A question for Gen. Clark: Is military experience important or not?

Or, what's changed in the last 4 years?

UPDATE: Jon Henke has more, including Jim Webb's turnabout.

BCWUW4: Subsidized housing

Be Careful What You Wish For:

The squat brick buildings of Grove Parc Plaza, in a dense neighborhood that Barack Obama represented for eight years as a state senator, hold 504 apartments subsidized by the federal government for people who can't afford to live anywhere else.

But it's not safe to live here.

About 99 of the units are vacant, many rendered uninhabitable by unfixed problems, such as collapsed roofs and fire damage. Mice scamper through the halls. Battered mailboxes hang open. Sewage backs up into kitchen sinks. In 2006, federal inspectors graded the condition of the complex an 11 on a 100-point scale - a score so bad the buildings now face demolition.

Grove Parc has become a symbol for some in Chicago of the broader failures of giving public subsidies to private companies to build and manage affordable housing - an approach strongly backed by Obama as the best replacement for public housing.

Electoral map using Intrade price predictions

Source here.

Democrat: 306 [-11]
Republican: 216
Dead Heat: 16 [+11]
Total: 538 (270 to win)

Quote of the day

There’s no point in being the richest man in the cemetery.--Evan Newmark's dad

The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.--Thomas Jefferson

The Civil War, in my humble opinion, makes it impossible to jointly hold two beliefs dear to libertarian hearts: 1) No country should ever wage aggressive war, [and] 2) States (or for that matter, smaller geographic units) have the right to secede from the polity if it stops meeting their needs.--Megan McArdle

Global warming discredited

reports Bret Stephens:

NASA now begrudgingly confirms that the hottest year on record in the continental 48 was not 1998, as previously believed, but 1934, and that six of the 10 hottest years since 1880 antedate 1954. Data from 3,000 scientific robots in the world's oceans show there has been slight cooling in the past five years, never mind that "80% to 90% of global warming involves heating up ocean waters," according to a report by NPR's Richard Harris.

The Arctic ice cap may be thinning, but the extent of Antarctic sea ice has been expanding for years. At least as of February, last winter was the Northern Hemisphere's coldest in decades. In May, German climate modelers reported in the journal Nature that global warming is due for a decade-long vacation. But be not not-afraid, added the modelers: The inexorable march to apocalypse resumes in 2020.

This last item is, of course, a forecast, not an empirical observation. But it raises a useful question: If even slight global cooling remains evidence of global warming, what isn't evidence of global warming? What we have here is a nonfalsifiable hypothesis, logically indistinguishable from claims for the existence of God. This doesn't mean God doesn't exist, or that global warming isn't happening. It does mean it isn't science.

As it turns out, a lot, at least if you're inclined to believe that our successes are undeserved and that prosperity is morally suspect. In this view, global warming is nature's great comeuppance, affirming as nothing else our guilty conscience for our worldly success.

In "The Varieties of Religious Experience," William James distinguishes between healthy, life-affirming religion and the monastically inclined, "morbid-minded" religion of the sick-souled. Global warming is sick-souled religion.

Yes, Virginia, tax rates matter

They matter a lot:

For those who still claim that tax rates don't matter to economic decisions or U.S. competitiveness, we present Exhibit A: the 2004 American Jobs Creation Act.

This law gave American companies a one-year window in 2005 to repatriate earnings from foreign subsidiaries to the United States at a 5.25% tax rate. Normally companies must pay the 35% U.S. corporate tax rate, minus a credit for whatever foreign taxes they paid on those earnings.

The IRS examined the results from this tax cutting experiment and found that the money came back in a flood. More than 800 U.S. corporations repatriated $362 billion from foreign operations. Congress's Joint Committee on Taxation had predicted closer to $200 billion. These dollars are now being invested in the U.S., rather than remaining in Europe or China. This capital infusion may be one reason that U.S. business investment rose 9.6% in 2005 – the highest rate in more than a decade.

Many Democrats, liberal groups and even some economists in the Bush Treasury opposed the measure four years ago, predicting it would lose revenue and merely be a tax holiday for profitable corporations. The Joint Tax Committee estimators also blundered again by predicting a mere $2.8 billion in revenue gains in the first year and then big losses after 2005. As always, they underestimated how tax reductions change behavior. The tax incentive raised $18 billion in 2005, and revenues have continued to exceed estimates. Instead of getting 35% of nothing, as U.S. companies kept their cash abroad, the Treasury took in 5.25% of the hundreds of billions the companies brought home.

One lesson here is how hypersensitive the trillions of dollars of annual global capital flows are to tax rates. It also underscores how damaging the U.S. corporate income tax is to American firms. Over the past decade the U.S. has gone from a below-the-average corporate tax nation to the second highest rate in the industrial world. (See table.) Many countries have slashed their corporate rates to as low as 10%. The economic impact is even worse because the U.S. is one of the few countries that taxes foreign subsidiary income when it is repatriated.

Those Americans who want to become more like Old Europe--as Europe becomes more like what America used to be--be careful for what you have wished. $7/gal gasoline, a fraction of the drugs currently covered under Medicare and private plans, and 6-month waits for critical care procedures, if not outright refusals of treatment

UPDATE: Monsieur Obama should pay more attention.

Orin Kerr nails Justice Breyer

and good:

In his Zelman dissent, Justice Breyer reasons that public school vouchers are unconstitutional because they "risk[]" creating "a form of religiously based conflict potentially harmful to the Nation’s social fabric." That is, they are unconstitutional because there is a possibility that they could lead to tension among religious groups. Justice Breyer speculates that such programs might lead different religious groups to feel that they are not getting a fair shake:

How will the public react to government funding for schools that take controversial religious positions on topics that are of current popular interest–say, the conflict in the Middle East or the war on terrorism? . . . Efforts to respond to these problems not only will seriously entangle church and state, but also will promote division among religious groups, as one group or another fears (often legitimately) that it will receive unfair treatment at the hands of the government.

As I read Breyer's Zelman dissent, his perception of a risk that the law could have a harmful result that touches on religious practice is enough to strike it down.

Contrast Breyer's Zelman dissent with his dissent in Heller. Here, the polarity of the culture wars has been reversed. And so has Justice Breyer's approach: Now he reasons that the possibility of a positive social impact of the law makes it constitutional. The political philosopher of Zelman is replaced with a careful and cautious social scientist who runs over pages and pages of statistics and scientific studies in Heller. So long as the legislature had a possible basis for thinking that restricting the constitutional right was a good idea, Breyer explains, the law should be upheld:

These empirically based arguments may have proved strong enough to convince many legislatures, as a matter of legislative policy, not to adopt total handgun bans. But the question here is whether they are strong enough to destroy judicial confidence in the reasonableness of a legislature that rejects them. And that they are not.
It's an interesting mirror image, I think. When the culture wars pointed one way, Justice Breyer thought that a "risk" of a "potentially harmful" adverse result was enough to strike the law down. When the culture wars pointed in the other direction, so did the burden of proof: now Justice Breyer must have his "confidence" in the reasonableness of the legislature "convincingly" "destroyed" before he would vote to strike down the law.

To be clear, I'm not suggesting that Justice Breyer is alone in taking different approaches depending on which side of the culture wars the challenged law happens to fall. Plainly he is not. At the same time, I do think the contrast between these two dissents provides an unusually clear case of the difference.

Who's tending the Constitution these days, if a Supreme Court justice is not?

Oh sure, the Scandanavians are so much better

than we Americans (via Gail Heriot).

A local NYC liberal is worried about the liberals

here:

1. Liberals tend to be tens of thousands of dollars in debt.
2. Many liberals are unemployed truck drivers with no health benefits.
3. The education system is failing the children of liberals, all of whom are flunking out.
4. Liberals cannot control their children.

but there's hope:

But bad as things are, they could be worse. Over on the Howard Stern show, they're selling an apparatus that will allow you to shave your back hair all by yourself. No more embarrassing trips to the barber shop, and no more begging your girlfriend to shave your back. They even promise it will make you smell better, as Howard's listeners' backs are not only prodigiously hairy, but painfully malodorous.

I can't speak as to the political persuasions of regular Stern listeners, but I'm not likely to join their ranks anytime soon. After all, as a card-carrying liberal I have massive personal debt, the endless job search, and my uncontrollable failing children to deal with.

Great healthcare interview of Julia Salamon

by Annika Mengisen:

Salamon’s book provides a vivid snapshot of the effects of the U.S. health-care system, where “cancer is a growth industry” and where first-year residents learn that Occam’s razor doesn’t apply to medicine.

Women's study statistics

Previous BS installment here.

Statistics are like a bikini. What they present is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital--Aaron Levenstein

Megan McArdle writes:

But many of the worst statistics come out of women's study and feminist advocacy. There are the appallingly shaky statistics on the number of rapes based on badly designed surveys manipulated with statistical methods so crude that Bayes must be spinning in his grave fast enough to power a high-speed monorail between New York and LA. The confident assertions that abortions have not increased significantly since legalization, when the pre-Roe figure is obviously unknowable, and the data we do have--on pregnancies--points firmly in the other direction. The various numbers on domestic violence that are thrown around with abandon even though a moment's thought is enough to dismiss them as ridiculous--the infamous Super Bowl claims being only the worst of the breed. And, of course, the silly assertion that we know how many women are helped with guns vs. hurt by them, when the data needed to decide such a claim are unavailable, and the coding problems enough to make Jesus weep.

Do futures contracts increase or decrease underlying price stability?

Answer: Increase stability (i.e. decrease volatility). I hypothesize this is true for both oil futures and terrorism futures, although several big minds differ.

Someday, there may be futures on futures which will help solve this riddle.

UPDATE: Paul Krugman agrees.

Quotes of the day

So it appears that New Jersey voters don't want a governor who increases taxes and may not want one who cuts spending, but they also want the state's credit rating restored and the budget situation fixed. In other words, they want a fiscal magician.--Stan Collender

Democracy, too, is a religion. It is the worship of jackals by jackasses.--H.L. Mencken

Many of the same people who ridicule the idea that private-sector output is meaningfully reduced by higher taxes are convinced that private-sector output is meaningfully raised by higher subsidies.--Don Boudreaux

For gas to reach a record high as a percent of per-capita disposable income, it would have to sell today for about $5.50 per gallon to reach 14.90% of per-capita disposable income, like it did in March of 1981, when gas sold for $1.42 per gallon, and per-capita disposable income was only $9,500.--Mark Perry

By preventing production and through inflationary monetary policy, maybe the government should be blamed for high oil prices, not speculators?---Mark Perry

If you vote for Democrats on the theory that Republicans are a threat to civil liberties, caveat elector. Bill Clinton and his administration incinerated children at Waco, undertook the policy of "extraordinary rendition," used a grand jury investigation to intimidate journalists at The American Spectator, deported Elian Gonzalez to communist Cuba, and signed the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, which restricts the habeas corpus rights of American citizens.

Whatever one may think of these particular measures, they would have generated much more opposition from Democrats had they been instituted by a Republican administration. The Keith Olbermanns of the media world outnumber the Glenn Greenwalds, so when an Obama administration curtails civil liberties (justifiably or not), the outcry will be far more muted than it is now. If civil liberties are your top concern, then, you better vote for John McCain.--James Taranto

Quotes of the day

Sadly, of course, not everyone gets out early, and a lot of innocent, if silly, people get caught up in these games. All I can say is, only suckers play games where they don't quite understand the rules and the percentage seems to be running strongly to the house. If you suspect you're the sucker, no matter how much fun you think you're having, it's time to cash out your chips and close your house account.--Megan McArdle, on dating games

First, on speculation remember that demand and supply are both very inelastic so relatively small changes in either can make a big differrence. That means that speculation, if that is what you want to call it, can shift prices a lot without being very significant in total demand. Because of this point Krugman's analysis is quite right for iron ore but a little off for oil - indeed Krugman's analysis of oil is difficult to square with his analysis of the California electricity crisis ... Finally, on oil - who really cares what the price is? The issue is energy, not oil. I am confident that the long run price of energy will fall. --Alex Tabarrok

Jennifer Rubin questions Obama's constitutional scholarship

Obama says he believes the Second Amendment confers an individual right, but that reasonable restictions should be permitted. But by what theory is a total ban a reasonable restriction? It is just this sort of flim-flamery which is frustrating, no doubt, both to supporters and opponents. Was he–a supposed Constitutional scholar–not capable previously of explaining his views?

UPDATE: Jim Lindgren questions Justice Breyer's dissent (via Glenn Reynolds).

UPDATE: David Hardy questions Justice Stevens' dissent (via Glenn Reyholds).

Million dollar reward for Swift Boat falsehoods still uncollected

after 4 years.

Why the rich do not feel rich

here.

I suspect it has to do with a certain four-letter word ...

envy.

A better approach to addressing global warming

by Bjorn Lomborg (via Don Boudreaux):

Politicians favor the cap-and-trade system because it is an indirect tax that disguises the true costs of reducing carbon emissions. It also gives lawmakers an opportunity to control the number and distribution of emissions allowances, and the flow of billions of dollars of subsidies and sweeteners.

Many people believe that everyone has a moral obligation to ask how we can best combat climate change. Attempts to curb carbon emissions along the lines of the bill now pending are a poor answer compared with other options.

Consider that today, solar panels are one-tenth as efficient as the cheapest fossil fuels. Only the very wealthy can afford them. Many "green" approaches do little more than make rich people feel they are helping the planet. We can't avoid climate change by forcing a few more inefficient solar panels onto rooftops.

The answer is to dramatically increase research and development so that solar panels become cheaper than fossil fuels sooner rather than later. Imagine if solar panels became cheaper than fossil fuels by 2050: We would have solved the problem of global warming, because switching to the environmentally friendly option wouldn't be the preserve of rich Westerners.

A low-carbon energy, high-income future is possible. Unfortunately, the political battles we just witnessed in Washington have done nothing to make it a reality.

Irony of the day: Bill Gates is unhappy with Microsoft software

at Todd Bishop's, via Felix Salmon.

Why polls are so much less accurate than prediction markets

Steven Dubner, on the perils of self-reporting.