…who knows all of the references in fake job titles? It’s a fun video, but besides the people, like me, who read and write about this for a living, who else gets it?
I should have opposed torture for the same reason I oppose just about every other surrender of power to the government that naive people (in this case, like me) tend to think looks good on paper: Because the government won’t use it competently, because the government will abuse it, and because the government will find new, inappropriate contexts in which to use it.It’s one thing to argue that torture may be justifiable and effective in a few, limited circumstances. It’s another to believe that once you’ve given it the power, government will only use torture in those same limited situations where it’s justifiable and effective.
I’ve obviously lived in DC too long when I watch political stuff on YouTube and I know every one involved, and I know them different ways. For example, there’s this video:
I know Rachel Oliphant through church and friends and I used to work with Ben Lieberman 7 years ago. Or there’s the next video where I know the host from when I worked on the Hill.
Maybe the answer is that I haven’t lived in DC too long, but Heritage just collects people I know.
This article in the WSJ provides an interesting brief economic history.
n the 1930s, we had a Great Depression, when income levels fell back to where they had been 20 years earlier. For a few years, people had to live the way their parents had always lived, and they found it almost intolerable. The underlying expectation — that the present is supposed to be better than the past — is a new phenomenon in history. No 18th-century politician would have asked “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” because it never would have occurred to anyone that they ought to be better off than they were four years ago.Rising income is only part of the story. One hundred years ago the average American workweek was over 60 hours; today it’s under 35. One hundred years ago 6% of manufacturing workers took vacations; today it’s over 90%. One hundred years ago the average housekeeper spent 12 hours a day on laundry, cooking, cleaning and sewing; today it’s about three hours.
As far as the quality of the goods we buy, try picking up an electronics catalogue from, oh, say, 2001 and ask yourself whether there’s anything there you’d want to buy. That was the year my friend Ben spent $600 for a 1.3-megapixel digital camera that weighed a pound and a half. What about services, such as health care? Would you rather purchase today’s health care at today’s prices or the health care of, say, 1970 at 1970 prices? I don’t know any informed person who would choose 1970, which means that despite all the hype about costs, health care now is a better bargain than it’s ever been before.
The moral is that increases in measured income — even the phenomenal increases of the past two centuries — grossly understate the real improvements in our economic condition. The average middle-class American might have a smaller measured income than the European monarchs of the Middle Ages, but I suspect that Tudor King Henry VIII would have traded half his kingdom for modern plumbing, a lifetime supply of antibiotics and access to the Internet.
It would be hard for the Europeans to be more hypocritical on climate change. Their greenhouse gas emissions are increasing faster than emissions by the U.S. and still they claimed that the U.S. needs to get more ambitious. According to the FT:
Jos
Jeremy, this one’s for you.
Today the President unveiled his plan to deal with climate change. The plan isn’t big on details, but essentially the plan is to engage China, India, and others not covered by the Kyoto Protocol, exchange technology, agree to voluntary greenhouse gas limits. The responses from global warming activists were interesting, because the activists are don’t pay attention to what is occurring in the real world or, more likely, they don’t care. It may be that their real agenda has very little to do with climate change and everything to do with limiting our supply of energy. Here are some examples:
Daniel Weiss, a senior fellow and director of climate strategy for the Center for American Progress, issued a statement on Bush’s proposal before the president had even finished his speech in Washington.
“President Bush’s do nothing policy on global warming continues despite our allies’ best efforts to spur U.S. reductions,” Weiss said. “At next week’s G8 summit, Germany and our other allies will once again implore him to join them in slashing global warming pollution. President Bush’s speech today indicates that he will snub them again next week.”
And this one:
Friends of the Earth President Brent Blackwelder also dismissed the Bush approach as a “complete charade.”
“It is an attempt to make the Bush administration look like it takes global warming seriously without actually doing anything to curb emissions,” he said. Blackwelder added, the United States “has a moral responsibility to help lead the fight against global warming. The American people get this. But President Bush isn’t leading. He isn’t even following.”
If you only read their comments you would think that the US is doing a bad job compared to the European Union on reducing greenhouse gases. But the reality is different. From 2000 to 2004, the Europeans’ greenhouse gas emissions increased by 2.1%. Over the same span U.S. greenhouse gas emissions increased 1.3%. How can US emissions be increasing slow than Europe’s? But it gets worse for the global warming activists. During 2006, U.S. carbon dioxide emissions fell by 1.3% from energy-related sources. But the EU’s carbon dioxide emission increase between 1.0-1.5%.
It appears that President Bush’s “do nothing policy” is getting better results than Europe’s cap and trade policy under the Kyoto Protocol. By the way, did I mention that because of regulations on greenhouse gas emissions electricity prices are up 15% in the UK and 25% in Germany? And their greenhouse gas emission continue to increase…
