Hi, I’m Barackitt Obromney, and I’m running for President.
Reasons For Optimism 10-14
Fortunately I’m not just going to leave you with some reasons for pessimism. Here are the latest reasons for optimism, involving marijuana, patent trolls, government land, state revenues, and oil production:
Reasons For Pessimism
I like focusing on good things that are happening in the world today, but I have to be honest about concerning things that are going as well. Here are a few of the latest, involving feeding the homeless, spying drones, and drug-resistant diseases:
Even Californians Are Rejecting Backward Government
Yesterday I offered my opinion that Wisconsin’s recall vote was evidence that “taxpayers of all political stripes are beginning to realize” the excesses of government benefits to public sector unions. It turns out Wisconsin wasn’t Tuesday’s only evidence. There were also ballot proposals in California. As NPR reports:
Continue reading Even Californians Are Rejecting Backward Government
Thoughts on the Wisconsin Recall Vote
Last night, Wisconsin governor Scott Walker won his recall election by a larger margin than his original election in 2010. Today there will be a lot of pundits telling you exactly what this means for Wisconsin and the future of the country, but I just want to try to recap what happened and tell you my reactions.
Where is the Climate Change Food Crisis?
For years we’ve been hearing about the looming global food crisis caused by climate change and overpopulation. But the world continues to refuse to cooperate. This morning, Bloomberg reports the world is likely to have a third consecutive record year for rice production:
Farmers will harvest 466.4 million metric tons in the 2012-2013 season, boosting stockpiles by 0.7 percent to 104.9 million tons, the largest since 2001-2002, says the U.S. Department of Agriculture…
“There is enough supply to meet all the demand in the world,” said Concepcion Calpe, a senior economist at the UN’s Food & Agriculture Organization, where’s she is also secretary of the Rome-based group’s inter-governmental body on rice. “There will be ground for a further slide in prices.”
The Right To Drink Unhealthy Soda
New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg wants to ban soda. Well, except for sizes 16 ounces and smaller. And all sizes in grocery stores. And diet sodas and fruit juices. But if you’re a cup of 32 ounces of Coke in a movie theater, Bloomberg wants to get rid of you.
“Nanny Bloomberg” has already done things like ban smoking in parks and restaurants and ban “artificial trans fat in restaurant food,” but apparently those haven’t done enough to increase the health of the city, where over half of the citizens are allegedly obese or overweight.
When do we have to admit that Mayor Bloomberg is a libertarian plant demonstrating the absurdity of nanny-statism?
— Timothy P Carney (@TPCarney) May 31, 2012
You might think it would be smarter for Bloomberg to go the California route and increase taxes on soda to at least make some money while they’re making people healthier. Actually, he already tried to get a state tax on soda, but it was rejected. So he came up with this new plan that conveniently just has to be approved by a board of people who were all appointed by him! (Brilliant system of checks and balances you got there, NYC.)
Did Last Year’s Debt Ceiling Debate Hurt the Economy?
Cool economists Justin Wolfers and Betsey Stevenson had an article in Bloomberg on Monday arguing that another debt-ceiling battle could “sink” the economy based on how costly the last one was.
Justin and Betsey believe the government needs to spend more money now to help the economy (after all, interest rates are insanely low right now), so they naturally oppose the Republican’s hypocritical efforts to restrain the debt ceiling. I believe this makes them biased to look for evidence that fights over the debt ceiling are bad for the economy. Meanwhile, I do not think the government should spend more money (after all, interest rates can go up rather quickly,) so I am biased to be skeptical of their evidence, which I believe is weak, cherry-picked, and contradictory.
Let’s look at the evidence they claim:
Continue reading Did Last Year’s Debt Ceiling Debate Hurt the Economy?
Hurting Enemy Bloggers With The Oops Cost
Political blogging is becoming dangerous – at least for the partisans. It appears that conservative bloggers are being targeted by some on the left for “SWATting,” a despicable tactic where someone spoofs a phone call to 911, posing as the blogger and claiming they just killed someone at their house in an attempt to draw a SWAT team (or at least policemen) with guns blazing.
Patterico lit up the conservative Interwebz on Friday with his detailed account of his experience that almost got him killed. Now a RedState blogger is claiming to have been attacked in the same way, although he had a much calmer encounter with his local law enforcement, perhaps due to precautions he had taken to alert the sheriffs about this very tactic.
What’s funny to me is that Patterico and most of the commenters have a (generally right-wing) perspective where the people who built the hoax are the “evil” and “demented” bad guys that need to be brought to justice, and the police are good guys that just happened to get caught up in this and almost accidentally kill an innocent man. “I don’t blame the police for any of their actions,” the blogger says. “But I blame the person who made the call.”
The right’s reaction reminded me of what how the left ignores government mistakes in other sectors. Take the recent hullabaloo about the J.P. Morgan trade that lost $2 billion and how that allegedly justifies the Volcker Rule or other forms of complex financial regulation. Democrats imagine a static world where there are specific problems with rules or people that the government can isolate and fix. Add a new law on top of the old one. Replace the corrupt or incompetent regulator with someone nobler or smarter.
Reasons For Optimism 7-9
It’s been a while since I added to the Reasons For Optimism series, but that’s more due to me lacking focus than because of any dearth of good news. Just in the last week we saw some cool progress in all three of the sectors that I think will greatly transform our lives in the next decade.
7. Outer Space. After a successful rocket launch on Tuesday, SpaceX’s Dragon capsule successfully docked at the International Space Station yesterday, becoming the first private company to do so. The numbers are complicated, but SpaceX has essentially caught up to NASA’s capabilities and costs in just a few years and is on track to make things even better and cheaper and faster (using more reusable parts, for one). It’s pretty cool to read this latest Elon Musk interview about their current successes and future plans, and then look at the confidence he had four years ago after some initial failures made others skeptical.