Quote of the Day
The Democrats are the party that says government will make yousmarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn.
The Republicans are the party that says
government doesn't work and then they get elected and prove it.
P.J. O'Rourke
Chart of the Day
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| Courtesy of Cato Institute |
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| Via Libertarian Republic |
According to Huffpo:
Federal employees at the Environmental Protection Agency have been instructed to stop defecating in the hallway of a regional office in Denver, Colo., according to an internal e-mail obtained by Government Executive.Physician, heal thyself!
In a staff email earlier this year, Deputy Regional Administrator Howard Cantor warned of "several" inappropriate bathroom "incidents" in the building, including paper towel-clogged toilets and "an individual placing feces in the hallway" outside the restroom.
SCOTUS Adds Another Goose Egg On the Lawless Obama Administration and Other Bad News For Authoritarian "Progressives"
The Supreme Court rebuked Obama 9-0 over his abuse of recess appointment authority in packing the NLRB with crony unionists. Thumbs UP! In other court news, SCOTUS also unanimously reaffirmed the First Amendment, striking down Massachusetts' censorship zones against pro-life protesters. Thumbs UP! And for the Zippers' current home state, former Mayor Michael "Big Apple Nanny" Bloomberg's quixotic big soda ban was finally put to rest. Thumbs UP!
One of My Favorite EconTalks: Yuval Levin on the Great Debate Between Burke and Paine
One of the things about this talk is that I rediscovered an appreciation for the great conservative Burke; it's clear that Levin and moderator Roberts lean towards Burke, but I may need to revisit a few posts where I've made more cursory references to Burke. Burke was particularly pragmatic and nuanced, not a line-in-the-sand-ideologue: he was an incrementalist reformer whom feared the Pandora's box of radical discontinuities (especially the French Revolution), Do I consider myself a Burkean? Certainly not in the sense of being a stare decisis jurist locking in activist anti-liberty judicial rulings; I don't think we're ever going to be able to finesse our way incrementally out of the Baby Boomer tsunami and the unfunded entitlement and pension crises. Burke, while sympathetic with American colonist grievances, never did support independence from the paternalism and second-class citizenship of British imperialism. And whereas he had an incremental plan for abolition of the abominable slave trade and slavery in Britain itself, he never introduced it and we saw an incremental reform initiated over 20 years later, roughly 1806. He also had more faith in the goodness of government.
Levin sees Paine and Burke as forefathers of social liberalism (Rights of Man) and conservatism (Reflections on the Revolution in France) respectively. Paine loathed the social institutions like organized religion as a yoke on liberty and wildly supported the more radicalized French revolutionaries; Burke was so horrified that the contagion might spread to Britain that he worried about what would become of his remains if and when he died.
I heard enough during the interview to want to put Levin's book, up for some book awards, on my wishlist. Roberts has an interesting post-interview reflection on interview comments well worth reading. Roberts' opinions on economic issues are strikingly similar to mine (although he has a more tentative, congenial approach). I did like the side discussion on libertarianism and the problem of marketing a conservative message.
On the Marketing Of a Conservative-Libertarian Message
Picking up where my Levin book discussion left off, I noticed one liberal website mourned the seeming fact that the electoral Senate map favors a GOP takeover this fall--they had been counting on Mississippi and Oklahoma pulling an Akin/Murdock result. I don't think so. Akin and Murdock got off message and talked incoherently on abortion--something that simply isn't an issue on the national stage except perhaps for government funding or mandate. These were predictable questions given the deceptive "progressive" talking point of a "war on women" and I'm surprised veteran politicians had not anticipated them. I don't think any Republican will go off message (at least I hope not), but let me predict this one: "gay marriage". And what I would advise any candidate to say is to remind voters this is not a federal issue; express a preference for government to stay out of the issue but to express personal belief in the traditional definition of marriage and acknowledge gay people's right to pursue personal happiness in their own relationships.
But there's a problem which I call the "paradox of limited government". You can't run a campaign of "good cop/bad cop", acting out as simply Whac-a-Mole on irresponsible "Progressive" programs. Now no political candidate has ever tried to hire me as a consultant, and I'm not going give away professional advice in a free blog, but here are some general points, not intended as a comprehensive program, but a good start:
- "too much government" slows the economy with taxes and expensive, unnecessary regulations which deter job creation
- we need a sound currency, not policies that starve pensioners and lower-income by punishing savings and inflationary healthcare, food and energy prices
- we believe more in the private sector helping people in need than overpaid, ineffective government bureaucrats; point out decades of failed "Progressive" policies, the diversion of resources better left in the hands of the job creators to invest in new businesses, technology and workers
- don't be predictable, do not allow your opponent to define you, don't run a defensive campaign: run a confident, positively-toned one
- don't get caught in a game of "which programs will you cut": point out current spending is unsustainable, everything--include Defense--needs to be cut across the board; talk about eliminating duplication across agencies, shuttering redundant programs and obsolete operations, reducing our overseas troop commitments and bases, selling federal government assets, government head count reductions by attrition, decentralizing social programs to the states
- point out the Democrats routinely overpromise and underdeliver; engage in "plain talk", not empty promises, about unsustainable entitlements and the national debt
- avoid polarizing rhetoric on immigration; do not attack Obama personally--pledge to be the loyal opposition, to engage in win-win negotiation
- lay out a true healthcare market-based agenda, focusing on catastrophic healthcare, cross-state competition and risk pooling and shoring up state/regional high risk pools
I started to comment on a relevant Facebook thread this week when I experienced a browser crash. But as I looked at a Daily Caller column today of 7 IRS employees suffering from relevant "computer crashes", it reminded me of the thread I was commenting on. Another discussant had correctly pointed out that in businesses, messages are not simply stored on desktops but on servers, and there are multiple levels of redundancy in terms of copies and backups. (As a 20-year DBA, I'm obsessed with backup and recovery, and I've had many occasions on my own PC's to migrate or otherwise restore multiple years of emails, filter rules, etc.)
The point of the discussant was to point out that the average citizen or legislator may lack sufficient computing background and professional IT experience to accept explanations of hard drive failures or computer crashes at face value. But when you look at the dependence of many businesses on messaging--and I have seen employee accounts with gigabytes of stored emails and/or attachments. I've seen occasional outages of email services result in lost employee productivity, never mind months or years of exchanges and materials. I've occasionally seen employee systems with corrupted email folders or other anomalies, perhaps a software or disk anomaly, but I've seen technicians resolve these issues within a couple of hours or so using redundant copies.
I have worked at a number of government agencies (city/county, state and federal), although not the IRS. There are often inconsistencies between agencies (e.g., I've had nearly a half-dozen background investigations, because agencies have their own idiosyncratic processes), and most emails are not stored in the databases I've worked with, so my direct knowledge is limited (not to mention contractual restrictions in what I can discuss). But let me point out a few general comments: computer server data storage tends to be state-of-the-art with highly sophisticated disk redundancy. These disks are arranged in a configuration which allows one or more disks to die without losing a byte of data. They are swappable, meaning a technician can remove and replace disks without affecting operations; the government has support contracts that call for vendors to replace these disks within at most a few hours. In addition, the IT manager may maintain a number of disks in inventory which could be deployed. Usually there is at least a minimum once daily disk and/or tape backup of changed data and weekly comprehensive backups and often layered hourly or more frequent backups of changed user files.
In addition, there are government audits/reviews of systems, databases and procedures to ensure "best practices" are being followed for each layer of technology, including security patching and scanning. Most agencies have in place disaster recovery processes that have been tested.
Does that mean things don't fall between the cracks? Of course not. For example, on my first Maryland gig, I discovered that the previous DBA/system administrator hadn't noticed two of the servers were effectively running on their spare tires and the backup power supply on the main server wasn't plugged into a usable socket. But the idea that the IRS "lost" emails is about as credible as the infamous 18.5 minute Watergate tape gap; the most reasonable explanation: criminal evidence tampering and obstruction of justice, pure and simple. Can I prove it? No. But the idea that the only flaw in the IRS IT system coincides with the few emails under scrutiny violates Ockham's razor.
Zipper, Does Everyone You Meet At the Grocery Store Put 14 $550 Swiss Watches on Their Shopping List?
Facebook Corner
(LFC). "Economists call this legitimate racket 'regulatory capture.' When a regulatory scheme is transformed into a competition-stifling tool of the ostensibly regulated industry, that industry has 'captured' the regulations. Regulatory capture in turn encourages rent-seeking behavior...In quota states, holders of liquor licenses see them as fairly liquid assets"
It's the Statist anti-consumer corruption of a mixed economy. Incompetent regulators cannot cope with the dynamism of a vibrant free market: innovation, creative destruction, etc. They believe that fewer market competitors are more manageable for the convenience of central planning.
(IPI). The U.S. Supreme Court could announce its decision in the case Harris v. Quinn as early as today.
Legal experts and unions across the country are closely watching this case because it could be a landmark decision on the issues of unionization and freedom of speech. Here are the facts: http://illin.is/1mqcCwp
The rent-seeking crony unionists want to skim off state funds as paydown on their political chits in supporting the election of corrupt Democrat leadership in Chicago and Springfield.
Videos From the Homecoming Blog (Let's Bring Them ALL Home)
Political Cartoon
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| Courtesy of Steve Kelley via Townhall |
Dan Fogelberg, "Same Old Lang Syne". If there is a signature Fogelberg tune, it must be this one. One of the most memorable story tunes like Chapin's "Taxi". This song got so much airplay that I remember that the ladies in UH Catholic Newman (I was one of the core dozen or two members of the group at the time) loathed hearing it yet again. I could listen to it hundreds of times and it would still sound fresh; I couldn't relate to the life of a traveling musician, but it makes me wonder what would happen if I suddenly ran into one of my old girlfriends (especially the one in Florida)....
(In case you're wondering, no one special in Houston or as a professor; there was a former Houston girlfriend whom didn't take it well when I broke up with her (I thought in a very tactful way, but she was determined to have the final word). She burned her bridges with me and permanently lost my respect and friendship. Houston was rather weird; in my first night MBA class, I was sitting in the front row of my macroeconomics class when a six-foot blonde at my left, whom I didn't know, spontaneously started playing footsie up my left pant leg; I was mortified that the prof might see it. A few years later, I was debugging one of my coed students' COBOL programs when she did the same thing; as in the first case, I didn't know what to say or do, so I froze and pretended that it wasn't happening. I overheard her bragging to another coed in the hall as they left my shared office, "Did you see me turn on the teacher?" Luckily, none of these type things happened when I became a professor; maybe it was something in the water in Houston. Given ideological feminism in academia, I as a single white male constantly worried about spurious allegations and always insisted on keeping the office door open, especially with coeds; for the record, I never dated any then current/former student. )
