September 30, 2002
From the desk of Jane Galt:So it looks like the
So it looks like the Torch is going to drop out of the New Jersey Senate race.
Democrats are getting slightly hysterical, because it's not clear that it's legal to replace him after the primary. It would be nice if they could pull a Jean Carnahan -- run Torricelli on the tacit understanding that after he is elected, he will resign and the governor will appoint a replacement -- but they can't, because the governor gets to appoint a replacement, and the governor of New Jersey is a Republican. They're in a nasty, nasty spot. If Torricelli runs, he's going to lose; if he doesn't, whoever replaces him will probably lose anyway, with only a month to campaign.
Meanwhile, Republicans seem to be talking about suing to keep him on the ballot. I can see why they want to, but they shouldn't. This is more important than control of the Senate; this is about saying that neither party supports putting a Senator in office who takes bribes. The Democrats dropped the ball on this one, to their eternal shame. Now the Republicans have an opportunity to do the right thing, and forestall any risk that a man who takes bribes might end up in our legislature.
Update
Oops, governor of New Jersey is a Democrat. I was flashing back to Whitman. Hmmm. This opens up new possible strategies.
Update II A reader sends in the applicable law:
§ 19:13-20. Vacancy procedure
In the event of a vacancy, howsoever caused, among candidates nominated at primaries, which vacancy shall occur not later than the 51st day before the general election, or in the event of inability to select a candidate because of a tie vote at such primary, a candidate shall be selected in the following manner:a. (1) In the case of an office to be filled by the voters of the entire State, the candidate shall be selected by the State committee of the political party wherein such vacancy has occurred.
(2) In the case of an office to be filled by the voters of a single and entire county, the candidate shall be selected by the county committee in such county of the political party wherein such vacancy has occurred.
(3) In the case of an office to be filled by the voters of a portion of the State comprising all or part of two or more counties, the candidate shall be selected by those members of the county committees of the party wherein the vacancy has occurred who represent those portions of the respective counties which are comprised in the district from which the candidate is to be elected.
(4) In the case of an office to be filled by the voters of a portion of a single county, the candidate shall be selected by those members of the county committee of the party wherein the vacancy has occurred who represent those portions of the county which are comprised in the district from which the candidate is to be elected.
At any meeting held for the selection of a candidate under this subsection, a majority of the persons eligible to vote thereat shall be required to be present for the conduct of any business, and no person shall be entitled to vote at that meeting who is appointed to the State committee or county committee after the seventh day preceding the date of the meeting.
In the case of a meeting held to select a candidate for other than a Statewide office, the chairman of the meeting shall be chosen by majority vote of the persons present and entitled to vote thereat. The chairman so chosen may propose rules to govern the determination of credentials and the procedures under which the meeting shall be conducted, and those rules shall be adopted upon a majority vote of the persons entitled to vote upon the selection. If a majority vote is not obtained for those rules, the delegates shall determine credentials and conduct the business of the meeting under such other rules as may be adopted by a majority vote. All contested votes taken at the selection meeting shall be by secret ballot.
b. (1) Whenever in accordance with subsection a. of this section members of two or more county committees are empowered to select a candidate to fill a vacancy, it shall be the responsibility of the chairmen of said county committees, acting jointly not later in any case than the seventh day following the occurrence of the vacancy, to give notice to each of the members of their respective committees who are so empowered of the date, time and place of the meeting at which the selection will be made, that meeting to be held at least one day following the date on which the notice is given.
(2) Whenever in accordance with the provisions of subsection a. of this section members of a county committee are empowered to select a candidate to fill a vacancy, it shall be the responsibility of the chairman of such county committee, not later in any case than the seventh day following the occurrence of the vacancy, to give notice to each of the members of the committee who are so empowered of the date, time and place of the meeting at which the selection will be made, that meeting to be held at least one day following the date on which the notice is given.
(3) A county committee chairman or chairmen who call a meeting pursuant to paragraph (1) or (2) of this subsection shall not be entitled to vote upon the selection of a candidate at such meeting unless he or they are so entitled pursuant to subsection a.
(4) Whenever in accordance with the provisions of subsection a. of this section the State committee of a political party is empowered to select a candidate to fill a vacancy, it shall be the responsibility of the chairman of that State committee to give notice to each of the members of the committee of the date, time and place of the meeting at which the selection will be made, that meeting to be held at least one day following the date on which the notice is given.
c. Whenever a selection is to be made pursuant to this section to fill a vacancy resulting from inability to select a candidate because of a tie vote at a primary election, the selection shall be made from among those who have thus received the same number of votes at the primary.
d. A selection made pursuant to this section shall be made not later than the 48th day preceding the date of the general election, and a statement of such selection shall be filed with the Secretary of State or the appropriate county clerk, as the case may be, not later than said 48th day, and in the following manner:
(1) A selection made by a State committee of political party shall be certified to the Secretary of State by the State chairman of the political party.
(2) A selection made by a county committee of a political party, or a portion of the members thereof, shall be certified to the county clerk of the county by the county chairman of such political party; except that when such selection is of a candidate for the Senate or General Assembly or the United States House of Representatives the county chairman shall certify the selection to the State chairman of such political party, who shall certify the same to the Secretary of State.
(3) A selection made by members of two or more county committees of a political party acting jointly shall be certified by the chairmen of said committees, acting jointly, to the State chairman of such political party, who shall certify the same to the Secretary of State.
e. A statement filed pursuant to subsection d. of this section shall state the residence and post office address of the person so selected, and shall certify that the person so selected is qualified under the laws of this State to be a candidate for such office, and is a member of the political party filling the vacancy. Accompanying the statement the person endorsed therein shall file a certificate stating that he is qualified under the laws of this State to be a candidate for the office mentioned in the statement, that he consents to stand as a candidate at the ensuing general election and that he is a member of the political party named in said statement, and further that he is not a member of, or identified with, any other political party or any political organization espousing the cause of candidates of any other political party, to which shall be annexed the oath of allegiance prescribed in R.S. 41:1-1 duly taken and subscribed by him before an officer authorized to take oaths in this State. The person so selected shall be the candidate of the party for such office at the ensuing general election.
HISTORY: L. 1988, c. 126, s. 1.
LexisNexis (TM) Notes:
CASE NOTES
1. Purpose of N.J. Stat. Ann. § 19:13-20(e) is to prevent a person whose party affiliations are unclear from assuming elective office under a party banner; such restriction is enforceable, assuming its constitutionality; challenge to the constitutionality of § 19:13-20(e) is merited. Mays v. Penza, 430 A.2d 1140, 1980 N.J. Super. LEXIS 791 (Oct. 28, 1980).
2. Where the county clerk rejected a candidate's petition as being defective because it had been faxed, and the candidate amended his petition and filed it personally, the candidate was entitled to have his name placed on the ballot; the amended petition was filed before the 48th day preceding the primary, within three days of his filing of the original in accordance with N.J. Stat. Ann. § 19:13-20, and before he received a notice of defect. Madden v. Hegadorn, 565 A.2d 725, 1989 N.J. Super. LEXIS 364 (May 3, 1989).
3. Where one political party and its candidate filed suit to disqualify a candidate of another party from participating in the general election for failure to comply with requirements of N. J. Stat. Ann. § 19:13-20(d), the trial court dismissed the suit as moot because the election had been held and the vote resulted in a tie; accordingly, under N. J. Stat. Ann. 40A:16-16, the office was vacant and the trial court had no authority to declare a winner. Mays v. Penza, 430 A.2d 1145, 1981 N.J. Super. LEXIS 609 (Jan. 12, 1981).
4. County clerk fulfilled her duty by accepting a candidate's certification as a candidate under N.J. Stat. Ann. § 19:13-20(e); clerk had no power to rule the candidate off the ballot due to a failure to comply with requirements of residency as that issue should have been determined by a court. Mays v. Penza, 430 A.2d 1140, 1980 N.J. Super. LEXIS 791 (Oct. 28, 1980).
5. Purpose of N.J. Stat. Ann. § 19:13-20(e) is to prevent a person whose party affiliations are unclear from assuming elective office under a party banner; such restriction is enforceable, assuming its constitutionality; challenge to the constitutionality of § 19:13-20(e) is merited. Mays v. Penza, 430 A.2d 1140, 1980 N.J. Super. LEXIS 791 (Oct. 28, 1980).
6. Pursuant to former N.J. Stat. Ann. § 19:13-20, the county committee had the power to fill a vacancy caused by the death of a candidate 36 days before the general election, so long as it made and filed its selection with the clerk 34 days or more before the general election. Kilmurray v. Gilfert, 91 A.2d 865, 1952 N.J. LEXIS 259 (Oct. 20, 1952).
7. Where a "write-in" candidate nominated in a primary election failed to file a certificate of acceptance, a vacancy of the nomination was created, and the county committee was permitted to fill the vacancy. Fiscella v. Nulton, 92 A.2d 103, 1952 N.J. Super. LEXIS 738 (Oct. 16, 1952).
8. Where nominee died 36 days before the general election and a political committee filed notice of its selection of a replacement candidate 34 days before the general election, the replacement nomination was timely, and the statute requiring 37-day (now 51 days) notice were merely directory in nature. Kilmurray v. Gilfert, 91 A.2d 859, 1952 N.J. Super. LEXIS 727 (Oct. 15, 1952).
9. N.J. Stat. Ann. § 19:13-20 unconstitutionally regulated elections so as to deny or impair the rights of electors and effectively granted a party committee the right to nominate a person to fill a vacancy and then, in turn, deprived it of the right to nominate someone who may have previously been a member of another political party. Gansz v. Johnson, 75 A.2d 831, 1950 N.J. Super. LEXIS 629 (Oct. 13, 1950).
10. Pursuant to N.J. Stat. Ann. § 19:13-20, the county committee was without authority to designate a candidate where no one had been nominated at the primary, and therefore a vacancy did not exist to give the county committee authority to make such designation. Cleveland v. Woolley, 68 A.2d 666, 1949 N.J. Super. LEXIS 725 (Oct. 11, 1949).
11. Complaint by candidate against election officials, which sought his selection as the Republican party's candidate, was properly dismissed where his rival was still eligible to stand for election in his party even though he had accepted nomination of the Democratic party; rejecting the contention that, by accepting the "write-in" Democratic nomination the candidate had identified himself with that party and would, therefore, be unable to sign the required certificate, the superior court held that the statute required that the certificate accompany the statement of the selection, but did not purport to obligate the candidate to execute the certificate until after the selection had been made. Brower v. Gray, 68 A.2d 553, 1949 N.J. Super. LEXIS 637 (Sept. 30, 1949).
12. Where one political party and its candidate filed suit to disqualify a candidate of another party from participating in the general election for failure to comply with requirements of N. J. Stat. Ann. § 19:13-20(d), the trial court dismissed the suit as moot because the election had been held and the vote resulted in a tie; accordingly, under N. J. Stat. Ann. 40A:16-16, the office was vacant and the trial court had no authority to declare a winner. Mays v. Penza, 430 A.2d 1145, 1981 N.J. Super. LEXIS 609 (Jan. 12, 1981).
13. Candidate for a party nomination for member of state legislature was not entitled to nomination where a vacancy was created in the nomination by the death of his opponent prior to the election, and the opponent still received more votes than the candidate did; the deceased candidate's nomination was not null and void but, rather, created a vacancy to have been filled in the manner pursuant to N.J. Stat. Ann. § 19:13-20. Petition of Keogh-Dwyer, 256 A.2d 314, 1969 N.J. Super. LEXIS 486 (Aug. 6, 1969).
14. N.J. Stat. Ann. § 19:13-20 unconstitutionally regulated elections so as to deny or impair the rights of electors andeffectively granted a party committee the right to nominate a person to fill a vacancy and then, in turn, deprived it of the right to nominate someone who may have previously been a member of another political party. Gansz v. Johnson, 75 A.2d 831, 1950 N.J. Super. LEXIS 629 (Oct. 13, 1950).
15. Complaint by candidate against election officials, which sought his selection as the Republican party's candidate, was properly dismissed where his rival was still eligible to stand for election in his party even though he had accepted nomination of the Democratic party; rejecting the contention that, by accepting the "write-in" Democratic nomination the candidate had identified himself with that party and would, therefore, be unable to sign the required certificate, the superior court held that the statute required that the certificate accompany the statement of the selection, but did not purport to obligate the candidate to execute the certificate until after the selection had been made. Brower v. Gray, 68 A.2d 553, 1949 N.J. Super. LEXIS 637 (Sept. 30, 1949).
Update III On Fox News, they're reporting that the statute is unambiguous: candidates can't be replaced less than 51 days before the election, which would have been September 16. Whee! More electoral fun and games! Maybe repealing the 17th Amendment isn't such a bad idea.
From the desk of Jane Galt:More brilliance from Lileks: But
More brilliance from Lileks:
But the Castro-worship just fascinates me. Why? Some applaud the way he thumbs his nose at the US, which always strikes a certain crowd as the hallmark of integrity; if you wrap your derision in the big red flag you’ll always have a claque of bootlickers eager to excuse whatever you do. (The enemy of my enemy is my President for Life.) The usual gang of collectivists admire the way he organizes society from the top down to the city block, because they love power; they love force; they have a romantic attachment to anyone who uses the cudgel to hasten the arrival of heaven on earth. My favorite defense, though, is “free health care” and “literacy.”Take the second one first. There’s no excuse for not being literate in America. Oh, we could impose literacy on the illiterate here, but it wouldn’t be pretty. We could make English proficiency a requirement for jobs, institute nationwide standards for graduation that mandated a high degree of literacy - and made the students' fulfillment of those standards a criterion for advancement in the educational establishment.
Let us pause to cogitate how well that would go over.
Health care: supposedly, it’s universal; supposedly, it’s high quality. Egalitarian. (muffled laugh.) Ask yourself this. You’re poor. You have a heart attack. Do you want to be in Havana or New York? Which phone system summons the EMTs faster? Which emergency response team is better equipped? Which hospital is better staffed with highly-paid doctors who have come from all over the world to work here?
Somehow I suspect that a heart attack in Havana at 3 AM means bundling Uncle Raul into your block captain’s ‘57 Belair and hoping it doesn’t break down before you get to the hospital.
But let’s assume that health care in Cuba is the equal of health care in America. If this is the reason to admire Cuba, then this is what some American citizens believe is more important than anything else. Free health care. They will give up elections, the free press, the freedom to travel, the freedom to dissent, the freedom to own a personal computer, for heaven’s sake - they’ve been banned for personal use. But for some, all of those freedoms are negotiable. They’ll give it all up for free health care. That’s their price.
Interesting.
Indeed.
From the desk of Jane Galt:The real scandal about the
The real scandal about the poet laureate of New Jersey's nasty poem is that it's terrible. Of course, even Shakespeare had his off days. But I wrote better poetry than that when I was in ninth grade. And I write dreadful poetry.
(Link via Jim Henley)
From the desk of Jane Galt:Nuclear Deterrance, Part II: The
Nuclear Deterrance, Part II: The Principle of Overwhelming Force
In Part I, we discussed the idea of walling off potential avenues of escalation. Now it's time to talk about why we chose Mutually Assured Destruction rather than, say, Mutually Assured Heavy Damage.
[Editor's Note: No, I am not a professional expert on defense policy. I'm giving you the broad principles here, not the "In 1962, the Soviet placement of an armored brigade near the Turkish border was widely seen as a signalling mechanism to convey their distrust of the protocols signed at the NATO meeting the previous month. . . ", on which I am not qualified to comment]
If you grew up in the 80's, as I did, you spent a good portion of your childhood waiting to be evaporated in a worldwide nuclear conflagration. This is especially true if your teachers were CND types who believed that MAD was the worst idea since the Barry Manilow comeback tour.
But there is a reason that the system was designed with overwhelming force, rather than limited response. It has to do with the nature of nuclear escalation. Nuclear use, especially before the advent of tactical nuclear weapons, was so shocking in its kill power, its destruction, and (importantly), its public horror, that the kind of arithmetic response (you hit me, I hit you 50% harder, and so on), was hard to sustain. I can't say this enough: deterrance is not tit for tat. I've already had five or six people email me with objections based on their analysis of nuclear deterrance as a tit for tat scenario, or comparing it to conventional military deterrance, which is not how it works. With a nuclear Iraq, the "Saddaam has been deterred" argument is meaningless, because the whole structure of deterrance changes.
Let's look at tit for tat. If you've ever seen small children playing, you've seen it at work. One child takes the other child's shovel. Outraged, the owner of the shovel pushes the thief. The thief is outraged -- he pushed me! -- and hits the shovel owner. Shovel owner is outraged -- he started it! -- and kicks his opponent. After a couple of rounds of this, the shovel is returned to its rightful owner, and the two children sit glaring at each other on either side of the sandbox.
The problem is that because of the overwhelming nature of even limited nuclear use, this pattern would be catastrophic once nukes were involved. If Russia nuked, say, Peoria, and we took out three of their cities, and then they hit New York. . . well, by the time we reached the standoff, there might not be much left to stand on.
As I pointed out in part one, the principle of overwhelming force was designed to prevent this sort of escalation. In order to do that, it had to make entering on any avenue that might lead to escalation just as unthinkable as suddenly lobbing your nuclear arsenal over the Bering Straits to see what would happen.
It also sharply reduced the incentive to gamble on borderline activities. Russia invades Canada; do we plaster them with nukes, or try to wage a conventional response? Would we use a limited nuclear response that might make it worth their while anyway? (This was, after all, the nation that killed 25,000 people to build a steel plant, 20,000,000 to collectivize the farms.) Overwhelming force didn't just make it unthinkable to risk borderline activities; it also meant that any leader who ordered such an action was guaranteed die in the resulting conflagration.
But overwhelming force truly meant overwhelming. If the Soviets, or we, had launched a single nuclear weapon, the orders were to launch a sufficient portion of our arsenal to bomb them flat. Not take out a single city for show. Literally, bomb them back to the stone age.
And there we are back to Iraq again. Not only is it unlikely that we would launch a nuclear strike on Iraq in the event of an invasion of their neighbors; it is unthinkable that we would respond with overwhelming force. Even if Saddaam did the worst and nuked Israel, would we really be willing to incinerate the entire population of Iraq in retaliation? That's what overwhelming force would mean. Yet, if you don't use overwhelming force, there is a high probability that Saddaam might survive. One of the reasons that we didn't take him out in the Gulf War was that it turned out he had two dozen or so body doubles, of which five or so were trained to impersonate him perfectly. We have no idea where he is, so we can't just nuke his headquarters.
So the first part of Cold War nuclear deterrance -- walling off potential avenues of escalation -- is unlikely in Iraq. A second important feature, overwhelming force, is also absent. Next we'll talk about credible threats.
September 29, 2002
From the desk of Jane Galt:Mchelle Cottle thinks that Noelle
Mchelle Cottle thinks that Noelle Bush deserves the media attention she's getting because of her family's stance on national drug policy.
Oh, delightful. May I assume that Al Gore jr.'s penchant for driving drunk and smoking pot will get the same amount of press?
But that's a cheap shot. The real problem with this is that Noelle doesn't make drug policy. She's a screwed up woman in her twenties, not a legislator. It's obscene to argue that she deserves to dry out in a spotlight.
It's common to say that celebrity children deserve the spotlight because they get special treatment. But there's no evidence that this is so. Cottle admits that she probably isn't treated much differently from any other rich offender, but then tries to argue that "in California, she might already be on her way to jail for life". Um, no. Not if she were rich, not if she were poor. People in treatment centers who are caught with drugs sometimes get kicked out, which might end their parole, but they don't get prosecuted for possession of crack. And it's hard to argue that her actions took place in the public spotlight, since the only reason we know about it is that another patient violated her confidentiality and called the papers. She's getting special treatment, all right.
The children of our politicians do not deserve to have their private tragedies on the front page. Unless you think it's all right for other people to publicize your mistakes based on what your parents do for a living, the decent thing to do is to keep mum.
From the desk of Jane Galt:Investment banks are in trouble.
Investment banks are in trouble.
Now, when I was recruiting for I-Banking, we were told that investment banking was pretty much a winner regardless of the market. If stocks went up, they did IPO's; if they went down, companies would be acquiring suddenly-cheaper targets, and there would be plenty of M&A work. Either way, the banks would win. What's even funnier is that the vice presidents and associates feeding us this line actually believed it.
And it sounds plausible. Unfortunately, like many plausible-sounding things, it had a hidden weakness. In this case, it was the great controversy in accounting known as Pooling of Interests Accounting. It's so controversial that they're thinking of eliminating it all together, which sparks the kind of argument that makes accounting types get red in the face and scream at each other, and aren't you glad you don't hang out with people like that?
There are two ways you can account for an acquisition on your balance sheet: pooling, or purchase. In the more conservative Purchase method, you basically take all the assets off the balance sheet of the company being bought and transfer them onto the balance sheet of the purchaser. Meanwhile, you take the money or stocks or what have you that was paid to the shareholders off the purchaser's balance sheet, and presto! you're done.
Well, not quite. Because in financial statements, most assets are recorded at their Historical Cost, otherwise known as What You Paid For Them. Thus your father's Sandy Koufax Rookie Baseball Card would be carried on the family balance sheet at 10 cents.
In these inflationary times, investment bankers have to go through all the assets of the company you're buying and figure out what they're actually worth, rather than what it says on the balance sheet. The price paid for the company will thus be higher, often much higher, than what the financial statements show, which is called the company's book value.
If the merger is accounted for as a purchase, the difference between the purchase price and the book value has to be recorded on the purchaser's balance sheet; otherwise the books don't balance. So an asset called goodwill is created. Because it is presumed to represent the value of depreciable assets, this goodwill number has to be depreciated. That is, every year, net income has to be lowered to reflect the fact that all of these assets have gotten less valuable as time goes on, through wear and tear and what have you.
[But what about the Sandy Koufax card? I hear you cry. That gets more valuable. Well, actually, I lied. Sandy Koufax cards belong to a special class of assets called "marketable securities" -- they trade on a liquid market, and thus their current value can readily be ascertained, so they are recorded on the books at their market value. I was just trying to illustrate the principal, okay?]
Companies really, really don't like having to take a goodwill charge. Which is because ignorant investors see EPS go down and run for the hills. So they try very, very hard to qualify for a different type of accounting treatment, known as Pooling of Interests Accounting.
In theory, a pooling of interests merger isn't about one company buying another; it's about two companies with a lot in common discovering that they were meant to be together. They throw all their worldly goods into one pot and call the new company McNikeSoft. In practice, this is a load of hooey; one company is buying the other. But that doesn't mean we can't all pretend, the way the friends of aging tycoons pretend that his eighteen year old bride is marrying him for his animal magnetism. So. Because it's not a purchase, all the assets simply transfer to the new combined entity just as they were on the balance sheet. No goodwill is recorded, so EPS doesn't take a hit. This is how almost all big mergers get done.
There's a kicker, though; in order to qualify for Pooling of Interest accounting, you can't just pull out a wad of cash and slap it on the counter. The deal has to be done with stock-for-stock: I'll trade you one of my AOL/Time Warners for two of your Time Warner certificates (and don't we wish we'd been an AOL shareholder in on that one!). Doing the kind of stock-for-stock deal that qualifies for Pooling treatment is extremely tax disadvantageous, in general, but the incentive to avoid lowering EPS with a goodwill charge is so high that CEO's are willing to shell out more of their hard-earned cash to the IRS, just to avoid a bookkeeping charge to EPS. No, I never said that private enterprise was perfect.
Thus, even though targets are now cheaper, it doesn't matter, because the potential purchaser's stock is also down. Whereas in the good old days, cash rich companies could go after targets in troubled times, now they have to sit on their hands until their stock price perks up again. About another decade, from the looks of the market on Friday.
So now you know about one of the hottest issues in accounting today, and why M&A hasn't picked up like everyone predicted it would, and also, how all those stupid deals in the late 90's got done. Now, if you go to the tool chest and get a hammer and tap yourself lightly on the forehead a few times, all this information will probably fall right back out and you'll be none the worse for the experience.
Update
Looks like today is my day for looking like an idiot. Several readers have emailed me to point out that they've eliminated pooling-of-interest accounting, and in order to pacify the Investment bankers, have allowed the goodwill to sit on the balance sheet forever, rather than depreciating like it used to.
I could weasel out of that by saying that it doesn't effect my main point, which is that the market was heavily biased towards stock-for-stock transactions during the great M&A idiot boom of the late 90's. Which is true. And in fact, I did know that they'd eliminated pooling; the fact just somehow dropped out of my head while I wrote the post. Darren Roulstone, who teaches accounting at my alma mater, sums it up nicely in an email:
Saw your piece on purchase and pooling accounting. As usual, you describe the issue succinctly with humor and charm. . . I just want to pass on an update: they (the FASB) have actually eliminated pooling-of-interest accounting. In order to do this without angry I-bankers storming Norwalk, CT with flaming torches, they also eliminated the amortization of goodwill that made so many managers wary of purchase accounting. So, firms now use purchase accounting, but goodwill can stay on the balance sheet untouched, with only periodic evaluations for impairment. (Firms continue to amortize any excess purchase price allocated to assets and liabilities other than goodwill and indefinitely lived intangibles.)For details check out FASB statements 141 and 142. For intelligible details, see Stickney and Weil's Financial Accounting... chapter 11 of the tenth edition. (The edition that all of my current students are reluctant to buy as they just managed to pick up a really cheap ninth edition. "Class, the first thing we're going to do is talk about why that ninth edition become so cheap just as the tenth edition was adopted by the intro financial professors.")
Anyway, the main point stands; stock-for-stock means that the countercyclical aspects of M&A that they were touting were, on their face, ridiculous.
As for the commenter who wanted to know about the rest of IB . . . well, there isn't much rest. There's securities issuance, which is in the trashcan until the equities market picks up, or cash flow gets strong enough to support more long-term debt. There's structured finance and related departments. These are the fun folks who brought you Enron's 87 zillion off-balance sheet "special purpose entities" and I don't think we need to ask why they're not doing so hot. Then there are the areas which technically are not part of Investment Banking, such as sales, trading, capital markets, brokerage, research, etc. Obviously, research is undergoing some reverses. Trading is doing fine in some spots, notso-hotso in others, but the overall revenue is simply not high enough to make up for the enormous fees that are being lost in the moribund investment banking business.
[For those of you who get their entire knowledge of how the financial firms work from the summer you took "Liar's Poker" to the beach, trading isn't as lucrative as it was when the S&L's were opening their vaults to the Solomon mortgage traders and inviting them to help themselves.]
And for the multiple emailers who have written to tell me that no one cares about goodwill, because professional investors just back it out of their valuation -- well, theoretically that's true, but in practice, managers were extremely reluctant to take the charge. Everyone I knew who actually worked on such deals told me the same thing: managers were paying hefty extra taxes in order to avoid the goodwill.
From the desk of Jane Galt:Question of the Day I
Question of the Day
I think that my anti-war interlocutors can agree with me that the last round of inspections were a dismal failure. Now that the Security Council seems intent on ensuring that we don't do anything to the inspections regime which might run the risk of making the inspections effective, what should we do now?
From the desk of Jane Galt:This article by Ryan Lizza
This article by Ryan Lizza has a look at the complicated process of getting inspections going again. If we go by the UN playbook, just the preliminary negotiations are expected to take five months.
From the desk of Jane Galt:Before I start, let me
Before I start, let me say that I am not a professional historian. But I did possess a modicum of interest on the topic of nuclear armament/disarmament before 9/11 -- though it's not like I had much choice, because I have family members who enjoy debating defense policy over dinner, and have for decades. Hours of fun for the entire family, so to speak.
So I've been following the debates on deterrance with interest. And I think there are some major errors being made by people whose understanding of the theory of deterrance is somewhat rudimentary. And no, I'm not naming names, because frankly, I've gotten enough angry e-mail about the Care Bears post. Memo: it's a joke. Not everything I say is meant as a serious commentary on geopolitical affairs. Anyone who read that post, and the comments, and did not laugh out loud at the commenter who suggested leading the charge with the My Little Pony cavalry, needs to turn off the computer and get out more.
Anyway, there are some misconceptions that I think some of my emailers/commenters/other bloggers are falling into. Call me a straw man constructer if you like; thankfully, I don't get paid for this. Unless you hit the tip jar, of course, and don't you think it's really about time you gave a little something back to the blogosphere? But I digress.
First of all, nuclear deterrance is not a simple matter of overwhelming force in response to threat, as some people seem to believe. I'm seeing a lot of people who seem to view deterrance against the Soviet Union, or Iraq, as a "I'll play nice, but if you smack me, I'll smack you harder" scenario. That's a very simple game theory construction known as "Tit-For-Tat", and that is absolutely not what deterrance is based on. If it had been, we'd all be little piles of radioactive waste by now. Tit for tat is actually a very good structure for many kinds of multi-move games, but in a nuclear scenario, it's very bad, because the step-up from the preceding action to a nuclear response is likely to be geometric, rather than arithmetic. Arithmetic escalation of response is what makes tit-for-tat work; in geometric escalation, which it's hard to avoid with nukes, things go kablooie too quick to develop a sustainable equilibrium. The Soviet Union invades West Berlin; we use a nuke; they hurl all their nukes at us; we hurl all ours at them. Bad, bad, bad idea.
Instead, the architects of MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) did something similar to what the Babylonian rabbis did in interpreting the Torah.
Did she go off her meds again? I hear you cry. No, but we are playing with the mgs until the tremors stop, thanks for asking.
No, seriously: in the interpretation of Jewish Law, there is a concept known as "building a wall around the Torah". Take, for example, the refusal to eat meat and dairy products together. The original prohibition that this is drawn from is "thou shalt not boil the kid in the milk of its mother". It's a pretty long way from there to "thou shalt not eat a cheeseburger, nay, nor even eat meat off a plate on which a slice of cheese has lain". You get there in successive steps: modern agriculture being what it is, there is a slight chance that the cream you are using in that Blanchette de Veau came from the cow that gave birth to the veal calf. Therefore, you shouldn't use it. You also shouldn't cook in a pot that has had milk in it, because some of the milk might linger in the pot, and you would be in violation of the commandment. Nor should you put cheese on a burger, because some of the milk in the cheese might get very hot and boil. . . next thing you know, you've got separate kitchens for meat and dairy. While a slapdash interpreter might have drawn the commandment very narrowly -- "It's okay as long as I don't deliberately boil the kid in the milk of its mother" -- the rabbis who defined the scope of modern Orthodoxy interpreted it very broadly, so that there was no chance of even unknowingly violating the commandment. And they ruled that you were as much in violation of the commandment if you ate a McDonalds cheeseburger as you would have been if you'd gone out and gotten milk from your cow so you could boil its calf for lunch. Thus they ensured that no one was tempted to slip.
Fascinating, you're saying, and what does this have to do with deterrance?
Well, the architects of MAD built a similar wall around nuclear use. They spelled out very clearly what actions, such as an invasion of West Berlin, would trigger overwhelming nuclear response. It was important that these actions were not themselves nuclear. Why? Because the logical response to an invasion of Berlin was not overwhelming nuclear force; it was some variation on conventional force, possibly backed up later with tactical nukes. But it was precisely that sort of escalation that the architects wanted to avoid -- inadvertently crossing a line in the sand where your opponent felt that it was necessary to make a limited nuclear response. Because once we'd had nukes used on our troops or cities in a limited fashion, the likely response, for a variety of reasons, would be all-out nuclear attack. And there goes the neighborhood.
MAD, frightening as it may seem, made nuclear use extremely unlikely, not merely because it threatened overwhelming response, but because it ensured that we never got into a pattern of escalation. It was not simply the threat, in other words; it was that any action that was likely to be the first step in an escalating conflict was itself chopped off by the threat of overwhelming force. Just as the rabbis drew the rules so widely that there was basically no possibility of getting into a situation where you were unknowingly boiling the kid in its mothers milk by saying that risking doing so was the same as actually doing so, the architects of MAD made sure that there was no possibility of getting into a situation where one side unknowingly escalated the conflict to the nuclear stage by declaring that the penalty for putting yourself at risk of doing so was the same as that for exploding a nuke. And now a light dawns, and you decide that maybe Jane isn't crazy, but just weird.
Now, what does that have to do with Iraq?
Well, this: we're not that committed to the Middle East. The equivalent to our Cold War deterrance strategy would be telling Saddaam that if he invaded his neighbors, we'd turn Iraq into glass. And that isn't true. The threat simply isn't credible. Israel might be able to credibly sustain a nuclear deterrance policy with Iraq, except that we complicate things. There are at least two nations that have the ability to tell Israel "If you nuke Iraq, we will utterly destroy you" -- us and Russia. (China may; I don't know what the range on their nuclear capability is. The other nuclear nations would not, as far as I can tell, be part of the equation). Not that we necessarily would. But it's not crystal clear that we necessarily wouldn't, either. So the combination of clear signalling, credible threat, blocked off escalation potential, and overwhelming, instant, certain response that sustained nuclear deterrance in the Soviet-American arms race cannot be re-created with a nuclear Iraq, as some people seem to believe. We almost got into a war with Russia, as it was; any scenario in which Saddaam has nukes will be much, much less stable.
From the desk of Jane Galt:So I'm reading through this
So I'm reading through this Washington Post article on cheating. And I'm horrified, because it says one survey showed that 3/4 of high school students cheat, which blows me away. I've never cheated on anything, as far as I can recall, and if my friends did, they didn't share it with me. How did we get to the point where this is possible? Students in my high school who were caught cheating were suspended or expelled -- and the reason for the disciplinary action showed up on your transcript. And the teachers knew who was cheating, because they had us for an hour and a half every day. Copious in-class writing assignments meant that students who tried to pass off someone else's work as theirs ran a high risk of the teacher picking out the ringer.
But that's not the point. As I was reading, I came across this truly bizarre phrase:
Even if students are caught, the consequences can be negligible. At some colleges, students who plagiarize are expelled. But a high school student caught plagiarizing may just get a zero for that particular assignment. Often, he or she will be given a chance to make it up for at least partial credit. And there's no mention of it on the all-important transcript that gets sent to colleges. At Bardstown High School in Kentucky last year, 118 seniors were caught copying and pasting from the Internet. Sometimes entire short stories were lifted. The punishment? One essay on the evils of plagiarism. No National Honor Society memberships were pulled, and one of those caught cheating remained the class valedictorian.Plagiarism--a derivative of the Latin word for kidnapping--literally means to steal someone else's words or ideas and take credit for them. According to the rules of scholarship, if you borrow someone else's words, you put them in quotation marks. If you use someone else's idea, you acknowledge it in your essay or in a footnote, even if it came from the revisionist southern-partisan.com.
What does this mean? Are there students who believe it's okay to plagiarize as long as their source is a much-reviled regionalist journal? Do the "rules of scholarship" refer specifically to Southern Partisan magazine, or is it included in a larger category of Magazines You Might Have Thought You Don't Have to Footnote Because They're On the Wrong Side of History? And is The Nation on that list? Is the cheating epidemic we're currently undergoing centered around a failure to accurately identify the sources of potentially revisionist material? Do America's students not know how to correctly cite internet references containing hyphens?
There's no other reference to Southern Partisan in the article. It's just a random aside, appearing from nowhere, referring to nothing, making no sense.
September 28, 2002
From the desk of Jane Galt:Titter. Chuckle. Snort. Is there
Titter. Chuckle. Snort. Is there anything in the entire world more fun than a barrel of WTO protesters?
September 27, 2002
From the desk of Jane Galt:So why did Al Gore
So why did Al Gore make that speech last Thursday, which most commentators, conservative and liberal, seem to agree put the Dems between a rock and a hard place? Well, I think it's because he thinks -- correctly -- that his only hope of getting the nomination again is to run to the left.
Moderate Democrats aren't going to nominate him again; they're interested in getting power for the Democrats so that they can enact a platform only modestly different from what would be enacted under the Republicans. They aren't going to take a risk on a man who lost the Clinton legacy to Shrub; they're going to nominate someone fresh, like John Edwards. In this case, better the devil you don't know than the loser you know all too well.
It's the party faithful, who would have felt nearly as hurt by the events in Florida if Dilbert had been the party nominee, to whom Al Gore must look. They're considerably to the left of the moderates who formed his base last time. His other hope is capturing the primary votes of the dyed-in-the-wool liberals, the ones who believe that the Republicans not only lied, cheated, and stole to win the election, but also no doubt sacrificed innocent Democratic babies to their fiery god. They're angry about Florida, angry at the party leadership because we don't have national health care yet, and welfare reform is still here, and the state hasn't withered away in time for true Communism to arrive before Friends is on. And they're madder than a wet hen about the war. They're also in favor of candidates that have the same kind of broad, national appeal as Walter Mondale, but no matter; for Al Gore, it's them or nothing.
So he's going on the attack. Consistency? It doesn't matter whether he's consistent. His potential supporters don't care whether he believes what he's saying; what they care is that he goes on the record saying it. Al Gore is trying to build a Reagan-style revolution, getting grassroots support to wrest control of the party from the moderates who are setting policy now.
I can kind of see where he's coming from. The moderate Republicans of Reagan's era were substantively indistinguishable from the Democrats; it was to Nixon we looked for price controls, massive expansion of federal entitlements, and foolhardy industrial policies. I can see how he tells himself that with the moderate Democratic leadership it's exactly the same thing now.
Except. Except that Reagan was selling his platform on low taxes, something almost everyone's in favor of; and regardless of what you think of his platform, he actually had one. Al Gore's speech is full of vague platitudes rather than specific proposals. And he's staking his candidacy on criticizing a highly popular president on the subject of a highly popular war. It may get him the nomination, though I doubt it, but it will certainly cost him the election. Not to mention drive another nail into the coffin of the left wing of the Democratic party. Although to be fair, I can see how another run could unify the party like never before -- in their dislike of the man who lost them the presidency twice.
From the desk of Jane Galt:Question of the Day: Every
Question of the Day:
Every so often I come across a historical issue which I'd thoroughly forgotten about, and rediscover, with surprise, some averted disaster. Thus did I read about FDR's attempt to pack the Supreme Court, and realize what a truly frightening thing this was. How did the Democrats make a hero of a man who basically attempted to gut the constitution in order to expand his power far beyond what the framers intended, or what he was elected for? And what would have happened if he had succeeded? Is my horror unjustified?
September 26, 2002
From the desk of Jane Galt:I remember how excited I
I remember how excited I was when I read in Time magazine or some such about the carbon-emissions-free future we could all enjoy just by switching our energy source to hydrogen fuel cells. And I remember how bone-crushingly stupid I felt when an engineer I know who enjoys travel, long walks on the beach, and making non-engineers feel bone-crushingly stupid, pointed out two things that I should have known:
1) Hydrogen is not lying around on the ground here on the planet Earth. It has to be produced. Producing this requires energy from another source. In our country, with our fear of nuclear, and our hydro supply that's far exceeded by our demand, that source is -- coal or oil.2) Hydrogen fuel cells are widely touted as clean because all they emit is "harmless water vapor". The single largest greenhouse gas is. . . you guessed it, harmless water vapor.
Hydrogen fuel cells might help improve our efficiency a little bit, because the big turbines they use to generate the electricity to make the hydrogen are much more efficient than the internal combustion engine that powers your car. But not that much, because most of the energy from burning oil is lost as heat. . . and then more is lost in transmission to the factory. . . and more is lost in turning water or methane into hydrogen. . . and more is lost in turning the hydrogen back into water and energy. So the net effect isn't very large, the Second Law of Thermodynamics being what it is.
So here's my question: I mentioned fuel cells to one engineer, who instantly set me straight. How come none of the reporters writing breathless articles about hydrogen power can do the same?
(Link via Dave Tepper)
From the desk of Jane Galt:This one's for all of
This one's for all of us who couldn't stay on Atkins.
From the desk of Jane Galt:Question of the Day: What
Question of the Day: What is the evolutionary purpose of crying? Not tears, which obviously clear out the eyes, but why do we cry when we're sad? As far as I know, no other species does this.
From the desk of Jane Galt:Looks like Jessica Lange has
Looks like Jessica Lange has confused being famous with being taken seriously on matters of importance. John and Antonio have the scoop.
From the desk of Jane Galt:A reader sends a modest
A reader sends a modest proposal for Iraq:
Where are the Care Bears (tm) when we need them? Certainly the awesome power of the "Care Bear Stare" would melt even nasty Saddam's heart and turn those Al-Queda frowns upside down! I say we send a message to Care-a-lot Land and summon our fuzzy friends!Daring? Unique? Thinking-outside-the-box? You betcha! Sure, those Mr. Macho U.S. Marines might sneer, as might the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, the Coast Guard, my family, and most of my co-workers. Who cares? What do they know?
Just look at all the advantages of a Care Bear-based solution:
1) Bears clad from head to toe in soft fur -- will not offend traditional Middle East sensibilities.
2) Collecting Care Bear products a rewarding hobby to fill the void caused by loss of terrorist activities.
3) Care Bears compatible with all NATO aircraft weapons mounts.
4) No one will want to be a suicide bomber when there is a visit from Birthday Bear (tm) coming up!
5) Share Bear (tm) might get those Arabs to lower the oil prices a bit.
6) Care Bears are environmentally friendly.
7) "Evil Bert" indicates that Middle Eastern Cultures open to influence by soft, fuzzy dolls.
8) Bear meat probably not Halal, preventing unfortunate misunderstandings on purpose of Care Bear deployment. (N.B.: probably best if Gentle Heart Lamb (tm) stays home)
I am disappointed with the administration for not even considering the possibility of deploying a Care Bear-based solution to the crisis. Such irresponsibility is obviously due to nasty conservatives led by Professor Cold-Heart's twin with a Texas accent.
I am even more unhappy (not mad, just very, very, very hurt) with the liberal anti-war left for ignoring the Care Bears -- the Care Bear worldview seems of a piece with the liberal worldview. An added plus -- the Care Bear Stare would soften up that Mean Republican Administration (tm)!
I look forward to you incisive commentary and keen analysis of this woefully neglected issue.
See guys, that's the kind of novel, thoughtful solution we need more of in this world. Remember -- sharing means caring.
From the desk of Jane Galt:Jesse Walker doesn't like the
Jesse Walker doesn't like the West Wing. Neither do I.
Not because it's left wing. So is pretty much every show on television, and I do watch the idiot box occasionally, and enjoy it. It's a pleasant addition to my needlepointing.
Walker hates the writing, specifically the dialogue. I hate the plot. Or perhaps a better word is the style: Sermon With A Cast.
The West Wing is Touched By An Angel for the political class. Sorkin takes the most burning issues of our day and reduces them to the kind of saccharin morals we spoon-feed fourth graders in their social studies texts. "Killing is bad." "Racism is bad." "People need help sometimes, especially if they vote Democratic." What grates on me is that Sorkin just can't bear to ever, ever give his ideological opponents a good argument, lest The Proles be misled into thinking their are actually two sides to an issue, and thus risk making a bad decision at the polls next year. Okay, I already read the Democratic position papers. The words don't suddenly vibrate with new meaning because they issue from the mouth of Rob Lowe.
The first episode I ever saw is emblematic: Bartlett takes on a woman who is clearly a doppelganger for Dr. Laura. In this scene, he just blows her away by citing all sorts of laws from Deuteronomy about various ritual sacrifices and such, which reduces her to incoherence as she attempts to explain why the laws on homosexuality apply, but the laws on sacrificing two white doves at the temple do not.
Nowhere does Sorkin reveal his native prejudices more clearly. I have heard such hilarious questioning from any number of liberals in my time, always posed to other people who are equally ignorant about any theology more complicated than the kind that comes in little books that come pre-packaged with crystals and incense sticks. The Jews have been debating these sorts of things for 5,000. The Catholics have been at it for 2,000. The fundamentalists have been giving it a good go for at least several hundred. Yet Sorkin & friends, to whom it would never actually occur to, y'know, ask someone, think that they have discovered a whole new set of questions that those ignorant rubes with the bibles were too filled with hate to even think of. Memo to Aaron: If a president had ever, ever directed that sort of inquisition to an Orthodox Jew in front of the press, what we would have seen was not His Triumphant Victory over the Narrowminded Religious Zealots, but the Presidential Ass Getting Handed to The President On a Plate, as she whipped out the eight zillion pages of talmudic debate concerning the very issues he'd brought up. But, of course, we don't actually want the opposition to be people; only cartoon villains can play opposite Superman.
Contrast this with Law and Order, which breaks liberal, but always, always makes sure that both sides have good arguments to make. Ultimately, conflicts don't always get resolved; sometimes, you have to make a judgement call between two competing values, and get an answer that truly satisfies no one. There's good reason it's the longest-running show on television.
But Gawd, it wouldn't be any less tiresome if it were libertarian. Less realistic, and there would be, no doubt, funny Pot Smoking in the Lincoln Bedroom scenes to leaven the dullness. But if it were libertarian, and still took the same smugly ignorant approach to opposing arguments, you'd find me in my living room hurling my needlepoint scissors at the television and screaming "Not all opponents of drug legalization are evil hypocrites, you evil hypocrites!"
But I digress.
It wouldn't be that hard to do a really good, still left-leaning show; get some Republicans, intelligent ones, and have them write the dialogue for the opposition. Let the opposition win once in a while. Any senior Creative Writing major ought to be able to tell you that any book where the hero never loses quickly gets tiresome.
But you know how those fundamentalists are. Can't risk letting anyone think for themselves; after all, they might get the wrong answer.
From the desk of Jane Galt:That reminds me, a propos
That reminds me, a propos of absolutely nothing, that when the Republicans took the House in '94, apparently that gave the residents of the previous speaker's district quite a shock. Someone was telling me at dinner that a poll revealed that a majority of the people in his district thought that whoever they elected automatically because Speaker of the House. I don't know if it's true -- but I find it frightening that I don't have any difficulty at all believing that it could be true.
From the desk of Jane Galt:So now Daschle's strategy becomes
So now Daschle's strategy becomes more apparent: he's trying to delay the vote on the war.
I don't think he thought this through. First of all, he made it into a Democrat/Republican issue more explicitly than it already was. Bush said "some in the Senate care more about politics than national security", with nary a word about Democrats; Tom Daschle told the nation that it was the Democrats who were obstructing Bush, and gave a platform to remarks that otherwise, almost no one would have heard.
Now, I think that the President's remarks went too far. And I understand why Daschle was hopping mad. But the speech he made on the Senate floor was hasty and not one of his finer rhetorical moments, and he's certainly not helping himself by saying "Well, now I don't know if we can vote on this until Bush has done a full grovel," that being what he's been telling the network shows. I don't think that "sulky girlfriend" is the image that the Democratic national leadership wants to portray heading into the election.
The Democrats, it seems to me, are doing exactly what the Republicans did under Clinton. They simply cannot learn to cut their losses, abandon issues they can't win, and get on with it. I understand that Daschle is in a tough place -- Wellstone may very well lose his seat if the war comes up for a vote. I admire Wellstone's honor, and I understand what a tough spot that puts the leadership of the Democratic Party in. But hurling yourself again and again against the rampart of a president's popularity ratings, when each sortie decimates your ranks and has no visible effect on the fortress you're attacking, isn't brave. It's foolish.
From the desk of Jane Galt:The administration is saying they
The administration is saying they have proof that Iraq has links to Al Qaeda.
More and more, I'm beginning to believe that the administration is adopting a policy of letting opponents raise arguments against an action, letting them wear the argument out in the press, and then calmly releasing information that demolishes it. Each new argument thus ultimately raises the credibility of the Administration, and lowers that of its opponents. If I'm right, it's an absolutely masterly control of information, and the discipline is impressive. They don't have the Clinton administration's all-out crisis response, but they have their own strengths.
But if this is the case, why haven't said opponents taken notice?
Update God, how fast do y'all type? I no sooner post than some speed reader flies to his email account to correct me. Or try to. When will y'all learn that I am always, always right?
Correspondant Brian emails to say that he doesn't think the ties in the article are that strong. But that's not the point. The anti-war press, and some bloggers I could name, have been stating that (I'm paraphrasing): "The administration is trying to gin up support for the war with outrageous lies, like it's flimsy attempt to connect Al Qaeda to Saddaam when there is no evidence that there is any connection."
The Clinton spin machine would have been all over this like white on rice. Probably they would have demolished it, but it wouldn't have gotten a lot of press, and so righties (their presumed opposition) would be repeating the trope long after it had been discredited, while party faithful wearily dragged out the evidence with each new wing-nut.
The Bush administration, on the other hand, let it grow until it had wide currency. And now when the myth is popped, it makes a big noise that everyone notices, and not incidentally, tarnishes the reputation of everyone who said it.
Each strategy has its advantages and disadvantages. But I confess to being amazed at how politically shrewd Bush has turned out to be. I didn't expect it.
(Incidentally, anyone who defended Clinton, who then complains about Bush's media management, is off my Christmas card list. I mean it. There's ridiculous, and then there's moronic.)
From the desk of Jane Galt:Clash of civilizations? This fellow
Clash of civilizations? This fellow makes a good argument.
The article was written in 1999, but this passage is utterly chilling:
The conflict between the West and the Confucian-Islamic states focuses largely, although not exclusively, on nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, ballistic missiles and other sophisticated means for delivering them, and the guidance, intelligence and other electronic capabilities for achieving that goal. The West promotes nonproliferation as a universal norm and nonproliferation treaties and inspections as means of realizing that norm. It also threatens a variety of sanctions against those who promote the spread of sophisticated weapons and proposes some benefits for those who do not. The attention of the West focuses, naturally, on nations that are actually or potentially hostile to the West.
The non-Western nations, on the other hand, assert their right to acquire and to deploy whatever weapons they think necessary for their security. They also have absorbed, to the full, the truth of the response of the Indian defense minister when asked what lesson he learned from the Gulf War: "Don't fight the United States unless you have nuclear weapons." Nuclear weapons, chemical weapons and missiles are viewed, probably erroneously, as the potential equalizer of superior Western conventional power. China, of course, already has nuclear weapons; Pakistan and India have the capability to deploy them. North Korea, Iran, Iraq, Libya and Algeria appear to be attempting to acquire them. A top Iranian official has declared that all Muslim states should acquire nuclear weapons, and in 1988 the president of Iran reportedly issued a directive calling for development of "offensive and defensive chemical, biological and radiological weapons."
Yes, that's what the Middle East needs -- nukes.
From the desk of Jane Galt:Steven Den Beste has a
Steven Den Beste has a post on military spending in Europe should the US pull out. He disagrees with me that German spending would rise (and since he spends a lot more time thinking about military things than I do, you should weight this accordingly). Most interesting, however, is the point he makes that much-vaunted European diplomatic efforts are becoming less effective as they lose the stick that went along with the carrot.
I've argued time and time again that both are necessary to negotiation; you may only pull one or the other out of the bag, but you need to have 'em both there. Den Beste makes a point I knew unconsciously, but not consciously: that we provided Europe's threat until the mid-nineties, and that as our interests diverged, their foreign policy has become less effective, because they couldn't back up their efforts with any sort of force projection. As he says, why is Europe pretty much irrelevant in the Middle East? Because we can put soldiers on the ground, and they can't.
(Before you send me the angry emails, think about it: why is the US involved in peacemaking in Israel and Northern Ireland, to name two places, when Europe is much closer to both countries? Recent successful European diplomacy efforts I can think of are almost solely centered around either events right in their back yard, which used American force to back up their efforts, or former colonies where they use cash to clean up the mess they left.)
In many ways it becomes more obvious that Europe needs military force of its own. Not that I think this will be enduring fun for America; it's not fun having more players with competing interests to deal with. But ultimately, I think, as Den Beste speculates, that it will make them better friends to us, and us to them.
September 25, 2002
From the desk of Jane Galt:Group Captain Mandrake has the
Group Captain Mandrake has the German point of view on our current tiff from an ardent SDP supporter.
Which brings up some of the emails I've gotten.
People have accused me of hypocritical moralism about the German elections. Listen, if they think the war in Iraq is immoral, and they can't support it, well then, they shouldn't support it. They're a sovereign nation.
But that's not what my interlocutors, particularly the German ones, really want. What they really want is for there to be no costs for refusing to support it.
Allies support each other unconditionally. At the very least, they do what Canada has done and shut up. They do not announce to the public, without consulting or even notifying their allies, that they will block assets to allied military assets in their country. They particularly do not do this for the purposes of grandstanding, when no one has requested the use of those assets.
They do not allow their ministers to compare the heads of allied states to Hitler.
We now know that we cannot trust Germany the way you trust a real ally. They made their choice; they don't want to be part of an American (Anglosphere?) bloc. That's their perfect right. But then you don't get the goodies that come from being part of the American bloc. If Germany wants to be an independant military power, it has to actually do so. We are not going to continuing paying for them to dress up and pretend.
We can argue about who made the split necessary, but ultimately it's irrelevant. The split is now there. Den Beste casts it in terms of honor, but I think of it in terms of trust. We don't trust Germany any more. Her leaders violated our trust. We can't go back to feeling the way we did before, even if we wanted to. The Germans have sent emails saying they feel the same way -- well, I'm sorry about that. But if that's really the case, you shouldn't want to be allied with us.
The funniest letters came from a slightly nutty French guy screaming that I couldn't want Germany to re-arm. The same thing applies. You felt big and powerful when you kicked the US out of the bases in your country. You wanted to stand on your own two feet, without the burden of supporting the US. Well, when push comes to shove, is the US going to protect you from a re-armed Germany? Maybe. Maybe not. Independance has costs as well as benefits.
(Not that I think Germany re-armed is Hitler III. But judging from my email, a lot of French people do.)
The world changed on September 11th for us. Germans who are saying that they're only reacting as they must should remember that we are too. I'm deeply saddened to see our relationship hurt, and I'm worried by what's happening to the world. But I can't turn back the clock, and I won't feel guilty about it. Nor do I want Germans to feel guilty about it. But I don't have much sympathy when they complain that it's really all our fault either.
From the desk of Jane Galt:Question of the day: How
Question of the day: How do you know that deterrence is working on Iraq?
I mean, it might be working in the sense that, after you jump out a 50 story window, flapping your arms works -- until you hit the ground. If he's two years away from getting a bomb, and we don't substantially change what we're doing, is that working? Will it still be "working" in two years, when he gets the bomb? And if you are sure that he does not already have nukes, why are you so sure that after he gets them, the military status quo will prevail? It's not like it did when the Soviets or the Chinese or the Israelis acquired them.
Yesterday's question has been answered, somewhat. Some people have pointed out that we will be redeploying special forces from Afghanistan, specificially, the 10th mountain, airborne assets, and special forces. Will all of these go, or some of them? Is that a foregone conclusion, or a guess?
Least satisfying were those who responded with vague quotations about needing to build up after the effort expended in Iraq. Yes, that's true, but that doesn't answer my question. The things we expended in Afghanistan that we have to rebuild, like missiles and cluster bombs, are not necessarily things that we will be using in Afghanistan going forward.
Also, Afghanistan is not synonymous with Al Qaeda. There are multiple problems in Iraq, of which Al-Qaeda/the Taliban are only one. And more and more of our victories against Al Qaeda are coming from degrading their presence in other countries, notably Pakistan, but also Western Europe and here.
I guess what I was trying to figure out was whether it is actually not possible to simultaneously sustain both operations at high efficiency levels, or if it simply more difficult/expensive. That question still hasn't been answered, although I presume the people who sent me detailed information on what units might be redeployed could answer it, if they chose.
From the desk of Jane Galt:VodkaPundit for President! So far
So far the Blogosphere nominees include Lawrence Simon and Our Fearless Leader. Maybe we should have a blogosphere debate in which the Blog party chooses it's candidate based on photogeneity and ability to deliver a speech without staring fixedly at the teleprompter.
From the desk of Jane Galt:You knew I wouldn't be
You knew I wouldn't be able to resist weighing in on tehe Burqa, didn't you?
Aziz Poonwalla, originally picking up on my post about our ability to culturally colonize Islam, is arguing that the Burka and the Bikini are both emblems of male control over women. I can see where he's coming from, though I don't agree with it entirely.
For one thing, the amount of clothing that a culture chooses to believe is necessary for modesty is fairly arbitrary. Mohammed may have been shocked by the display of bare breasts in some of the tribes he encountered, but it's a sure thing that if it really was common, the men didn't think of it as particularly sexy. Ho, hum, breasts. No, really, I'm serious. The only reason y'all are titillated by cleavage now is that it's usually covered. I'm not saying that men wouldn't be interested in them, but if they weren't covered, they wouldn't find uncovered breasts any sexier than you find uncovered ankles.
Uncovered ankles? I'm equating breasts to ankles? Well, your Victorian ancestors were obessed with them. They had a lot better chance of getting a look at a lady's cleavage than they did at her bare ankles. Paens were written to the glimpse of ankle. Yet I bet you don't even know what your girlfriends ankles look like, unless she's sprained one recently. Fat? Thin? Bony? Your Great-Grandfather would have known.
Bikinis are sexual because they uncover what is normally covered. ANd in this climate, a good thing, too.
What Aziz is arguing for is, in my opinion, a well meaning but futile attempt to take sex out of male-female relations. I had an interesting conversation with Norah Vincent a little while ago on a similar topic: the way that NOW and other feminist groups have made enemies of the womb. Reproduction is inherently unfair, and there's nothing that can be done to make it fair . . . except giving women the same right to walk away that men have. Doing this requires them to pretend that these are equivalent activities; to argue that failing to take care of a child is morally the same as preventing it from living. In fact, NARAL and NOW, in the ultimate reductio ad absurdum, have elevated the latter choice over the former, approving abortion but disapproving guys who excercise their "right to choose" not to be a father. They've staked out some extremely precarious moral and political ground.
Aziz is, probably without knowing it, endorsing another brand of feminism, the "difference feminists". Those are the folks who set up the speech codes and sexual harassment laws in a futile attempt to excise every trace of sex from all but the narrowest spheres of human life. Can't be done. All the Burqa, or a speech code does, is bottle in a potent force that then explodes in dangerous and unforeseen ways wherever it finds a weak spot. The more you cover up, the more time men are going to devote to trying to figure out what's underneath all that fabric.
Sex is a powerfully disruptive force, and I don't think that any society can survive long without finding ways to control both sex, and its consequences. But I don't think that you can argue that there is some platonically ideal way to do so; that the set of standards you've stumbled upon is best. I certainly don't think that you can argue that you've managed to remove it entirely.
From the desk of Jane Galt:The only problem with Doug
The only problem with Doug Turnbull is that he doesn't post often enough. Well, here's an excellent piece deconstructing another simplistic type of anti-war argument.
Incidentally, Jim Henley is ribbing me about the "simplistic terms of a morality play" line in this post. Well, I never gloried in being simplistic as some Republicans did, but I also think that we're referring to two different things. A situation may be complex, and it may require sophisticated analysis, but that doesn't imply that the answer is also complex. In this case, I think it is valuable to make complex analysis, but that doesn't mean we're going to get a sophisticated answer. Ultimately, we're going to do one of three fairly simple things:
We're going to invade, or institute an inspections regime so thorough that it will constitute a military invasion.We're going to stay with variations on the status quo: ineffective inspections, limited by the most of the same qualifications that made them ineffective last round, and sanctions.
We're going to pull back to the kind of mild interference-running we use on Iran.
Opponents will say I'm sneaky to load working inspections in there with the invasion. Well, right now that's where the UN is putting them -- off the table, to be achieved only if we bully them into it. And I've written before that a regime that would really work would involve thousands and thousands of soldiers there to support massive simultaneous inspection, and prevent the shell games and the petty degrading of our capabilities that Saddaam used so successfully last time around. And that many troops in-country will render Saddaam unable to engage in the kind of brutal repression of his people that keeps him in power. Which means he's not going to go for it. So in my mind, it's in that group. But fine, take it out; make it four. None of these are complex solutions. They are, basically: use overwhelming force to get what we want; do nothing; or give up. The kind of elegant diplomatic solutions we all wish would solve this problem only work when there are complex baskets of things that the various parties want. We want, basically, one thing: Saddaam never, ever gets WMD. This is inconsistent with Saddaam's goals, which are: continue breathing, stay in power, increase that power. He sees WMD as crucial to at least 2 of those goals. There's no horse-trading, no brilliant orchestration of competing interests to reveal a previously unthought of solution, that is going to reconcile those sets of goals. I mean, I guess we could offer to invade Iran for him if he gives up his WMD, but isn't that Sending the Wrong Message to the Children?
Vedrine was complaining that the US was seeking simplistic answers. My problem with the anti-war crowd isn't that their answers are simple; it's that their arguments are.
September 24, 2002
From the desk of Jane Galt:Excellent article by William Saletan
Excellent article by William Saletan on the differing views of human nature that animate Bush's foreign policy vs. Gore's:
The party of good will, led by Gore, believes that the behavior of foreign peoples and governments toward the United States is driven by whether they like us. If we're nice to them, they'll be nice to us. If we're mean to them, they'll be mean to us. "It is impossible to succeed against terrorism unless we have secured the continuing, sustained cooperation of many nations," Gore asserted. By angering these nations, he argued, a unilateral American attack on Iraq would jeopardize that cooperation.Believers in good will tend to talk about foreign peoples and leaders the way you talk about friends, colleagues, or neighbors. Other nations will be friendly to us if we treat them as "equals," said Gore, but Bush treats them with "disdain." Instead of being "calmed down," they're suffering "apprehensions" about us. As Gore sees it, after Sept. 11, 2001, "We had an enormous reservoir of good will and sympathy and shared resolve all over the world. That has been squandered in a year's time and replaced with great anxiety" about American adventurism. "Look at the entire German election campaign," said Gore. "It revealed a profound and troubling change in the attitude of the German electorate toward the United States."
The party of fear, led by Bush, takes a different view. It believes that the behavior of foreign peoples and governments toward the United States is driven, as President Reagan put it, not by whether they like us, but by whether they respect us. Terrorists don't think the way your friends or colleagues do. They're "a bunch of killers," Bush declared Monday. As for our allies and potential allies, they respond more to forcefulness than to pleading. Lead, and they'll follow. Punish an upstart, and they'll fall in line. "Either you're with us or you're with the enemy," said Bush. It's "necessary to send a message to friend and foe alike that we're plenty tough, if you rouse this country." The Germans don't like us? Screw 'em. A few good slaps, and they'll come around.
I don't know if I buy the idea that this is actually what's animating their foreign policy, though I think the fundamental distinction is sound. Bush obviously draws starker rhetorical lines than he does in practice. And while I think that the Clinton administration was, disastrously, more interested in building up goodwill with Europe than in deterring nations who took restraint and amity as a sign of weakness, they did after all send troops a number of places. But rhetorically, this is certainly where they've positioned themselves.
So why do I think that Bush's view is the nearer correct?
I don't, globally. I don't think that we need to invade China to gain advantage in the region; we'll do far better trading with them. I don't think we need to arm up in Europe to ensure that the Belgian Menace is contained. But I do think that in the case of Iraq, the stick is more appropriate than the carrot. Why?
The kind of regime we're dealing with. It isn't that it's a dictatorship; so is China, or near enough. It isn't even that he's crazy; so are half the leaders in teh world, so far as I can tell, and we all seem to get by. It's that on international terms, the carrot must be predicated on an exchange of value. We give countries aid because we hope it will make them rich and they'll invent or produce stuff we want, and we'll all get richer selling stuff to each other. We trade with countries because it makes us both better off. We enter into alliances because they make both nations more secure.
Iraq has nothing to offer. Oil, of course. But the oil doesn't really seem to improve things in the Middle East. And the money we give him to buy oil buys the arms with which he threatens his neighbors, and the bounties he pays the families of suicide bombers.
Aid might alleviate some poverty at the margins, but only at the expense of sending an immense amount of money into Saddaam's personal coffers. Giving aid to dictators like him is a net destruction of value.
He might, in exchange, give up his territorial and munitions ambitions. But he isn't interested in that sort of exchange. He's interested in the sort of exchange where we give him stuff, and he pretends to give up his nasties until we get tired of listening to France whine.
The Iraqi economy is not so constituted as to develop the kind of mutual ties with the rest of the world that foster the goodwill approach. When they trade with us, it doesn't make them a prosperous nation with a broad middle class; it makes them Zimbabwe with mineral deposits. It doesn't have to be this way; there's nothing intrinsic to the Arab soul that makes this so. But it is this way currently, and until we get rid of the corrupt system that suppresses economic development, there is no way to develop the economic interdependance that makes military threat less necessary.
From the desk of Jane Galt:Can someone please explain to
Can someone please explain to me what this argument that the war in Iraq will distract us from Al Qaeda is supposed to mean? What resources are we using for the hunt for Al Qaeda that will be diverted to Iraq?
And how come 90% of the people I see making this argument were arguing a year ago that we shouldn't go after Al Qaeda, at least not in any way that would actually threaten the ongoing health of OBL et. al.?
From the desk of Jane Galt:Why we shouldn't leave Saddaam
Why we shouldn't leave Saddaam in place, Part Nine Zillion.
From the desk of Jane Galt:I've been having an ongoing
I've been having an ongoing conversation for the past couple of weeks that started in the Philadelphia Art Museum. The initial exchange was between a friend of mine, who grew up in Soviet Ukraine, about American morality.
"Americans are too black and white about everything", she said. "If you grow up in Europe, especially Eastern Europe, you see shades of gray." She was talking about cheating the government, pulling small fast ones on corporations, that sort of thing. Americans are too rigid about their ethics, was the upshot; it makes them dangerously inflexible.
And she's right. We are hyper-rigid about our ethics. But I admire the hyper-rigidity. My answer to her was that, while I am not under the impression that I could have sustained an American style ethics system under, say, Soviet Russia, nonetheless, I think it is superior to the system in use in most of the world, which I would sum up as: one set of morals for "us" (family, friends) and another set of morals for "them".
Now, of course, America does not practice this ideal perfectly. But in other parts of the world, it's not even an ideal. There are large groups of people who do not consider it "wrong" in a moral sense to kill or cheat people outside the clan. It may have unpleasant repercussions, but it's not immoral. I, on the other hand, was marched five blocks back to the store I stole the tootsie roll from to hand it back to the merchant with a tearful apology. And I know I'm not the only one this happened to.
Americans, as a group, embrace the ideal that there is one contiguous set of morals for everyone. It's not okay to steal from your employer, not even to give it to your cousin who really needs it. It's not okay to attack, rape or kill people even if they're not related to you. These things do happen, but they're not widely accepted as the norm. That's huge. That's what makes America work.
Really, a remarkable number of people don't cheat on their taxes, steal when they can, fiddle their expense reports, divide themselves into ethnic interest groups, or violate, in a hundred different ways, the trust our society places in them, which in other countries is available only to family members. It's an idea that's unique, I think, to Western Europe, and I think that the Puritannical values, for which we're everywhere derided, are it's purest form. And I think that that is what makes America so successful. This is what Ralph Peters meant when he said that the clan or extended family as the basic social/political unit is the kiss of death to becoming an economic superstar. A clear set of values, and the notion that those values apply to everyone, is a key part of the "Operating System" on which capitalism has to be installed.
But what about Asia, I was asked. Well, we eradicated those notions in Japan, and until recently, Britain controlled the operating environment in Hong Kong. And lo, Japan and Hong Kong are the only countries with high rates of Total Factor Productivity growth. I'll explain that concept another time; the important point is that while Japan
has massively increased the productivity of its inputs (labor and capital), other Asian "miracles" have dismal growth in this key indicator. They haven't increased the productivity of their resources; they've just raised the inputs, through extremely high rates of forced savings. As their economies mature, the return on investment will decline, and the miracle will start to look mighty soggy.
That's why the relativist morality of the sixties radicals was so destructive to the inner cities. Martin Luther King was the standard bearer of middle class blacks who wanted to live with dignity. He was standing against a racialism that hurt the interests of everyone who practiced it. After Malcolm X, however, it was Us against Them, and as usual, it was Us who got hurt. You do not build a stable middle-class environment when the leaders are telling everyone that it's okay to assault, batter, rob, or kill, as long as you do it to "them" -- and isn't that what Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson are saying when they take the side of the thugs in their community against "The Man? Not that they invented this practice; my ancestors were pretty good at it themselves, and you'll note how long it took them to get out of the ghetto.
That sounds awfully paternalistic, doesn't it? Of course, it's a two way street, just as it was with the Irish; they closed in on themselves because the WASPs closed them out. But the sad thing is, it doesn't matter. You can't build a middle class society -- stable, orderly, decent, with a modicum of happiness thrown in for the majority of folks -- without those values. The Nation of Islam understands this; that's why they enforce those values within the larger community, which allows them to build a pretty high-functioning little economic community. That's why no amount of tax breaks will revitalize a high crime area; nor any amount of foreign aid build a capitalist miracle out of a society still mired in tribal wars.
So the next time someone tells you that Americans are too black and white, just remember to thank your lucky stars that it's so.
Update I've been accused of saying that blacks are immoral. No, no, no. That's not what I meant at all. I was speaking on the community level, to a breakdown of reciprocal morality. And I was speaking of the inner cities. I used Malcolm X and Martin Luther King because they're widely known; parallel processes occurred in all sorts of inner cities, including white areas. Blacks in the middle class behave pretty much like everyone else in the middle class. Poor whites in high-crime communities behave pretty much like everyone else in a high-crime area where community norm enforcement has broken down -- "Screw you, I want mine." The point about Malcom X was not that he was angry; it was that his separatist tendencies paved the way for the Black Panthers, MOVE, and other groups who, first of all, saw the poor and criminals as their target audience, and second of all, combined their ideology with the radical poverty ideology of the era that said it wasn't wrong to steal, or engage in violence, as long as it was against those richer than you, or those outside your race.
Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson were born in that era. They make excuses for egregious black criminals -- but only those whose crimes are committed on whites. Sharpton not only comes within a hair's breadth of encouraging lynching, as he did with the stores in Harlem, or the motorist who accidentally killed a little black girl; he then refuses to condemn those who commit them. Both Jackson and Sharpton excused the Reginald Denny mob on the basis of race. Message: go ahead, attack people. Steal from merchants. Just not your own kind. Obviously, this message isn't played to the middle class, though it probably touches a sense of angry justice in some. It's aimed at the poor and disaffected, who form the political base of inner city leaders.
It's not just reprehensible; it's a major barrier to building a sustainable community. The inner cities have few mechanisms for capital formation; they need outside entrepreneurs to come in and provide jobs, services, and a critical mass of commerce into which local entrepreneurs can grow.
But this has nothing to do with the majority of blacks who are in the middle class, any more than a riot in South Boston has to do with me. Nor is it somehow characteristic of the black underclass. It happened in Russia. It happens in most countries in most parts of the world. After all, it was my ancestors, the Irish, who invented the race riot in America; it was they who perfected an interlocking system of family obligations that had its fullest flower in the corruption of Richard Daley. All oppressed minorities are tempted to it, understandably. In many places, the majority does it. I'm just saying that you can't build a middle class community until you abandon it.
September 23, 2002
From the desk of Jane Galt:Why do people keep saying
Why do people keep saying "He won't give nukes to terrorists" as if they know this for a fact? You're almost certainly middle class, probably a guy, sitting in a comfy chair somewhere in America. How the hell do you know what Saddaam will or will not do? What, are you channeling Idi Amin?
The Cold War doctrine of deterrence was intimately tied to non-proliferation, the doctrine that the anti-war crowd is explicitly abandoning. No one serious doubts that Saddaam is trying to get nukes; almost no one doubts that he has the blueprints for a bomb, and needs only fissile material. Of course, this is very, very hard to get, but it is not, as many have argued, impossible. They've caught 200 people trying to smuggle fissile material out of the former USSR; you quant types want to bet that any inspection system is catching 100% incidence? You libertarians in the crowd should go back and read what you've written about the War on Drugs before you answer that, and be prepared to explain how they are different.
Deterrence was predicated on the ability to know at all times where any offensive action was coming from. Specifically, that with only five nations in possession of nuclear weapons, you could not degrade another nation's capability with a stealth nuclear attack, because it would be immediately obvious which one or two nations could have been responsible. In fact, it would have been obvious which one it was coming from, since Chinese missiles didn't have the reach to go to the US, and while the US could have launched to Russia and China, the trajectory would have been different from a launch originating in Russia or China and targeted at the other. And Britain and France's intercontinental nuclear ability was provided by us.
Proliferation destroys that. It becomes possible to launch a plausibly deniable stealth attack. And Saddaam with a nuke means massive proliferation.
If Saddaam gets nukes, Iran will get nukes. They've been squabbling over the same damn territory since the Persians poured into Mesopotamia; neither will cede the other military advantage. If Iran gets nukes, the entire region is going to try to go nuclear. You want unstable? Try five or six Middle Eastern nations with nukes pointed at each other and Israel, all with the hope of launching a strike on a neighbor that will be taken to be from someone else. And Israel, who if attacked, will blow up all of them.
And the "Saddaam won't because of his self-interest" argument doesn't hold up. Saddaam has demonstrated that he is willing to strike at the US for spite, with an action that did nothing to advance his interest, yet would certainly result in his own demise if it were successful: his attempted assassination of President Bush. If he had succeeded in assassinating an American president, there is nothing more certain than the speed with which the US would act to remove him from power. He did it anyway. Stupid? Psychotic? Attempting to play to the folks at home? Who knows. The point is, you can't say that he wouldn't risk his regime to lash out at the US, because he did.
I frankly cannot understand why anyone is willing to argue in favor of allowing Saddaam to acquire nuclear weapons. No damage wrought by the US could begin to compare to the damage that would be done, to us and to them, by a bevy of dictatorships in the Middle East armed with primitive nukes.
Update: No, we're not abandoning non-proliferation, say correspondants; we just want to wait until we're sure. Come again? When you're sure will be when Saddaam has fissile material. You'll find out about that when it's in a bomb, pointed at civilians. Non-proliferation is, by definition, pre-emptive.
From the desk of Mindles H. Dreck:Government and The Committee Effect
Here are two shining examples of how the Committee Effect makes working with government such a pleasure. Today, the glorious state government of New Jersey is in the crosshairs:
First, the E-Z Pass system manages to send penalty notices to drivers without passes going through the E-X Pass lanes....with at least a 68% error rate. I know for a fact this is undercounted, as several of my friends get a penalty notice every time they go through one particular Turnpike exit. When they receive the notice, however, they can never get through to E-Z Pass before the due date (try it sometime). They've paid the fine so as to not make a court appearance.
Despite these gratuitous payments, the state stopped sending notices on July 15 and found that cheaper than sending them out and collecting the 32% who eventually paid, with or without cause. That explains why we didn't get any when my wife's E-Z Pass went on the fritz in mid-summer.
Moving right along, the brilliant legislative body of New Jersey has decided to pass a law confiscating idle balances in banks (known as "escheat", I believe) after three years instead of ten. The purpose was to get hold of an estimated $209 million to balance the budget. The government claims this tax in sheep's clothing is for the benefit of the account holders.
One simple problem: They forgot to allow for CDs of greater than ten year maturity, so banks are sending out notices to holders of these instruments who are then reacting with understandable outrage. Apparently the desperate lawmakers passed the law so fast they never put the wording out for comment.
Like I said, dumb as a bag of rocks.
September 22, 2002
From the desk of Jane Galt:I just realized one of
I just realized one of the things that really, really, bothers me about a lot of the anti-war arguments; it's the huge number of people who want to cast this in the simplistic terms of a morality play.
"If we take pre-emptive action against Iraq, how can we protest when others do the same?"
You're kidding, right? We are not their parents. The United States is not going to conduct its foreign policy on the level of setting a good example and hoping others follow. These are the same people who refuse to believe that over-generous welfare policies will not result in social decay because they somehow fail to apprehend the huge threat-power that enforces norm in reciprocal-morality social systems, and thus believe that you can build a working system with all carrot, no stick. Unfortunately, they also often raise their children this way, and worse, take those children to public places I frequent. But I digress.
If you are really under the impression that the reason that people listen when the US talks is our immense moral power -- well, why do you spend so much time screaming about how George Bush is just like Hitler, and if he'd just hold still while I paste on this little fake mustache, everyone would see it? Also, I'm afraid you're not quite emotionally old enough to be allowed out on the street without someone to hold your hand, much less be permitted to enter a voting booth.
"How can we risk going to war when we're not completely certain Saddaam poses a threat?"
Because the threat Saddaam potentially poses is not The Utter Destruction of the West Chipton Charity Fete's Frozen Lemonade Stand. Unfortunately, the risk is that he will seize and control a plurality of the world's oil supply by using WMD as a deterrent, or hand WMD to groups whose links cannot be directly traced back to him. And before you say that this is not true, let me point out that since you are the same person who, when a WMD attack of uncertain provenance happens on American soil, will be staunchly against launching some smack-ass on Hussein without firm proof of a connection, I find it hard to take this seriously. Since committing in advance to do exactly that is the only way to credibly deter such a handoff.
"It's wrong to enter a war without getting multilateral support".
So something that is morally wrong becomes morally right if enough mandarins appointed by third-world dictators vote okay?
"Why can't we try more diplomatic avenues?"
What do you think we've been doing for the last ten years?
"But Saddaam had legitimate grievances against the inspections -- they were spying!"
We made a deal with Saddaam: allow unfettered access of inspectors, or we invade. The agreement did not say "Except if they want to go into special, secret places like Presidential Palaces." The entire point of inspections is going into special, secret places. If Saddaam didn't like that, he was free to choose Plan B -- and whoops! He has.
"But how can we attack Iraq and leave [horrible regime of choice] in place?"
Repeat after me: other nations are not our children. We do not have to treat all of them the same so they won't know we love Australia best. Saddaam is getting taken out because Saddaam with WMD will, first of all, destabilize the Middle East far, far more than anything we do there, and second of all, make a probably successful ploy to seize control of a majority of the region's oil supplies and thereby render himself untouchable. I'm sorry it isn't Making the World Safe For Democracy, but then, the wars that were supposed to do that did not, on the evidence of the last 50 years, do a very good job. Maybe Making the World Safe From Horrible Dictators With Chemical or Nuclear Weapons is the best we can do right now.
Also, you may note that North Korea has invited us to inspect. They're not stupid. So we are setting a good example.
"How can we attack Iraq unless we're prepared to give the whole place a makeover -- more like, say, Sweden with Pita Bread?"
First of all, I'm not sure they eat pita in Iraq; all Arabs aren't alike, you racist pig. Second of all, Sweden's not doing so hot right now. And third of all, I'll say it again: we are not responsible for making sure they grow up to be solid world citizens, although if we can do it, I'm all for trying. What we are responsible for is making sure that they do not amass sufficient power to wreak havoc on their neighbors or American citizens, or both.
There are good arguments for holding back from Iraq. I, too, am worried about the shape of the world to come. But telling me that we have to conduct our foreign policy on the same set of rules as kindergarten -- well, it would be nice if we were all that civilized, and I am all for beating our swords into plowshares, but only after we've beaten the bad guys into a pulp. These arguments are just silly. For one thing, kindergarteners do not have munitions. And for another, most dictators have already learned not to eat paste.
Update Wow, record time to angry email. Listen, I am well aware that many anti-war arguments are not simplistic. I have continuing dialogue with intelligent anti-war people like Jim and Jim. We are assessing risks differently -- they rate the risks of action higher, the risks of inaction lower, than I do. Eventually, we'll know who's right. But there are people who are making these kind of simplistic arguments. I ran across one in the Fray the other day, whose prescription was -- yes, you guessed it -- ratifying Kyoto, freeing up trade, and doing an all-out grovel to the UN. These things leave me speechless. At some level, can people really believe that Atta et. al drove a plane into a building because of concerns about carbon emissions and textile tariffs?
From the desk of Jane Galt:A German in my comments
A German in my comments section informs me that Germany has sufficient military power to defend itself.
Now, I'm no expert in affaires militaires, but I don't think this can be right. It sounds to me like one of those oft-repeated tropes that few of the natives ever question, like the immutable wonderfulness of George Washington. Why do I say this? Several reasons. First of all, there is no such thing as a defensive force which cannot project across borders; if you can't interdict supply lines, cut off reinforcements, and prevent your enemy from regrouping, you can't stage a worthwhile defense, particularly if the enemy is not similarly limited. (Some nations do have hostile terrain which hostile natives can make Not Worth Conquering. Germany, however, is not among them.)
Second of all, unless the Germans have developed massively parallel defense plans, something which, to my knowlege, they lack both the technology and the technological capability to do, a crucial pieces of any defense are undoubtedly supplied by American forces, such as intelligence, air support, and supply.
And third of all, Germany currently exists in a military equilibrium. Which is to say, it's neighbors have toy armies. It has a toy army. (I mean no disrespect to the European military. But I am aware of no force in Europe which could repel a determined attack by a serious enemy. They are too small, lack key capabilities, and a large portion of their force is composed of 19 year old boys whiling away their national service.) The US presence makes it pointless to build a bigger army, since no nation in Europe is either large enough, or rich enough, to build a force that would not be simply dwarfed by the force that the US would project in the event of an attack.
Europeans, in my experience, tend to think that the extremely low level of their military spending is evidence of their moral superiority; they've evolved beyond defense. I submit that every other nation in the world, even if poor, spends a higher percentage of their GDP, and their budget, on the military. Argentina could use the spare money far more than Belgium -- why doesn't it just cut that pesky military spending? Because those Brazilian madmen are