Saturday, August 31, 2002 :::
Say no to the nay-sayers (link from Instapundit)
Recently, one British visitor was chatting to CIA Director George Tenet about the Europeans' role. "I'll tell you exactly what the President said the other day on that very subject," said Mr Tenet. "He said, ?I don't give a shit what the Europeans think.? "
I find that heartwarming.
::: posted by Steven at 11:17 AM
(0) comments
Friday, August 30, 2002 :::
A reluctant call for war reads like truth. If anyone actually knows whether we should go to war or not, let me know.
::: posted by dWj at 12:26 PM
(0) comments
TheAgitator.com: Cuban Diary -- link from Miss Sasha Castel
::: posted by Steven at 10:22 AM
(0) comments
Nick Schulz on African Farmers on National Review Online
[T]he United States is currently leading a charge here in Johannesburg to phase out all agricultural supports over five years.
Great idea! Let's start at home.
::: posted by Steven at 9:56 AM
(0) comments
Greenpeace, the Third World Network, and Biowatch got a well-deserved award.
::: posted by Steven at 8:11 AM
(0) comments
Thursday, August 29, 2002 :::
I'm having trouble figuring out exactly how blogger decides how to format these things, but I'm not going to worry about it too much.
Some baseball thoughts:
- It seems odd to me that revenue sharing is an issue for labor negotiations. This is something I'd think the owners would simply work out themselves without any suggestion that they would talk to the players about it.
- I don't get why the owners are allowed to work it out themselves, though. The anti-trust exemption is emotion-based muddle headedness. There is no reason baseball should be treated differently from any other industry.
- But I don't like anti-trust laws, really. The owners should be allowed to work together to figure out what they think is best for the major leagues. Fans and players who don't like it can go to the Northern League, or elsewhere. It would be interesting to see how quickly the Northern League could grow if the top players would consider this option, though first
- The local municipalities should quit subsidizing owners who don't own the stadium, and holding those back who do (say, the Cubs, who aren't allowed to expand their own ballpark).
- Revenue sharing -- heck, "competitive balance" -- would be a disastrous idea for Major League Soccer. The best teams are in California; the best in the east may be Chicago. This is where Mexicans live. The revenues will come in for teams with support; you want the good teams to be where teams would be able to get support. A bad team will keep away more potential fans than a good team will draw nonpotential fans. Whether New York is that much better a baseball town than somewhere else is debatable, but the possibility is being ignored.
- I don't think teams should be able to prevent other teams from moving in next door. That has to cost people concerned more than it benefits them, even if "people concerned" is just team owners; I don't understand why they put up with this rule. On the other side,
- Drug testing should be promoted strongly by the players' union. If companies in an industry were all threatening their long-term well-being for short-term economic advantage relative to each other -- let's face it, if everyone got worse at the same time it wouldn't hurt them that much -- they would jump all over any chance to collude to change that. U.S. labor law allows workers to collude, even where it doesn't get rid of special wavers of anti-trust laws for particular industries.
::: posted by dWj at 6:12 PM
(0) comments
It's not just the US media which is biased, according to an apparently open-minded member of the British Labour Party. (Link from Peter Cuthbertson)
As BBC Online reports: "A major study of capital punishment recently suggested that more than two-thirds of convictions in the US are so flawed that they are overturned on appeal".
Alternatively, the standards of US appellate courts are so high that more than two-thirds of convictions are overturned on appeal.
::: posted by Steven at 5:37 PM
(0) comments
Re Ms. Malkin and High Theory, it's worth noting that Pigouvian taxes on actual externalities per se -- say, pollution in various forms that come out of a tailpipe -- can't produce unarguably unmitigated errors in policy the way that direct intervention -- say, telling the consumer how to achieve it -- can.
Obviously, I'm posting this as practice with the interface.
Before I hit post, though, I'll also note that taking energy from a form in which it's hard to carry around in your car into one in which it's easier is progress on that front. It's liable to be regress on others, though, if you're losing that much of your energy in the process. As I was saying about Pigouvian taxes, though, giving the markets a shove at the consumer end leaves them free to figure out whether or not the one is worth the other.
::: posted by dWj at 3:23 PM
(0) comments
City to tax rainwater - winonadailynews.com News
::: posted by Steven at 10:44 AM
(0) comments
Michelle Malkin
Cornell University agricultural researcher David Pimentel, who chaired a Department of Energy panel that investigated ethanol production several years ago, published an analysis last year showing that about 70 percent more energy is required to produce ethanol than the energy that actually is in ethanol.
That's an interesting figure, innit?
::: posted by Steven at 6:37 AM
(0) comments
Wednesday, August 28, 2002 :::
Mark Steyn
But you can't expect Scowcroft, a notorious stability junkie, to accept such a premise. Just over a year ago, I sat next to him at dinner and it wasn't so much that he disagreed with this or that Administration initiative as that he was congenitally suspicious about the very concept of initiatives.
Actually, I can sort of empathize with this in general. In Iraq, though, I think the risks of inaction are greater than the risks of action, as the VP argued the other day.
::: posted by Steven at 2:53 PM
(0) comments
Michael Kelly plays both sides here, and does so correctly, as he frequently does.
::: posted by Steven at 12:00 PM
(0) comments
Debra Saunders
Referring to Zambian refusal of genetically modified grain being sent by the US:
"We would rather starve than get something toxic," Zambia President Levy Mwanawasa has proclaimed.
Anyone want to wager with me on whether he, personally, starves because of refusing the grain? I'll give you two-to-one odds. How about ten-to-one?
::: posted by Steven at 11:13 AM
(0) comments
Pete Dupont on School Choice
Shouldn't this guy be appointed to something in the administration?
::: posted by Steven at 10:13 AM
(0) comments
Debunking Bear-Market Myths
It really cracks me up to see how many people (and financial magazines) are rediscovering bond funds now that interest rates are at a multidecade low. This is a classic example of what the behavioral finance crowd calls "recency," which means taking recent events and assuming the same trend will continue into the future.
It also calls to mind Herb Stein's law, "If something can't go on forever, eventually it will stop." A bond bubble has to stop at some point, even more clearly than a stock bubble, since bonds have fixed coupons and maturities by the end of which one expects a better-than-mattress return.
I don't see the Fed putting on the brakes any time soon, but in a year or two, anyone too heavily into bonds is going to get whiplash.
::: posted by Steven at 8:07 AM
(0) comments
Fool.com: SEC Gets Pushy [The Motley Fool Take] August 27, 2002 expresses my thoughts when I heard about the SEC meeting results. In particular, this excerpt:
So is faster better? Not necessarily.
For the quarterly and annual reports, you could argue that what investors want is accuracy. Forcing speed only encourages mistakes, and reforms might be better targeted at accounting issues such as the failure to expense stock options. Frankly, if we've made a long-term investment, we don't think knowing the numbers five, 10, or even 15 days in advance should affect our investing decisions much, if at all.
::: posted by Steven at 5:54 AM
(0) comments
|
