Asymmetrical Information

From the desk of Jane Galt:

You want some materialism with that marriage?

From Amitai Etzioni, a sad, sad, sad commentary on the state of American culture:

I admit – with some embarrassment – that I am an avid reader of personal advice columns. I often ask myself what I would advise, and then read on to see what the pros have to say. On March 23, 2003 a reader asked:

Dear Abby:

I am a young man with a burning question: Does an engagement ring have to be a diamond? I’m not ready to pop the question yet, but I’d like to know just the same.

Now, my answer would have been “hell no!” Love can be expressed in thousands ways that cost nothing (or next to it). When I proposed, we were walking in the Village and I had no ring with me. I stopped by a five and dime, and bought a ring made of olive wood, for $7.50. Our love lasted for 21 years, until my wife was killed in a car accident.

Here is what Abby had to say:

I took your burning question to Carol Brodie, director the global communications for Harry Winston Jewelers. Our conversation was fascinating. She says the tradition of giving a diamond as an engagement ring began in 1477, when Archduke Maximilian Hamburg presented one to Mary of Burgandy. At that time, diamonds were regarded as “charms” that would enhance the love of a husband for his wife. In more recent times, diamonds were the logical choice because their hardness equates to durability. However, it is not the only choice. Much depends on the woman’s taste. Rubies, sapphires, and colored diamonds (pink, yellow, etc.) are also popular. (Because emeralds are the softest of the precious stones, they are not recommended for use as engagement rings.)

There is one thing to be said for diamonds: because everyone has them, they're instantly recognizeable as engagement rings, which allows brides-to-be the (presumably pleasurable) activity of surprising people by letting them notice their ring. It also theoretically serves to ward off potential suitors, although not as well as you'd think. On the downside, it's hard not to feel silly paying several thousand dollars for a chunk of carbon that is, geologically speaking, not much rarer than quartz. Perhaps cubic zirconia is the rational man's choice, although I'd check with the intended before you spring it on her.

From the desk of Jane Galt:

Good piece on the rocky road to getting Iraq's oil pumping and onto world markets from Irwin Stelzer.

From the desk of Jane Galt:

So the reason I started the post immediately beneath, which somehow got lost in the typing, is this ridiculous Mailer piece arguing that the reason we went to war in Iraq is to inflate the ego of that soulless creature, the white American male.

The key question remains — why did we go to war? It is not yet answered. In the end, it is likely that a host of responses will produce a cognitive stew, which does, at least, open the way to offering one’s own notion. We went to war, I could say, because we very much needed a war. The US economy was sinking, the market was gloomy and down, and some classic bastions of the erstwhile American faith (corporate integrity, the FBI, and the Catholic Church, to cite but three) had each suffered a separate and grievous loss of face. Since our Administration was probably not ready to solve any one of the serious problems before it, it was natural to feel the impulse to move into larger ventures, thrusts into the empyrean-war!

Be it said that the Administration knew something a good many of us did not — it knew that we had a very good, perhaps even an extraordinarily good, if essentially untested, group of Armed Forces, a skilled, disciplined, well-motivated military, career-focused and run by a field-rank and general staff who were intelligent, articulate, and considerably less corrupt than any other power group in America.

In such a pass, how could the White House not use them? They could prove quintessential as morale-builders to one group in US life, perhaps the key group: the white American male. If once this aggregate came near to 50 per cent of the population, it was down to . . . was it now 30 per cent? Still, it remained key to the President’s political footing. And it had taken a real beating. As a matter of collective ego, the good white American male had had very little to nourish his morale since the job market had gone bad, unless he happened to be in the Armed Forces. There, it was certainly different. The Armed Forces had become the paradigmatic equal of a great young athlete looking to test his true size. Could it be that there was a bozo out in the boondocks who was made to order, and his name was Iraq? Iraq had a tough rep, but he was old and a blowhard. A choice opponent. A desert war with no caves in sight is designed for an air force whose state-of-the-art is comparable in perfection to a top-flight fashion model on a runway.

This is amusing cocktail chatter. Yet Norman Mailer somehow mistook it for thought, typed it up, and sent it to the Times as if it would be interesting to someone whose reasoning facilities hadn't been considerably loosened by whiskey. It is metaphor abused, used as if a metaphor could itself create a link between two things, rather than illuminating one that already exists in the phenomenal world. This is war described as if the most important thing about it were the description.

In other words, it's idiotic. And it's symptomatic. There is something about our literary culture that has caused its prominent members to believe that words are the same thing as facts, more important than the objects they describe. They seem to think that one can make up any theory, no matter how ridiculous, and unless it is dramatically falsifiable, it's just as valid as a theory that starts with known facts and basic truisms about human behavior and builds from them. They think style is more important than substance.

And for some reason, they're mad because the rest of us don't take them seriously.

From the desk of Jane Galt:

So I spent last weekend at a Liberty Fund seminar with some very, very smart people, ranging from the inimitable bloggers Will Wilkinson and Arnold Kling, to an economics professor who runs economics experiments with Vernon Smith of Nobel Prize fame. The subject was The Two Cultures, which is to say, the scientific culture and the literary one.

There is nothing like such a neat split as the book at the center, CP Snow's The Two Cultures, posits. But I think there is sufficient truth to the proposition that it's worth exploring, and I certainly enjoyed the seminar. As someone with a foot firmly in both worlds, I do think there is a discernible difference in worldview. Not that CP Snow seems to understand it; he argues that the main difference is the attitude towards helping the world poor (the book was written in 1960), and he says that the literary folks are unfeeling reactionaries. This based on Eliot, Pound, and another writer with Fascist sympathies, ignoring, in the truest tradition of literary culture, the vast swathe of communist writers who would have disconfirmed this thesis.

What is the difference? I'd argue that it's a mindset. The scientific mindset is about a system of interlocking falsifiable premises that form a falsifiable theory. This system encourages mental habits that go beyond the "critical thinking" facility that liberal arts colleges like to tout. It means knowing your premises, and examining every theory, including your own, for how they conform to your premises, to other theories you have examined and believe to be true, and for possible disconfirming evidence.

Let's take the minimum wage as an example in economics. The calssic model tells me that if I increase hte price of labor by raising the minimum wage, I decrease demand for it, just as I decrease demand for anything else when I increase the price. Now, say you come to me and say "I don't think that increasing the minimum wage decreases the number of jobs (or hours worked)".

As students of economics, we have certain premises we share. I can say "let's go back to first principals: are you arguing that the laws of supply and demand don't work?"

That's probably a little drastic for you. You can argue that the laws work, but don't show much effect here because labor demand is very inelastic, which is to say that changes in price produce very small changes in demand. Cigarettes are a good example of a price-inelastic good. Minimum wage labor is not generally thought to be a good example of a price-inelastic good over the medium-to-long term, but you can argue that small increases don't produce effects that are distinguishable from background noise, and we can look for evidence. We'll both basically agree on what sorts of evidence work. We may argue ferociously about the result, or how good our model is, etc., but we'll both agree that the process for finding truth is to construct a hypothesis by building carefully from basic premises, and then test it as well as we can against the real world. The physical sciences will have even more rigorous tests than economics, which runs up against hte difficulty of getting humans to let themselves be experimented on. Ultimately, perhaps you'll be right: the effect of a small change in the minimum wage doesn't have any measurable effect. But the process will have refined and enhanced both our understanding, for example by establishing that we agree that the laws of supply and demand still apply to labor, and we can't generalize from, say, a study showing no effect on employment from a $0.05 change in the wage, to a conclusion that we can raise the minimum wage by $5.00 and still have no change in employment.

The humanities simply doesn't have this rigor. In some cases, such as literature, you really can't, although you can certainly be more rigorous than many of the programs devoted to exposing the obvious truth that Shakespeare and company did not have the same racial and gender sensibilities as 21st century Americans, yawn. In other cases, such as sociology and political science, it's possible that you could, but don't yet. That's why discussions in those courses tend to revolve around the speakers' opinions on human nature, interesting and possibly right but very difficult to either prove or falsify.

A while back, I was interviewed along with some grad students in a Middle Eastern studies program. They presented me at one point with a most extraordinary thesis. The war in Iraq, they said, was about oil. But not in any way that anyone had been arguing (presumably, earlier theories had been refuted.) Rather, the object of the war was to get Iraqi oil so that we could keep it away from Europe and, by impoverishing them, improve our own lot.

There were a number of very strange economic ideas in there, but one is demonstrably incorrect: that you can force oil prices up in one area through embargo. It simply doesn't work in commodity markets. If we took all Iraq's oil ourselves, the oil we otherwise woudl have consumed would simply be purchased by Europe. If we cut production and diverted all the oil here to keep our prices stable, prices would spike in Europe, and people would resell our oil to Europe until the prices balanced. We know commodity boycotts don't work, because they've been tried in various times and places, including by OPEC on us, and they don't work unless you've got a totalitarian police state to enforce them (even then, there's a lot of leakage).

I tried to explain this to them. All three of them reacted as if the very idea of referring to the economics of oil markets to test the validity of their argument were some sort of wacky notion, like trying to disprove it using the tea leaves at the bottom of my cup. It had clearly never occurred to them to think about ways in which they could test their theory -- and in my days as a Lit major, it wouldn't have occurred to me to test my semantically interesting, but economically demonstrably false, theories either. They didn't attempt to refute anything I said, but sat there with a pitying, contemptuous look on their face, about the way I used to look at my parents when I was fourteen and they told me drinking was bad for me. They seemed to believe they had some sort of hidden knowlege that validated their beliefs in such a way as to render any empirical evidence moot.

It was strange. But not that strange. I've been an English major. And the unfortunate tendency for those who are verbally fluent and spend four years arguing their opinion through footnotes and elegant phrasing rather than data, is to believe that a nice turn of phrase is as important as hard data. It informs the glib politics of many in the academy who often seem to think that the amusing bon mots of a Doonesbury cartoon constitute serious policy thought. And the reaction I get when explaining, say, rent control -- that somehow I'm just being mean, and that if I wanted to, I could make it so that imposing rent control improved the housing stock rather than destroying it.

Which is not to diminish the importance of literature and art. It's vital. But it's dangerous that our humanities students are so alienated from the scientific way of thought that they can't evaluate science on its own terms. You don't need to be able to run a study yourself -- but you should understand the limits of experimental design, how data is used to build a case, and the frameworks of almost-sciences like economics that will let you understand where economists pronouncements are likely to be pretty solid (rent control) and where they're likely to be personal opinions dressed up as facts (tax policy). We can't all be scientists, but we can, most of us, understand the scientific way of thinking. And since the scientific way of thinking is what's building most of the science that's building our world, and should be constructing the economic thought we expect to make us all richer, we'd better be able to follow it or we risk being led around by the nose.

From the desk of Jane Galt:

Is it possible for the Democrats to lure me to their side with promises of personal liberty? Maybe. But they'll never do it. For starters, most of the personal liberty policies they're actively advocating are one of three things:

1) trivial
2) an argument about some state policy regarding some state program I don't believe should exist
3) actively wrong

In the trivial category come things like the right to breastfeed in public or engage in whatever sort of carnal congress you desire in the privacy of your home; lovely, but the four people who were getting arrested per year are not, no matter how unjustly they've been treated, going to form the basis for my vote, especially since those matters are decided locally, and my local posts are inevitably filled with Dems anyway.

In the "argument about foolish state policy" come things like arguments about faith based programs and marriage promotion: I care a lot more about getting rid of the programs than whether the pamphlet with which we harangue our 'clients' was penned by Noam Chomsky or Pat Robertson.

In the "things I'm actively against" category come things like forcing Catholic hospitals to dispense the Pill to their employees, and hate crimes legislation. I think the employees have a perfect right to take the Pill, but the very idea that there is some sort of a civil right to have it paid for by their employer so debases the idea of a civil right that I turn a delicate shade of purple just contemplating it.

There are the things I do care about that the Democrats should be for, but aren't, like ending corporate welfare or legalizing drugs.

There are the things the Democrats apparently care about in my district, which would require a brain transplant to arouse my slightest interest, such as the subject of nativity scenes in the public spaces of small, southern towns to which atheists interested in ruining everyone's holiday have to be imported for the purpose of securing their civil right to be Jesus-free while renewing their driver's license.

There's the stuff all the Democratic blogs are yelling about the Bush administration doing that the Dems do to0, like grabbing every bit of power their greedy little hands can fasten to, and then trying to use it double-quick to screw over people they don't like. Everyone complaining that Ashcroft is the anti-christ -- where the hell were you under Reno?

Then there's all the crap they're for that I'm against, such as redistributing military spending to people and districts that vote Democratic, ratcheting up my taxes until I have to go on welfare to make ends meet, starting new government programs without first making the old ones do what they're supposed to, and generally assuming that the solution to every problem life throws at us is to get together and make a rule about it, preferably one that involves taking money from people who don't vote Democratic.

Bottom line: it's awfully hard for the state to regulate private things like drug use and sexual behavior. On the other hand, they seem to have no trouble at all getting their hands in my pockets. Until those things are reversed, it's unlikely I'm going to vote Democratic very often.

From the desk of Mindles H. Dreck:

'Is our children' learning history? and reading and political correctness and....?

Today's fresh air featured an interview with Diane Ravitch, author of The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn. Ravitch describes how the Texas and California rules govern what is in textbooks all over the country (through essentially monopsonistic practices), and how all history and literature in textbooks has been purged of just about anything that can be offensive to anyone.

What's been banned? Harry Potter; "extremist"; "senile"; references to poverty; truthful depictions of islamic attitudes towards women; African-Americans in ghettos or "white houses with picket fences" (I guess that still allows posh townhouses in Brooklyn Heights); emphasis on certain regions of the country; slavery; earthquakes; fires; "creepy animals"; cancer; losing a job, etc.

The result is Really boring textbooks. Amazingly enough, these brainwashed textbooks manage to be simultaneously appalling and soporific.

Geoff Nunberg also honors us with a short segment described as follows:

Linguist Geoff Nunberg on the stylistic differences between writers on the political left and right.

Terry Gross and Nunberg himself echo that idea of "comparing the rhetoric of left and right". I was excited to hear it.

Failing to keep this promise, Nunberg only talks about Peggy Noonan's and a few other conservatives. He also nastily deconstructs Noonan's rhetorical flourish of polysyndeton (putting "and" or another conjunction between every item on a list for emphasis). Displaying his leftistpundit mindreading skills, he demonstrates that she picked up this technique from It's a Wonderful Life, but in her hands it turns to "kitsch". [Cough] nice balance, Geoff!

He does toss a dart at Molly Ivins, and I suppose he might do "The Left" at a later date.

From the desk of Jane Galt:

Volokh posts an interesting missive from a reader on the Hartford Courant story. She writes in their defense pretty much what I thought when I heard the story:

Speaking from inside what Glenn calls "Big Journalism" I'd like to come to the defense of the Hartford Courant and its decision not to let reporters have blogs. What are they vulnerable to? Loss of credibility.

You know that a substantial part of the public believes that their daily newspapers deliberately slant news stories to conform to the ideological predispositions of their reporters/editors/publishers/corporate owners. I don't believe that is true on any large scale in the news departments of mainstream dailies, at least as to the "deliberately" part. Reporters and editors are trained to strive for fairness and balance in coverage, and when they fall short, as does happen, it's because they spend way too much time in the company of like-minded people.

Nonetheless, readers' discovering by way of a blog what their reporter's opinions actually are will confirm their worst fears, and it is not unreasonable of the paper to worry about that. Two blogs, of differing viewpoints, would be even worse than one blog, because every reader would find something to object to.

Note that I am speaking specifically of news reporters at papers that aim for balance. I doubt the editors of the Nation or the Weekly Standard would mind if their staffers had blogs; there, it would be an asset. Readers don't mind if sportswriters are fans of the teams they write about. I'm an opinion writer, and I could probably get permission to run a blog, if I wanted to work that hard, because I wouldn't say anything I wouldn't say in my column.

But news reporters? What do people think when they find out that Linda Greenhouse, who covers the Supreme Court for the NYTimes, attends rallies in support of Roe v. Wade? (She did, once.)

Now in one respect the public's concern is misplaced. The problem, to the extent there is one, is that reporters let their biases seep into what they write, and that problem is not made any worse if readers know what the biases are.

Lots of law-school professors blog. Do judges? Should they? When they give speeches, every word gets picked apart by law-school professors.

But while it's understandable, is it laudable? Shouldn't we know when a reporter's an ardent Roe supporter, so that we can get a little suspicious when the arguments from the anti-side get short shrift?

From the desk of Jane Galt:

Judges Posner and Epstein. I like the sound of that.

From the desk of Jane Galt:

I find this really fascinating. It's a debate between James Twitchell, a Columbia professor who writes books on popular culture, most recently the brilliant Living It Up, a book about American's attitudes about luxury; and Sut Jhally, a marxist media critic. It starts out about advertising, but what it comes down to is Twitchell pointing out that the dreck critics complain about is the stuff that a majority of Americans want to watch, read, etc. It's a powerful sermon on revealed preference:

TWITCHELL: Here's my idea for an independent film. I want to set a camera on the head of my colleagues. And then I want to see what they do when they're left alone, to study the difference between saying and doing. It seems to me that reaching into the wallet is a much more powerful articulation of desire and belief than delivering the lecture. In that area, I think the market essentially shows this. What is being consumed is what people really do think is entertaining them, satisfying them, making them happy. It may not be what you and I like, but it is the illusion perhaps that is so powerful. And this illusion seems to be making American culture incredibly attractive to others and making other cultures essentially mimics of American popular culture. Whatever this stuff is in advertising, it's incredibly powerful. It's pushed all these other things aside. Literature, art, religion. It's eating everybody's lunch. Maybe that's because most people most of the time want that for lunch. Maybe it really is resolving the concerns that they have, as hard as that is for us to believe.

Jhally ends up essentially arguing that we should use the power of the state to force the networks to carry things that people don't want to watch, chosen on a different hierarchy of values that Jhally, presumably, will be in charge of articulating. It encapsulates for me the observation I've repeatedly made that the biggest problem the leftists are dealing with now is that with the end of the industrial era, they've lost any claim to the goodwill, or even the welfare, of the majority; they're down to claiming the anti-democratic, authoritarian right to make people stop living the way they've chosen to and start living some other way because, even though they don't actually want to go live in a communal house and work in a hemp factory, in some metaphysical sense, it will be better for them. Given that we've already seen what the gulag looks like, this is not an easy sell. Hence the squishy language about modes of power and manufactured consent, the new code-words for "unsufficient proletarian consciousness". But if you force them to speak plainly, it's the same old totalitarian impulse peeking out at you.

From the desk of Jane Galt:

In case you haven't heard, the big Wall Street investment banks yesterday reached a $1.4b settlement with regulators, which included the SEC, the National Association of Securities Dealers, the New York Stock Exchange and state regulators led by New York's Eliot Spitzer. The settlement is supposed to cover the improprieties of the Bubble Economy, and includes a lifetime ban for Jack Grubman and Henry Blodget, who both had to pay millions in personal fines. They probably aren't any guiltier than the other equity analysts, but they were unlucky, and Wall Street does nothing more efficiently than punish the luckless.

The settlement is fine, as far as it goes. I don't feel particularly bad for Grubman or Blodget, not because they skewed their research for clients -- I don't know that it was ever that explicit -- but because equity research is taken as gospel by uninitiated investors, and research analysts know it, and they keep cranking out "buy" recommendations as if that had any meaning. Perhaps it is not their fault that investors somehow manage to delude themselves into believing that people with special insight into the future of the market are for some odd reason willing to write these insights down for the benefit of the common man rather than trading themselves rich, but the fact that people often behave like idiots does not impose some sort of obligation to exploit their folly, though many of my business school classmates seemed to believe otherwise.

But the terms of the agreement dispel the notion that this is about much else besides making Eliot Spitzer more famous. It's window dressing: get rid of analysts, make some cosmetic changes, call the press so Eliot can preen.

The agreement sets new rules that will force brokerage companies to make structural changes in the way they handle research. Analysts, for instance, will no longer be allowed to accompany investment bankers during sales pitches to clients. The pact also requires securities firms to have separate reporting and supervisory structures for their research and banking operations, and to tie analysts' compensation to the quality and accuracy of their research, rather than how much investment-banking fees they help generate.

Moreover, stock research will be required to carry the equivalent of a "buyer beware" notice. Securities firms, regulators said, must include on the first page of research reports a note making clear that the reports are produced by firms that do investment-banking business with the companies they cover. This, the firms must acknowledge, may affect the objectivity of the firms' research.

The settlement would be fine, as far as it goes, except that of course this is not as far as it goes. Eliot Spitzer is turning himself into a sort of legal blackmailer: give me a ton of money, or I'll get all the guys in my gang and we'll put you out of business. You'll call the law? Ha! I am the law!

I mean, there were obviously improprieties. I can be heard arguing that the entire structure of the investment banking industry is rotten (although before the lefties get too excited, I can also be heard arguing that the reason it's rotten is SEC over-regulation). But how much does this lawsuit have to do with improprieties, and how much with the fact that everyone's mad because they lost a ton of money, and hence it's good press for the regulators?

The analysts didn't cause the bubble. They fed on it, but let's be honest: the real cause of the bubble was the willingness of a large number of Americans to believe that they could make large sums of money without working. They didn't have to read a balance sheet, analyze a business model, or even understand a product - just plunk down your money see it magically double.

And this settlement has unleashed a really unattractive belief in a growing number of Americans: we wuz robbed. Buying Webvan at $200 wasn't our fault -- it was those robber barons in the banking industry who made us do it. If they hadn't conspired to tell us, through research we never read written by guys we'd never heard of, that we could make money for nothing, we wouldn't have blown our retirement savings on Priceline stock.

Already I'm seeing lawyers crawl out of the woodwork to proclaim, on television and in print, that they can get the money back. Just hire us, they say, and we'll get justice for you. Justice? The market didn't drop by a third because Jack Grubman touted the AOL/TIme Warner merger, and ol' Henry didn't come to your house and shake the money out of your pocket to buy Amazon. Moreover, even if the investment banks disgorged every penny of profit from the last seven years it wouldn't make their clients whole. The Nasdaq has lost 4/5 of its value. You could liquidate the Bulge Bracket and still not recover all that was lost, because most of it has already been pissed away on television advertising and Aeron chairs and corporate retreats on the Riviera and two-bedroom condos in Palo Alto that are now trading at a fraction of their value. We all went on a spending spree in the late nineties, and now the visa bill's here we want to call up Bergdorf's and dispute the charge. That isn't justice. It's an infantile refusal to admit that we acted like idiots, and now the money's gone and it's not coming back. The only person it's going to enrich is lawyers. And if we don't admit that we were foolish -- if we blame our folly on evil conspirators -- it only makes it more likely that we'll do the same stupid thing again.

So while I would certainly like to see just desserts for the people who made a killing off the inevitable fact that 95% of the country is not competent to manage their own investments, I don't want this to be the opening act in some morality play, directed by Spitzer, in which the rest of America is absolved for speculating wildly on investments they don't understand. It's an expensive lesson, but it will be even more expensive if we don't grow the hell up and acknowlege that the easiest man to cheat is the guy who's looking to get something for nothing.

From the desk of Mindles H. Dreck:

Hello?

Sigh. I need to find some more weekend bloggers. Preferably some not engaged in Santorrhea.

From the desk of Mindles H. Dreck:

A Hostile Environment for 'Asymmetrical Speech'

Ken Layne's and Roger Simon's discussion of blogging prohibited by employers strike a chord for this pseudonymous blogger, but I don't think either of them have captured the entire ugly truth about blogging for the organization man/woman. Here's Layne's take:

In America, the tyrant is the little man presiding over a roomful of employees ruled by Fear. He is the hate-filled middle manager, the brown-nose, the squealer, and especially the corporate mid-sized newspaper editor.

and Simon:

I agree with Layne about those hate-filled middle managers but what about the real bosses, the Murdochs and Turners of the world? "Freedom of the press belongs to the man who owns one," A. J. Liebling famously said and he was sure right. Now everyone's got his or her own, if he or she wants it. (Readers? That's another question.)

So the media plutocracy is also under assault here as much as their underlings, but exactly how is hard to tell. The future is anybody's guess and don't ask me. I'm no Nostradamus. (In fact, Nostradamus was no Nostradamus.) But as that other great journalisto Mencken said, when they say it's not about money, it's about money.

Newspapers and editors are not the only ones that would frown on blogging by employees. In point of fact, many employers can and do object to several threats from blogging:

1. loss of profits from ideas and information developed while on the organization payroll (how do you draw the line here?)
   
2. expression of ideas that might bring unwanted publicity to the employer
   
3. potentially unflattering characterizations of the employer, fellow employees and/or customers
   
4. (In regulated industries or government agencies) potential exposure from unsupervised communication with the public
   
5. unproductive use of company time and bandwidth
   

The typical reaction (for those employers who have even thought to make a weblog policy) to any of these risks is to prohibit the activity without further consideration of its benefits for the blogger or even the organization. This is simple bureaucratic behavior in a litigious environment - low-frequency risks are exaggerated, benefits are ignored. Unfortunately, those low-frequency risks can have high severity. An employee can say or disclose something egregious that then plays a role in a client loss, a hostile environment lawsuit, a regulatory fine or the embarassing public disclosure that surround regulatory investigation (such as the avalanche of silly but reputation-killing Wall Street emails we've endured these last few years).

Imagine reading it back in court
At work I used to have a reputation for "purple prose" in my emails and memos (I was working in the paleolithic pre-email era). I like to recall P.G. Wodehouse similes ("“one of those robust, dynamic girls with the muscles of a welterweight and a laugh like a squadron of cavalry charging over a tin bridge.”; "aunt to aunt like mastodons bellowing over primeval swamps"), and make rather vivid descriptions of the companies I visited. The good news was that people actually read my memos.

Occasionally, my old boss would wander over and object. He proposed a rule with regard to everything recorded in writing, "imagine yourself reading it back in court". Given the current regulatory and litigation environment this is a very reasonable principle.

Asymmetrical Speech
On the other hand it is a horrible rule for lively, interesting or enlightening discussion, especially of a socratic nature. Sometimes it is necessary to "try on" a viewpoint you may not support. Sometimes a colorful insult or description livens up a detailed argument. All of these things are viewed as small potential liabilities by the supervisor. It is a terrible rule for social/individual speech as opposed to official speech. In the employer/employee arrangement the line between these two is disappearing. The internet has brought us to the era of "asymmetrical speech", where speech intended as social and individual is considered official because of the potential size of the audience, the permanence with which it is recorded and the ease with which such speech can be found and used against one. Employers would have few objections to an employee running a community newsletter on his own time. Running a website is different primarily for these reasons of exposure*, permanence and accessibility. Until society adjusts to this, blogging will have its dangers.

I view this as part of a particularly evil social trend of creeping criminalization of thought and analysis, but I'll save further discussion for another post.

* I think the exposure is overestimated. Weblogs as a whole have had an impact, but apart from the few bloggers who have made big media appearances, they are a bit like a swarm of ants.

From the desk of Mindles H. Dreck:

Missed Congeniality

David Warren's most recent column asserts that the Bush administration is attempting to deprive our allies and enemies of the 'weapon' of anti-Americanism by simply raising the stakes:

earlier this week, when the secretary of state, Colin Powell, was asked unambiguously by media whether the U.S. intended to "punish" (their word) France for her recent behaviour over Iraq, and he replied in one word: "Yes."

One had to refer to other officials to gather that this would be done most likely by cutting France out of the consultation process in NATO and among other U.S. allies, and by "disinviting" France to other trans-Atlantic fora, thus isolating the Chirac regime diplomatically even within Europe.

.....For decades foreign powers have been able to influence U.S. policy simply by fomenting anti-American displays. This is what Arab regimes do, to put pressure on the U.S. State Department -- it's called the "Arab Street" -- and what President Chirac did, in touching off a frenzy of anti-Americanism in the "European Street", as a way to pressure President Bush to stand down, and Prime Minister Blair to fall down. The Americans, and British, went into Iraq anyway; and the former at least seem now convinced that anti-Americanism should no longer be either subtly or overtly rewarded. It will instead be subtly ignored, or overtly punished.

Compare Warren's essay with this interview with John Brady Kiesling, former Athens-based diplomat who resigned publically in protest over the administration's conduct prior to the war in Iraq (His resignation letter is all over the internet. Here, for instance).

Kiesling's principled sincerity is attractive, but I think these two pieces highlight some problematic differences about what constitutes "successful" foreign policy.

For Kiesling, probably because of his diplomatic posting, the popularity of the U.S. is a paramount objective. He complains to Terry Gross that the U.S. had been viewed as a "necessary evil" in Europe during the cold war. According to Kiesling, acceptance of the U.S. as a potential partner in progress was growing slowly during the Clinton years and has since fallen off a cliff.

Secondly, Kiesling places a high value on treaty-making. It is clear in the interview that he believes the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty was a high water mark in international diplomacy, made possible by the kind of multilateral conciliation that the U.S. has foresworn.

Kiesling's description of anti-American sentiment strike me as mostly accurate. I don't believe we had gained much popularity in the Clinton years. My experience is that America-bashing was as much of a sport as it is now. I asked the radio what happens to "necessary evil" when it is perceived as no longer necessary. I have my own memories of Germany in the 1980s (the good old days of Sauren Reagan). Perhaps a pop culture reference is inappropriate in this sort of post, but whenever this subject comes up I think of this Joe Jackson song from about 1985:

Here in Berlin people line up to get in
To wait for the end, living in glorious sin
They've looked around and now there is no looking back
To when rivers ran red, now it's the sky that grows black
Shadows are cast as two giants roam over the earth
We light a match, but what is that little flame worth?

Once allies danced and sang
But it was forty years ago

Here in D.C. they talk about 'Euro-disease'
And how the French are always so damn hard to please
Motions are passed in Brussels but no-one agrees
And no-one walks tall, but no-one gets down on their knees

Once allies laughed and drank
But it was forty years ago

Where I come from they don't like Americans much
Think they're so loud and so tasteless and so out of touch
Stiff upper lips are curled into permanent sneers
Self-satisfied awaiting the next forty years

Once allies cried and cheered
But it was forty years ago

The U.S. willingness to engage in brinksmanship and our jaded view that diplomacy often degrades into feckless jawboning have never been popular. This is far from new.

I have more critical differences with Kiesling's characterization of the NNPT. Negotiating such a treaty is not an end in itself. It may be a great success of diplomacy but it has not necessarily been a great success for non-proliferation, it's stated goal. I am tempted to observe that it largely binds the behavior of nations whom we would trust to have WMDs and fails to bind those we are most concerned about. Whether North Korea has nukes or not, prior treaty-making clearly means nothing to them now. Where is the "achievement" in that, other than delivering an entirely false sense of security?

In sum, while I understand the utility to local diplomats, I cannot view the achievement of local popularity and treaties as ends in themselves, but rather consider them means . There are many means to a foreign policy/security end, and many more effective than pleasing talks with other powers. The peculiar Western-style martyrdom of repeated diplomatic failures holds scant appeal. We would certainly like certain governments to fear us (Syria and Iran, for instance). Fear rarely serves popularity.

These views need to be balanced. I believe it is entirely appropriate for the administration to work with the "quartet" for a solution for Palestine, especially since some of Bush's initial conditions have been met (not without a parting blow from Arafat and a disturbing loss of face for Abu Mazen, I notice). I also think the administration should be extending an olive branch to the more ambivalent countries that did not join the coalition. Isolation of France, I'm afraid, is entirely appropriate. De Villepin sandbagged Powell and should pay the price.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the interview is Kiesling's comment on Bosnia. Kiesling was an early advocate of military intervention in that case. When Gross asks about the difference between Iraq and Bosnia he claims that the "slaughter was ongoing", essentially implying that the pace of the killing and the lack of damage to our relationship with western powers make the critical difference.

Perhaps I am oversimplifying Kiesling's argument, but I'm having a hard time with that distinction. How are we to define the ratio of atrocities per diem-to-alliance damage that justifies intervention? Is the damage to our diplomatic potential so great as to nullify the end to Hussein's atrocities? I don't deny that we must make such a utilitarian calculation or cost/benefit analysis, but I don't see Saddam Hussein as so much more tolerable than Slobo (whatever history's final reckoning of his death count may be). I cannot escape the feeling that in Kiesling's analysis the entire difference between the two can be attributed to the cost to established alliances.

The lives of State Department professionals, like middle managers during cutbacks, are doubtless less pleasant when they must sell America's reprioritized self-interest. However, this is not a popularity contest and harried diplomats are far from a prohibitive cost where national security and the threat of pan-Arab fantasist/islamic fundamentalists are concerned.

I struggle not to discuss two other topics within this:

1. The subject of the influence of our historic alliances in a post cold-war context. Will they constantly reorganize ad hoc around competing national interests from now on?
   
2. The higher level of tolerance for treaty lip service in other countries. The U.S. is typically unwilling to sign on to a treaty that it will not honor, whereas other powers are more comfortable with greater discrepancy between tatemae and honne.
   (think Maastricht).
   

From the desk of Mindles H. Dreck:

Probing the Limits of Post Exposure Alteration

The Dixie Chicks photo enjoyed a liberal application of airbrush, in my amateur opinion. This, however, is going to require an air-hose

In a dramatic development, under-fire British MP George Galloway has stunned an audience of journalists at a press conference by stripping off all of his clothes and posing for photographs whilst completely naked.

One can only hope Michael Moore and Susan Sontag do not follow...er...suit.

From the desk of Jane Galt:

How to lie with quotations

Virginia Postrel points out a case of journalistic "reasonableness" -- bending over backwards to give both sides' stories -- with unintentionally hilarious results. Here's a case of quasi-reasonableness that doesn't go far enough, in this story about the morning-after pill:

Obenshain, whose term on the board expires in June, moved fast to establish his antiabortion credentials, asking the administration to explain itself at its April meeting. Like a number of other abortion opponents, he argued that the pills induce abortion because, in some circumstances, they prevent an already fertilized egg from attaching itself to the uterus.

That's perfectly true. Those "circumstances" are the ones in which the morning-after pill works as intended -- to prevent pregnancy.

As far as I know, by the time you take the morning-after pill, it's far too late to prevent ovulation, and a single dose of hormones wouldn't work even if it weren't so. Sperm live something like three days in extremis, meaning that in order to get pregnant, the woman has to be either just on the cusp of ovulating, or already have done so.

The morning-after pill works one way: by preventing a fertilized egg from attaching to the uterus. You can argue about whether or not that's wrong, etc. But the quote makes it sound like the attachment-prevention is an occasional side effect, rather than the intended purpose, of the pills.

Both suffer from the same problem, I think: just offering quotes without offering more background that might allow the reader to come to a reasonable conclusion. In one case, it seems to be because the author doesn't want to risk taking a side; in the other, because the author doesn't want you to know they already have.

From the desk of Jane Galt:

I wish you could read this outstanding subscribers-only article in the WSJ (speaking of which -- why not get a subscription? It's a steal!) on dieting.

Some highlights:

Stop Drinking Soda: Over the course of a year, one can of regular cola a day, at 140 to 150 calories, adds up to more than 50,000 calories, or about 15 pounds.

But calories alone are not what make beverages so insidious. Liquid calories have the potential to do more damage in terms of weight gain because they don't make you feel as full. The body simply doesn't "notice" calories that you drink as much as it does calories from solid foods -- so you end up consuming far more calories than you would otherwise. (Liquid diets don't pose the same problem because the drink is intended as a replacement for other food.). . .

Write it down: Doctors have long been fascinated by people who claim to eat very little but can't lose weight -- people who blame their dieting problems on metabolism, for instance, or heredity. But for many people, researchers believe, the problem lies elsewhere.

A New York study monitored a group of obese patients who complained they couldn't lose weight on 1,200 calories a day. But researchers found there was nothing metabolically unusual about the patients. Instead, the study found the group was eating, on average, 47% more than it claimed and exercising 51% less.

The deception isn't always intentional. "If you ask someone to recall what they ate that day, I guarantee you a handful of M&M's is forgotten," says Lawrence J. Cheskin, director of the Johns Hopkins University weight-management center in Baltimore. . . .

Eat Big Food: A Pennsylvania State University study fed normal-weight women over two days. The women ate as much as they wanted of different types of high-calorie and low-calorie foods.

When researchers tallied the women's intake, they found the women instinctively ate about three pounds of food a day. The calorie content didn't seem important to the women in determining how much they ate -- even when it dropped by 30%. In other words, the women seemed satisfied by a certain volume of food, not calories.

So the trick for the dieter isn't to eat less food, but to pick foods that pack relatively few calories by weight, says Barbara J. Rolls, the Penn State nutrition professor and author of the "volumetrics" diet books. An easy way to do this is to think big. Choose foods that are bulked up by water or fiber. For instance, for 100 calories, you can eat a quarter-cup of raisins or two cups of grapes. Adding vegetables can double the size of a pasta dish without much of a calorie increase.

Soups are also big food -- even though liquid calories usually don't satisfy hunger. The reason could be psychological, or it may simply be that soups are more substantive, so the body treats them as a food. . .

Pay Attention to Portions: Studies of the way children eat during early childhood show that our eating instincts can change. One study put large portions of macaroni and cheese in front of two groups of children. The three-year-olds ate normal amounts, but the five-year-olds ate most of it.

"We're born with a better ability to listen to bodily signals than we're later exhibiting," says Dr. Rolls. "Between three and five, kids are getting rewired for cleaning their plates."

The process continues into adulthood. In one study, Dr. Rolls switched a popular restaurant dish of baked ziti with a portion that was 50% larger. Patrons didn't notice the bigger size and ate most of the dish, consuming 45% more calories than when the portion was smaller. The lesson: If a dieter doesn't pay attention to portion size, the body won't either. . .

Monotony Works: Most dieters think eating a wide variety of foods is the key to a successful diet. They're wrong.

The body has different satiety quotients for different types of foods. The mechanism meant our ancestors could pig out on protein when they found it, but would still have room for more if they stumbled on a cache of berries moments later. It's the reason so many of us end Thanksgiving dinner stuffed with turkey, dressing and sweet potatoes, but somehow manage to find room for pie. Variety excites the appetite.

For dieters, though, variety is trouble. The more choices you have, the more you will eat. In laboratory studies, people choosing from a variety of foods will eat 60% more than those given a single food -- bad news for dieters who love a good buffet. . .

Rethink Exercise: Everyone thinks exercise is the only way to lose weight. But the truth is, it's a lousy way to lose weight. Working out gives you all kinds of health benefits, but weight loss generally isn't one of them.

It takes an enormous amount of exercise to burn a meaningful number of calories. A woman who walks 30 minutes a day, six days a week, will burn a paltry 830 calories. Theoretically, it would take her more than four weeks to expend the 3,500 calories needed to lose one pound.

But the math isn't that simple. When a person starts exercising, all kinds of compensatory mechanisms kick in to defend body weight. The natural tendency is to increase eating enough to make up for the calories lost to exercise.

Even if you resist the hunger pangs, the body finds other ways to conserve calories. Your walk may be a little slower, or you may rest on the sofa a moment longer -- all of which eats up all or part of the caloric deficit created by exercise.

In a May 2000 University of Kansas study, one group of overweight women exercised for 30 minutes, three days a week. A second group took two 15-minute brisk walks five days a week. After 18 months of exercise, the first group lost just 2.1% of its starting weight, while the second group didn't lose any weight. . . .

. . . None of this gets you off the hook. While exercise often won't make you thin, it's generally the only way to keep from getting fat again.

That's because on any given day, we make small overeating mistakes we don't even notice. A handful of potato chips or a tablespoon of salad dressing each has about 100 calories. But a 100-calorie daily mistake adds up to 10 pounds a year. Regular exercise keeps you from gaining weight by correcting those small eating mistakes that are virtually unavoidable.

In other words, we're fighting an uphill battle against evolution. But apparently, the war can be wom with the right strategies.

From the desk of Jane Galt:

Where's PETA when you need them?

From the New York Times:

ITH MET ALPHA, in Baghdad, Iraq, April 23 — American-led forces have occupied a vast warehouse complex in Baghdad filled with chemicals where Iraqi scientists are suspected of having tested unconventional agents on dogs within the past year, according to military officers and weapons experts.

From the desk of Mindles H. Dreck:

Post-PriMadonna Deconstruction

Having earned enormous amounts of money and achieved extraordinary fame, Madonna announces she has risen above all that, and so should all you plebes.:

Madonna told the Radio Times that Americans had opportunities people in other countries did not have but got caught up in superficial dreams.

"We as Americans are completely obsessed and wrapped up in a lot of the wrong values -- looking good, having cash in the bank, being perceived as rich, famous and successful or just being famous," Madonna told the television listings magazine.

What's this "we", kemo sabe?

"It's the most superficial part of the American dream and who would know better than me? The only thing that's going to bring you happiness is love and how you treat your fellow man and having compassion for one another."

"Who would know better than me" she sighs, her condescension triumphing over her grammar. We must accept her experience in these matters, as there is no expert like a reformed drunk. On the other hand, there may be just a few people who, without performing everything short of an on-air gynecological exam to scandalize and attract the public, came to the understanding that extreme wealth and fame are poorly correlated with happiness.

Call me a Material Churl, but it is hard not to notice that Madonna's matriculation to Counter-Tribalism 101 coincides with the inevitable waning of her star:

The interview coincided with the release this week of Madonna's latest album "American Life."

The album -- her first in three years -- received poor reviews and left many critics asking if pop's most successful chameleon had lost her touch after 20 years at the top.

A chameleon blends in. Only a passing predator would judge it 'successful' for being as inconspicuous as Madonna.

But Madonna, who has embraced domestic bliss in Britain with Ritchie and her two children in recent years, brushed off the criticism.

"The critics have been writing me off for 20 years. That's nothing new. As far as I know I still have plenty of fans and sell lots of records. Do I care what critics say about me? No, and I don't read reviews."

Oh to achieve the zen-like indifference of an aging popstar raising the kids in a mansion in Britain! To cry "farewell to that crass Yankee hurly-burly" into a gold-plated megaphone before retreating noisily back to 'domestic bliss'.

Still, if she's really interested in "treating her fellow man" well, and celebrity, money and attention don't matter, she could just shut the f*** up.

UPDATE: Listen to Ken Tucker's review, including cuts from the new album. The whole album is about her supposed anti-materialist epiphany, but the music is sappy synth-trash. It sounds like something a slightly crunchy teenage girl made in her bedroom with her guitar and a new Casio keyboard. She's also overdoing it with the vocoder (big hat tip to Cher's abysmal innovation in this category - do you bebleeb in libe affer blub), the last refuge of those whose abs are substantially more attractive than their singing voice.

From the desk of Mindles H. Dreck:

The stories keep coming...

...and these are not for the squeamish:

Farris Salman is one of the last victims of Mr. Hussein's rule. His speech is slurred because he is missing part of his tongue. Black-hooded paramilitary troops, the Fedayeen Saddam, run by Mr. Hussein's eldest son, Uday, pulled it out of his mouth with pliers last month, he said, and sliced it off with a box cutter. They made his family and dozens of his neighbors watch.

There's quite a bit more.

A functioning constitutional democracy with respect for the rule of law may be a lofty and difficult goal for Iraq. On the other hand, why is it supposedly inevitable, as one of my projectile commenters stated recently, that the U.S. will fail to leave Iraq better off?

From the desk of Jane Galt:

How good is the Euro for Europe?

Arnold Kling has a nice post on the EU, and whether the currency zone is going to work. I had some thoughts on the subject a while back, when I analyzed it in terms of a corporate merger. The upshot of my analysis: the EU's major advantage is labor mobility and the unified currency, it's major weakness multiple layers of bureacracy and the potential imposition of the most inefficient economic models on all members by fiat. The pieces Arnold Kling links examine the question of whether the currency union, which is by far the best feature of the EU, is going to be a net gain or loss for Europe.

From the desk of Jane Galt:

In other news, Frank Quattrone, whose meteoric rise to the top of the tech-banking heap was always too good to be true, has been charged with obstruction of justice for allegedly advising (telling?) colleagues and employees to destroy documents related to how they allocated IPO's.

Which is dumb, because it was an open secret that banks allocated IPO stock to favored clients, who flipped the stock almost immediately for a practically guaranteed profit, in exchange for lucrative banking business. Destroying documents wasn't going to fool anyone.

On the other hand, if you were in on the dot-com scam, I suppose it must be easy to believe that everyone else is easily fooled.

From the desk of Jane Galt:

Accounting Retro-Chic

The Wall Street Journal is reporting (subscription required) that AOL/Time Warner has recovered from its massive loss last quarter to report a profit.

What gives, you may be asking.

Well, it just goes to show you that "big hit" accounting is alive and well.

The basic idea of the "big hit" is that if you're going to lose a little money, you might as well lose a lot, because investors will punish you anyway. So you pack every possible expense you can imagine into a one time charge, which is to say, a non-recurring item related to some unique event in your corporate history. Such as, say, a massive write-down of assets related to the AOL/Time Warner merger.

Some of the bad predictions you have made will not come true: gigantic hungry space aliens do not invade and eat all the AOL subscribers, for example. When it becomes clear that what we thought was the mothership was really only a speck of dirt on our window, we get to reverse the charges. The sudden increase in company value due to improved expectations gets recorded as earnings, and voila! You are back in the black, with a nice little boost. Investors, thinking the crisis has passed and brilliant management has managed a spectacular turnaround, breathe a sigh of relief and buy stock.

Theoretically, this shouldn't work, because professional investors are wise to this sort of thing. But if the dot-com boom proved anything, it's that our theory of how financial markets operate needs a little work.

From the desk of Jane Galt:

I find this story about George Galloway, an anti-war British labor MP, accepting money from Saddaam, very hard to believe. I mean, awfully hard. I mean, damn near impossible. Why would Saddaam pay him --it's not like he kept teh war from happening. And how could Mr. Galloway have not thought he was going to get caught?

On the other hand, I'm constantly amazed at the possibilities of human stupidity.

From the desk of Jane Galt:

Spending or tax cuts?

I've heard a fair amount of noise on what is apparently the new Democratic Party line to explain why the Bush tax cuts are bad, but all the spending they want to do is good. To wit: "Well, spending is okay, because it's temporary stimulus. Tax cuts are bad because they cause permanent fiscal havoc."

This is a very, very silly argument. I was gratified to see a friend who is both a professional economics person, and a raging liberal, look across the table at the person who offered the argument, blink twice, and say "Damn, that's stupider than anything the Republicans ever thought up."

Spending and tax cuts, while they are the same thing as far as the budget is concerned, do not have the same affect on the economy. Spending is worse for a couple of reasons. First of all, as long as the tax cut is on marginal rates, it has a slight positive affect on behavior, on the order of 5-15%. Second of all, unless the tax cuts are the insanely complicated, productivity killing and economy distorting "targeted tax cuts" of the Clinton/Gore juggernaut, tax cuts are very inexpensive to administer. You reprint some tables at the IRS, and presto! You're done. Spending, on the other hand, gets done by the government, which is insanely inefficient. Some of this is because spending is done by civil servants, not all of whom do their jobs well, or at all. But there's also the fact that the government has an eighty page procedure for the simplest thing. If any significant amount of money is spent there has to be public hearings, open-bid contracts -- and whoops! Your stimulus just arrived four years too late, and half of it was wasted on printa agendas for the community board meetings.

But this is even more stupid because tax cuts are temporary. It's spending that's forever.

What's going to happen when the Democrats control at two out of three of the Senate, House, and Oval Office? Those tax cuts are going away. Don't believe me? Tax rates have fluctuated by as much as 50% between presidents in the last half-century, maybe more. Just one example: Reagan cut 'em, Bush/Clinton raised them, Bush II cut them again. Projecting deficits from these tax cuts forever and ever is stupid, because we're only one election away from seeing them reversed.

But spending. . . aaahh, would that we all lived as long as government spending.

Remember how we were getting rid of the farm programs, begun in 1914? That was six years ago. They're all still here. I can't think of a single subsidy that actually got eliminated, not even honey or mohair. You with the mohair sweater: you owe each of us seventeen dollars.

How about rural electrification? I've been to the country, and it's electrified. Yet the program is still with us, still sucking in great gallons of federal money.

I mean, name your own program. Anything that the federal government has ever done, it's still doing, and then some. Any new spending we do now will, I guarantee, be with us for years to come.

Why? For one thing, the costs and benefits of tax cuts are both widely distributed. It's thus easy to get a constituency against them as well as for them. The benefits of spending, on the other hand, are almost always more concentrated. Because they are concentrated, they create pockets of people who will vote on, say, the continuation of the rural electrification administration. The costs, on the other hand, are still diffuse. Not even the most ardent libertarian is going to vote solely on the issue of eliminating one program.

For another, spending creates people who are dependant on that spending. Their pathetic voices describing what will happen to them if you end it make much better propaganda than the poor schmuck paying taxes to provide jobs teaching Old Church Slavonic in Elk Snout, Wyoming. After all, the taxpayer already has a job. He doesn't need our help.

Democrats: just say it. "I want taxes to be higher because I think that people who are better off should pay more of their income to support other people than they currently do." Of course, that's an election loser. But so's "tax cuts are evil, but government spending makes us all better off." I mean, don't y'all remember what happened to Dukakis?

From the desk of Mindles H. Dreck:

Random Thoughts

Listen to the two Iran-related pieces here (WMA = 1 , 2 ), especially the second comment by an Iranian Immigrant. George Bush "The Messiah"? When's the last time you heard that from the notorious "Arab Street"? (update: OK Persian Street).

Also, reading the WSJ site today I was confronted with this with this strange advertisement apparently depicting a crash-test dummy lecturing Robert Byrd, Ricardo Montalban, Clarence Thomas and Sumner Redstone on workplace safety. It's odd in a hokey nostalgic way I just can't describe. Somehow it seemed to cry for captioning by Lileks, so I sent it along.

Finally, George Monbiot follows his negative interest rate policy with another looney economic suggestion - massive Euro appreciation. In the process, he compares the U.S. economy to that of a "West African state". I'm sure his new colleagues in the EU will be pleased with the "basket case" moniker (since many of them run larger deficits than ours) and enjoy watching the value of their U.S. holdings plummet for George's sake. I forwarded this article to a colleague of mine who worked in London for twelve years, and he responded "Ah - the Guardian, the good old days arguing socialism with my drunken friends." (via Bros. Judd)

From the desk of Jane Galt:

Come on girls, we've all worn some of these.

The nice thing about being 6'2 is that usually everyone else in the wedding party is a good half foot shorter than I am. While my figure is best set off by something long and lean, they want something shorter, with a poofier skirt and a nice crisp waistline. A nice crisp waistline that will, on any dress not custom designed for me, strike at approximately my rib cage, with the skirt coming up five or six inches higher on my legs than everyone else's. The general effect is to make me look like a twelve year old who underwent a very sudden growth spurt right before the wedding.

Or there was the Indian wedding I was in, where the Indian lady who made the saris flatly refused to believe that I was as tall as my measurements made out, and took several inches off everything, including tightening the sleeves to "tourniquet".

Not like I dwell, or anything.

From the desk of Jane Galt:

Can Daschle be told to stop calling himself a Catholic?

There was a lot of noise in the Blogosphere about this article by Tucker Carlson, which covered the South Dakota Catholic Bishop ordering Tom Daschle to stop calling himself Catholic.

Many bloggers reacted with horror. How dare the bishop threaten to excommunicate Daschle for his personal, private beliefs? Separation of Church and State, buddy! Get back behind the line! You've got no right to tell him what to think.

Ummm. . . no.

First of all, he didn't threaten to excommunicate Daschle, at least not according to the article. He told him to stop publicly identifying himself as Roman Catholic, and since the public identification was being done in materials used for political purposes (speeches, campaign brochures and web sites, etc.), it's hard to see how that crosses some church/state line that Daschle didn't already cross.

I strongly suspect, although I do not know, that most of the people kicking up the fuss are protestant or jewish. There isn't anyone with the authority, as far as I know, to tell you you aren't a member of one of those faiths. You can be expelled from a congretation, to be sure, but no minister can declare that you are not a Presbyterian, no rabbi strip your jewishness from you. When they hear a bishop telling someone to stop calling themselves Catholic, it sounds like that bishop telling that person to stop proclaiming their beliefs.

It's a little more complicated than that, however. For one thing, unlike most mainline protestant denominations, or any jewish ones, Catholics are pretty firm on what beliefs you have to embrace to be a member. [Aren't the Orthodox Jews pretty strict? -- ed. Yes, but as far as I know, technically, you don't have to believe in anything they say, as long as you obey the Law.] You cannot, for example, deny the physical resurrection of Christ, or that He is the Son of God, and still call yourself Catholic. If you do not subscribe to the nicene creed, you do not subscribe to the Catholic faith, and the bishop has a perfect right to ask you to stop, because you are lying to people.

Daschle is already out of communion with the church because he is divorced and remarried. As far as I know, until he separates himself from his current wife, the only sacrament of which he may partake is extreme unction, and only that if he repents his remarriage.

He's also pro-choice. He works legislatively to facilitate an act which, if you facilitate, perform, or undergo as a private citizen, leads to automatic excommunication. (Note that the church may not know that you're excommunicated, but you're excommunicated just the same. God knows, which is what counts.)

A lot of people have pointed out that he's for a lot of other things that the Church is for, but they're failing to grasp that in the Church, there is a hierarchy of teachings. There are teachings, and then there are teachings. Abortion is one of the big ones, and before you open your mouth, the death penalty and war are not. The latter two fall into the category of things that are sometimes right and sometimes wrong, depending on the context. Abortion is always and forever, in every place, time, and context, wrong. There's no wiggle room. I'm sorry you dislike it but that's what they believe and please don't argue with me, because I'm not a canon lawyer. Hell, I'm not even Catholic.

Think of it like this: if you're a Methodist, you don't have to like the wedding service, and you can even tell everyone you don't like it, even not use it, and you're still a Methodist. But if you tell everyone the Bible is bunk and that Jesus guy was a real jerk, you may tell people you're a Methodist, but you're not one, and it would be reasonable for your clergy to ask you to stop so identifying, except that Methodists are far too polite to ever dream of such a thing.

If you are not in communion with the Church, and are actively working against some of it's major teachings, the Church has a perfect right to tell you to stop identifying yourself as Catholic. I can't go around telling everyone I'm a Girl Scout because I like camping and think a lot of their ideals are pretty nifty. You may like a lot of the Church's teachings, like the history and continuity, and feel a connection to your ethnic and ancestral history through it, but if you are living in sin with a woman the Church does not recognize as your wife, with no intention to change this behavior, while not merely denying many of its major teachings, but actively working against them legislatively, you're not a Catholic, and you shouldn't call yourself one without the words "lapsed" or "former" in front.

The bishop didn't tell Daschle to stop attending services, reading catholic theology, or praying. That would be foul. What he told Daschle to do was to stop telling people an untruth: that Daschle is currently acting in major accordance with the teachings of the Church. Since he is doing so for the public purpose of enhancing his electibility, I see no violation in the Church telling him to stop. Moreover, the bishop may believe he has a moral duty to do so, since Daschle identifying himself as a Catholic while living in sin and promoting abortion could lead the faithful, or potentially faithful, astray.

There are questions about whether the bishop showed good judgement in doing so, but I don't think there is any legitimate question the he had the right to do it. It also raises some questions that I think the Democrats are going to find troubling. A lot of their politicians are Catholic. Some are pro-life, but those ones don't get treated very well in the party. The rest have sort of glossed the issue over with a public/private distinction that I'm hearing more theological types say is invalid; that you can't sign legislation favoring abortion and still be a member in good standing of the Church. If the bishops start to get noisy about it, that could cause major trouble for either the Democratic Party, which is more dogmatic on abortion than the Republican Party, or the politicians themselves, who will have to choose between their office and their putative faith. (I bet the office wins, 9 times out of 10. But I'm ready to be pleasantly surprised.) The uneasy ceasefire between an authoritative church and an ascendant political class may be at an end.

Anyway, the reason I thought of this was that via Eve Tushnet, I found this nifty piece on the matter which says much what I've said, but better.

But I think Patrick has made a more fundamental error. He seems to assume that Daschle has a right to be Catholic; that is, that he may say and do whatever he pleases, remain a member of the Church, and continue to tell the world that's he's Catholic. But that's quite simply wrong. Membership in the Church is a privilege--albeit one not lightly revoked, once obtained--based on certain concrete actions that one must take in order to be and remain Catholic. Mr. Daschle has a constitutional and human right to freedom of conscience, and to speak freely. He's certainly free to reach any conclusion he wants on abortion, and equally free to publicize it, vote accordingly, etc. But Catholicism is not a matter of taking a random set of moral abstractions, turning them over in one's mind, and deciding that they're pretty good guidelines to live by. It requires, among other things, day-to-day adherence to certain non-negotiable moral tenets, and submission to the authority of the Church--including one's bishop--on matters of faith and morals. The Church has the inherent authority to discipline errant Catholics, and indeed a moral obligation to do so in some cases; otherwise, it sends the message that those non-negotiable moral tenets I just mentioned are in fact negotiable. In the eyes of the Church, that's a threat to the salvation of the faithful, who may be led into error and sin by such examples.

Note: I haven't even gotten the emails, but I know that someone missed the part where I said this, so I'm saying it again -- I AM NOT CATHOLIC. I have never been Catholic, despite my name. I had the kind of indifferent, yet broad, religious education that only the Upper West Side can provide, but these are not my beliefs I'm discussing. I don't accept the authority of the Church, and it's most unlikely that I ever will.

However, there's a sort of inability among most people on the left, plus the libertarian class, to accept that religion provides an alternative worldview to theirs, with very different premises that produce very different scopes of action and conscience, and that unless they can conclusively prove the non-existance of God, it is not metaphysically inferior. They want religion tamed, stuffed in an appropriate Sunday box, trimmed to fit in the unobtrusive place they've assigned it.

The objection to abortion has a number of complicated theological roots which are not, as I often hear, "the hatred of women". One can argue endlessly about whether the Church hates women, except that I don't care. The point is that the Church cannot alter its position on abortion, nor downgrade it, because you find it offensive. Nor can it tell its politicians to vote their conscience, any more than it should have told its German politicians to vote their conscience on the Final Solution. That's how wrong they think abortion is, and it's nice that you disagree, but it's not up for debate, because THEY THINK GOD SAID SO.

I'm not Catholic, but I can understand how one's freedom of action shifts when you start from the premises of Church theology rather than liberalism. I don't have to agree with it. But I can understand it. However, since I don't agree wtih it, I'm also not going to argue it. This is what they believe, and it's not up for argument. If you want to try to change their minds, go find a canon lawyer. I give you ten minutes before you're begging for mercy, but that's not my problem either.

From the desk of Jane Galt:

Quote of the Day

Churchill described Lenin's sympathies as being "...cold and wide as the Arctic Ocean, his hatreds tight as the hangman's noose. His purpose to save the world, his method to blow it up." Those who love all mankind have frequently been ruthless: I would prefer to trust a man or woman who has loved well a few precious others. Such a person is more benevolent even to a stranger.

Natalie Solent

From the desk of Jane Galt:

A Blogging Coup

Congratulations to Happy Fun Pundit on their amazing new staff addition!

From the desk of Jane Galt:

You're going to hear some noise about how the unions are pushing American Airlines into bankruptcy. Technically, that's true. But if you're looking for someone to blame, blame the executives.

They asked the unions to make big concessions -- like 15% of salary -- while paying the top 45 executives retention bonuses worth up to twice their base pay, and taking steps to shelter the executive supplemental pension from bankruptcy. And they didn't tell the unions. Too bad for them they had to file with the SEC the same day that voting closed on the concessions deals. The unions, angry that they hadn't been told about the safety net for the executives before being asked to hand back major concessions, scuttled the deal.

Some of it seems to be legit. There were a lot of executives who were eligible for retirement who wanted to take their retirement in a lump sum and get out before the collapse -- the company needed them, and it's unlikely they could have been persuaded to risk their pensions. But the retention bonuses sound like a warm personal gift from the executives to themselves before the bankruptcy court cut their salaries to "junior fryolator operator".

And even if it were totally legit, not telling the unions gave a loaded weapon to anyone agitating against the concessions.

The executives are getting what they deserve, and will hopefully soon be out on the tarmac. The shareholders and employees, unfortunately, aren't. The unions can probably count on the bankruptcy court to cut them a fair deal. But the shareholdes are going to lose everything.

If you live near one of the American executives, and you happen to see an angry mob on the way to their house -- don't just wave at them. Take some time out to draw them a map.

From the desk of Jane Galt:

Debut

My new food column, The Starving Artist, is up at Mimeograph.

Incidentally, budding writers, Mimeograph is still looking for columnists. If you like to write on food, entertainment, or other non-political topics, drop Paul a note with a writing sample.

From the desk of Jane Galt:

What's causing hte rise in government spending?

Kevin Drum says it's entitlements, which is true, and reasonable wage increases for government employees, which is not.

The thing is, he's right: the services provided to him and his family probably haven't changed much. In fact, most of the per capita increase in government expenditure over the past 40 years has come from Medicare, Social Security, and interest on the national debt, none of which benefit him at all — for the moment, anyway. And much of the rest of it comes from the fact that we pay government employees more, just the same as we pay private sector employees more these days too thanks to rising GDP and increasing prosperity. School teachers, for example, are no longer expected to do their jobs for $15,000 per year. But since Friedrich doesn't work for the government, that doesn't benefit him either.

If government wages were rising just in line with national income, we'd see no measurable effect on government spending as a percentage of GDP, which is how those increases are usually measured. (If you're measuring absolute dollars, even inflation adjusted ones, you get a lot more bang out of the more-than-doubling of the American population than any other factor.) GDP would rise by x%, salaries would also rise by x%, and the ratio would remain the same.

Where does most national income come from? Salaries. So government wages can't possibly be in line with private sector salaries and have any measurable effect on the ratio of spending to income.

Maybe salaries have increased more for the white-collar clerk professions that make up most government employment? But Drum has another post saying it ain't so. (That's also misleading, because such charts as I've seen that show stagnation leave out the effect of taxes, and tax free bennies like health care spending, which at 15% of GDP, is non-negligible.)

The rises definitely aren't coming at the top. An agency head pulls in under $200K. Try to find a private sector corporate officer or EVP with that many reports for under half a mil.

Any raises due to government spending come from the fact that:

1) We spend more on more programs
2) We pay government workers at the bottom of the pyramid more than any private sector equivalent would make, while paying people from the mid-level upwards much less, the famed Swedish model that the Left is always on about. The result is -- the quality of government services we all so enjoy.
3) We waste an enormous amount of time and effort on procedures designed to prevent fraud and/or the least little bit of unfairness, with the result that we all get the same level of crappy, incompetent service at inordinate cost.

From the desk of Mindles H. Dreck:

Better Lucky than Good...

There have been many detractors to the administration's stance towards North Korea. Surely the administration was giving them no choice with their tough talk.

Now that the North Korean position has softened, these same detractors will attribute it to luck, or to the wisdom of China. Surely the administration has not been pressuring China. How would they know to do such a thing?

Lee Trevino once said the more he practiced the 'luckier' he got. If he were reading this he'd add "and stop calling me 'Shirley'".

From the desk of Mindles H. Dreck:

Apologies

Yes, Jane, I'm alive. I don't know why I am compelled to apologize for my long absence, but I am. It's really quite simple -

1) Work has been hellish, and times are not good. Extra hours at the office and little to show for it, except that I am employed, which is something. My industry is surfing the backside of the bubble. One piece of economic news that isn't getting much play outside of finance circles is that risk premia (i.e. corporate bonds vs. Treasuries; P/E discounts to riskier stocks) are finally declining from historically enormous levels. If it continues it will ultimately be good for business and markets. And not a moment too soon.

2) Just keeping up with the information on the war and aftermath soaks up almost all my leisure time (except for the brief 4-day vacation I just took in Florida, declared a blogging and news-free hiatus by the better half)

3) As if 1 and 2 weren't enough, my brother is distressed enough with my politics he is trying to work a conversion effort. He's a very smart guy but so far it has been all spleen and no brain. Some excerpts:

The Mail & Guardian of Johannesburg said the war "is about revenge; about American penis size as much as American bellies. It is an object lesson to the Islamic world in the aftermath of the Twin Towers and a shot across the bows of the other great powers with interests in the Gulf. It is an opportunity for hard-eyed generals and their industrial suppliers to test new military toys. The last thing it is really about is the liberation of the Iraqi people." (slate.msn.com)

...From my point of view, it takes more than a few things to become the most disastrous president in recent (or remote) history, but being religious is not necessarily one of those things. Being a triumphalist is (using the prevailing shorthand definition of people whose philosophy is "We're strong; you're not; so shut up "). Of course in religious circles this refers to the evanglelicals (sic) who permuate (sic) this administration and I do dislike them a whole lot (An education secretary who thinks Christian schools are best etc etc ad nauseum). It's that bit about "gods on our side" that makes me start remembering zealots in history who have tortured and burned people alive to save them. But as you know, the evangelicals are not the only suppliers of triumphalists to this government- they're pleanty (sic) of secular trimphalists around.

.....Perle and Wolfy get the major arrogant-SOB-foot-in-mouth award on that one. (I mean having these bozos in governement (sic) is almost as demoralizing as Negroponte the death squad apologizer and bush the insider stock trader and corrupt tax-break seller)

...I hope the Iraqis get something out of this-I don't have high hopes given the track record of these (u.s.) officials. I have 0 confidence in their professed concerns for the Iraqi people.

(I can't resist asking you to imagine the reaction of republicans had this misadventure been undertaken by a democrat- mon dieu! "oh my god - state building??? what kind of softy liberal left wing miasma is this, where is the US interest in this, LYNCH THE BASTARD!"-that last was the lovely conservative talk radio host reaction, always ready to supply an eddifying (sic) addition to the civic discourse)

In any case when an Iraqi who is actually in the middle of being tortured when he is rescued by American soldiers can only say "well, of course I'm sort of thankful and all that but don't let me keep you and could you close the door on your way out?" Then we are in deep doodoo.

Speaking of family, I also endured remarks from my sister on how she and her in-laws are going out of their way to BUY French products and show their support for that...er..regime and how the U.S. flag "needs healing". When I cheerily informed my brother-in-law that the P.o.W.'s had been found (Young, Johnson, et. al.) he made a contemptious noise (like a 'raspberry') and said "good for them." Needless to say I didn't pursue the subject. Much moaning about Museums, no joy at liberation.

I love my family and it pains me to see the poor dears have been drinking the Common Dreams Kool-Aid.

From the desk of Jane Galt:

RIP

Dr. Atkins has died -- not of a heart attack, as his detractors had predicted, but of a blow to the head after a fall.

Here are some thoughts I had on Dr. Atkins' favorite diet:

On the Gary Taubes article arguing we're fat because of the FDA.

On fat metabolism.

On what makes the Atkins diet tick.

My attempt to do Atkins:

Diet blogging first post
Diet blogging baseline post
Diet blogging Day 1
Diet blogging interlude
Diet blogging Day 2
Diet blogging Day 3
Diet blogging Day 4

Final thoughts

From the desk of Jane Galt:

Speaking of ACORN, here's a piece describing their agenda from City Journal.

From the desk of Jane Galt:

Party! Party! Party!

From the desk of Jane Galt:

It seems that despite claims that the folks who were organizing the boycott are the bubba demographic that isn't sophisticated enough to consume French products, the boycott is actually being felt.

I confess I'm surprised. Although my mother is participating in teh boycott, and an astonishing number of my acquaintances have given up French wine or French vacations, I didn't really think the overall effect would be noticeable.

But sales of French wine are down something like 10%, and one retailer reports sales of Limoges off as much as half.

That doesn't mean the boycott is "working" in the sense of hitting the French consumer where it hurts in order to make a foreign policy point. The goods that are being hit are ones that have close substitutes: wine, cheese, china. Even the people I know who want to give up French goods are having a hard time giving up Dannon yogurt, Mephisto sandals, and Phyto hair products. (And we're awfully glad we found a source for domestic brie.) It seems unlikely that the French consumer is going to notice, unless he's a winemaker.

On the up side, it's nice that Americans are finally starting to give Spanish, Italian, and Australian wines their due.

From the desk of Jane Galt:

You can't make this stuff up

The WSJ has a nice piece (subscription required) on union busting by a community activist group that was -- get this -- advocating for a minimum wage:

[The National Labor Relations Board] found that when workers in the Dallas branch of the left-leaning Acorn expressed interest in unionizing, management responded by giving them the old heave-ho. What makes this even more hypocritical is that Kimberly Olsen, the head of Acorn's Dallas operation, was at the time leading the charge for a Dallas "living wage" ordinance. The union in question, by the way, was the famed Wobblies: the International Workers of the World.

The ruling doesn't appear to have attracted any media attention, but it is available in the "Decisions" section on the NLRB Web site (www.nlrb.gov) -- and well worth the read. The union, Ms. Olsen told an employee, was "trying to destroy" Acorn, and she said she didn't see why she should have to take orders from employees. Spoken like a true robber baron.

The employees in question were paid $18,000 a year for a 54-hour week. And just what were these latter-day Oliver Twists demanding? Well, one request was that Ms. Olsen and the powers-that-be see their way to granting them one weekend off a month.

From the desk of Jane Galt:

We don't want to supress free speech -- just bad speech!

Thank you, Matt.

From the desk of Jane Galt:

Steven Landsberg on why war never goes quite like you expect.

From the desk of Jane Galt:

Great moments in advertising history

You can't make this stuff up.

From the desk of Jane Galt:

Whither Iraq

I don't think you need to be an industrialized power to have a vibrant democracy. But I think it's clear that what you do need is a functioning economy in which property rights and obligations are sufficiently well defined, and markets are sufficiently free, to allow people incentive to build up businesses, invest in their homes and families, and otherwise build a better life for themselves and their country.

This article from the Wall Street Journal (subscribers only) gives a taste of the problem ahead:

Unless the U.S. knows wages and prices around Iraq, it risks setting off a round of hyperinflation when wages are no longer fixed. Without knowledge of Iraq's total debt, the U.S. can't begin critical negotiations to write off a portion of it. Without an assessment of Iraq's infrastructure, the U.S. can't accurately gauge how much it needs to budget for Iraqi aid or try to raise from foreign donors.

Before Mr. Hussein ordered the disastrous invasion of Iran in 1980, Iraq had moved to the top echelon of developing nations. The country was flush with oil revenue. Per capita income had doubled in the 1970s, and the government spent heavily to improve education and health services. Today, Iraq is widely believed to have about 112 billion barrels of oil reserves, No. 2 after Saudi Arabia. But in the wake of the nine-year war with Iran, the 1991 Persian Gulf War, years of sanctions and the devastation of the current campaign, the country is a shambles.

The bill for feeding Iraqis, providing security forces and rebuilding hospitals, power plants, telephone exchanges and other vital infrastructure could total more than $60 billion over the next several years. Baghdad also is saddled with foreign debt and war reparations that could top $300 billion. While Iraq also has assets, including about $18 billion a year in oil exports, that amount is dwarfed by the scale of the task ahead. Iraq faces "a double transition" from the ravages of war and the Hussein regime's central planning, says Columbia University economist Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate.

I'm more sanguine than most about hyperinflation; as long as the government doesn't run the presses, such an interlude will be brief, and will most likely impoverish those with ill-gotten gains from sucking up to the Ba'ath party. I think we can stay in place long enough to ensure that the government doesn't run the presses. Alternatively, we can quasi-dollarize by paying locals in US currency.

But that debt is a massive problem. No one even knows