auburn, said his 39 officers would not be issuing $100 citations for possession of an ounce or less of marijuana, as required under the ballot initiative known as Question 2.

"If the Legislature enacts some changes, we'll be happy to do it in the future, but as it stands now we're not going to be issuing civil citations," he said. If an officer spots someone smoking marijuana, he said, "We will confiscate it and the person will be sent on their way."

HT: Andrew Sullivan.

Bracing for the Shit Storm

It's just three weeks until the American Messiah descends on the Federal City.

The Washington Post reports:

Every inauguration presents huge security challenges because of the large, open areas the new president traverses and the large number of visiting dignitaries. A massive crowd presents further complications. The Secret Service and other agencies must increase the number of undercover agents they have mingling among the spectators, officials said. And even if a small incident occurs, people could be trampled in a panic.

The threats aren't limited to violence or terrorism: Freezing or rainy weather could send people fleeing for shelter or medical attention. The D.C. Fire and Emergency Medical Services Department is among the many agencies across the region gearing up for demands. And the crush of traffic will put additional pressure on police and transportation officials.

Another Beggar Rattles His Tin Cup

Now the steel industry.

Apocalypse Later

Bad news sells. It's a cliche, yes; it's also evidenced by a cursory glance of the media. Pick up the New York Times and witness the new heyday of doomsday journalism: the chorus is singing an elegy for American prosperity, with glee. From cable news analysts to news magazine cover features, the consensus is that there are dark times ahead. Implicit in their doomsaying is that the American system of capitalism has brought us here.

As I've posted before, the media are ignoring the fact that, fundamentally, our standard of living continues to improve. Things are getting better. That's why this article on FOXNews.com comes as a bit of a surprise.

Partisan cynics will claim that the sentiment of the article is tainted by the very partisanship of the source. But the article is merely an aggregation of statistics from government agencies like the CDC, the DOJ, and the NIH; nonprofit organizations like the National Bureau of Economic Advisers; and mainstream media outlets like US News and World Report and the Washington Post.

What does the article find? Crime rates continue to plummet. Life expectancy continues to rise. Americans have more free time, more free time to use the latest everyday gadgets that were inconceivable just 30 years ago.

A sampling, from the article:

• Crime rates are still falling. Violent crime in America has been in a freefall since the early 1990s, despite a slight uptick in 2005 and 2006. Economists, criminologists, and sociologists can't conclusively say why. Explanations range from the 1990s economic boom to changes in crime-fighting strategy to the legalization of abortion to reductions in childhood exposure to lead. Whatever the reason, long-term trends show crime is down across the board.

• Life expectancy is up. In June, the Centers for Disease Control announced that in 2006 (the latest year for which data is available), Americans once again set a record for life expectancy. Men, women, blacks, whites — all can expect to live longer today than at any point in American history. Discrepancies in the average age of death between ethnic groups are narrowing, too. All of those things we're told need heavy regulation because they're potentially killing us — obesity, alcohol, coffee, sodium, pollution, stress, cell phones — aren't doing a very good job.

• We have more leisure time. Americans work on average eight fewer hours than we did in the 1960s. Believe it or not, lower-income Americans are actually more likely to spend time at leisure and less time on the job than their wealthier counterparts, suggesting that when we do work long hours, it's more likely to be because we want to than because we have to. We also seem to be enjoying ourselves more. We're spending more money per person on recreation. And the toys we do have (high-definition televisions, iPods, computers, sound systems) are immeasurably more fun than they were generations ago.

It's not in the media's interest to report the good news. I'm not arguing that the media should put on their rose-tinted Ray-Bans and ignore the bad news, and there is bad news. Our economy is ailing, but let's not misdiagnose the patient and reach for the hemlock, instead of the medicine.

HT: Marginal Revolution.

Know Thy Enemy: John P. Holdren

Obama has chosen John P. Holdren as one of his four science advisers. Holdren is a colleague of fellow neo-Malthusian Paul Ehrlich. Those two, along with John Harte, famously made a wager with Julian Simon on the scarcity of resources that would result from the detonation of The Population Bomb. It turned out that that bomb was a dud: they lost. However, Holdren is still one of the most strident opponents of anyone who disagrees with his claim that there is an impending environmental apocalypse.

While he considers himself a Cassandra, Holdren is squarely in the mainstream. So why does he need to viciously attack those who oppose him? This Cassandra doth protest too much, methinks.

Here's the NYT's John Tierney on Obama's pick.

UPDATE: Tierney elaborates on why Ehrlich and Holdren's loss of the bet is important to the failure of their central thesis.

Uncle Josef

Here's a chilling article about Stalin's legacy in Russia, from the Tribune.

Stalin, the brutal Soviet dictator responsible for the deaths of millions of his citizens, has been undergoing a makeover of sorts in recent years. Russian authorities have reshaped the Georgia-born dictator's image into that of a misunderstood, demonized leader who did what he had to do to mold the Soviet Union into the superpower it became.

My favorite quote:

There were, writes Filippov, "rational reasons behind the use of violence in order to ensure maximum efficiency."