Mark Steyn: Gaia’s Right

Environmentalism seeks to return us to the age of kings.

Environmentalism opposes that kind of mobility. It seeks to return us to the age of kings, when the masses are restrained by a privileged elite. Sometimes they will be hereditary monarchs, such as the Prince of Wales. Sometimes they will be merely the gilded princelings of the government apparatus — Barack Obama, Barney Frank, Nancy Pelosi. In the old days, they were endowed with absolute authority by God. Today, they’re endowed by Mother Nature, empowered by Gaia to act on her behalf. But the object remains control — to constrain you in a million ways, most of which would never have occurred to Henry VIII, who, unlike the new cap-and-trade bill, was entirely indifferent as to whether your hovel was “energy efficient.” The old rationale for absolute monarchy — Divine Right — is a tough sell in a democratic age. But the new rationale — Gaia’s Right — has proved surprisingly plausible.

The good news is that, at this week’s G8 summit, America’s allies would commit only to the fuzziest and most meaningless of environmental goals. Europe has been hit far harder by the economic downturn. When your unemployment rate is 17 percent (as in Spain), “unsustainable growth” is no longer your most pressing problem. The environmental cult is itself a product of what the prince calls the “Age of Convenience”: It’s what you worry about it when you don’t have to worry about jobs or falling house prices or collapsed retirement accounts. Today, as European prime ministers are beginning to figure out, a strategic goal of making things worse when they’re already worse is a much tougher sell.

B.C. government subsidizes emissions, then taxes them

Raphael Alexander: B.C. government subsidizes emissions, then taxes them - Full Comment

[..] last summer Gordon Campbell implemented his infamous carbon tax at the pump, an inflated 2.4 cents per litre. On Dominion Day it went up to 3.6 cents per litre, and by 2012 will reach 7.2 cents per litre. According to the government, all this accomplishes, at best, is a 30% reduction in our CO2 emissions by 2020 for the province. In 2006, B.C. emitted 62.3 million tonnes of CO2 [or equivalent]. This amount is 8.6% of Canada’s total 721 Mt GHG emissions. So what we’re talking about here, to settle some facts:

A 30% reduction of 8.6% of Canada’s CO2 emissions, which represents 2.3% worldwide [2004 count]. B.C. is therefore contributing to a 0.22% of global emission reductions, or two-tenths of one percent. To accomplish this, they’re taxing B.C. drivers at a rate of 3.6 cents per litre of fuel. And while they’re taxing us this amount, they’re taking tax revenues and subsidizing and constructing infrastructure for the very same companies that are contributors to our GHG emissions.

Does that make any sense to you?

Min Wage Laws: The Laws of Supply and Demand Are NOT Optional

CARPE DIEM: Congressional Reality Check: The Laws of Supply and Demand Are NOT Optional

As if the recession hasn’t been rough enough on those near the bottom of the economic food chain, fresh bad news is on the way. Beginning July 24 (two weeks from today), the federal government will be making it more difficult for employers to hire low-skilled and unskilled American workers. Thanks to an ill-advised law enacted with bipartisan support in 2007, the cost of providing an entry-level job to individuals with few skills or minimal experience will be going up by more than 10 percent. Those who cannot find a job paying at least $7.25 an hour will not be permitted to work. Welcome to the latest chapter of America’s minimum-wage folly.

Those who press for a higher minimum wage often claim that making entry-level jobs more expensive won’t reduce the number of entry-level jobs. Were the government to compel a 41 percent increase (see graph above showing the 41% increase in the minimum wage from $5.15 in 2006 to $7.25 this year) in the price of gasoline or movie tickets or steel, every rational observer would expect a drop in the demand for gasoline, movie tickets, or steel. Yet when it comes to the minimum wage, politicians and journalists somehow persuade themselves that making workers more expensive won’t reduce the demand for workers.

But that’s exactly what it does. Artificial price floors - mandatory minimum prices set higher than what the market will bear - generate surpluses. Minimum-wage laws are no exception. The price floor imposed by the government on the supply of low-skilled labor results in a labor surplus, which is just another way of saying higher unemployment.

The laws of supply and demand are not optional. They weren’t enacted by Congress and Congress can’t override them. Minimum-wage laws don’t make low- and unskilled Americans more productive, more experienced, or more desirable. They merely make them more expensive - and more likely, therefore, to be unemployed.

It is bad enough that Congress and the president would deliberately price so many workers out of the market. What is worse is that they claim to be helping the poor when they do so (see cartoons below, both by Henry Payne of the Detroit News).

~Jeff Jacoby in the Boston Globe

Of NICE and Men

Of NICE and Men - WSJ.com

NICE is the target of frequent protests and lawsuits, and at times under political pressure has reversed or watered-down its rulings. But it has by now established the principle that the only way to control health-care costs is for this panel of medical high priests to dictate limits on certain kinds of care to certain classes of patients.

The NICE board even has a mathematical formula for doing so, based on a "quality adjusted life year." While the guidelines are complex, NICE currently holds that, except in unusual cases, Britain cannot afford to spend more than about $22,000 to extend a life by six months. Why $22,000? It seems to be arbitrary, calculated mainly based on how much the government wants to spend on health care. That figure has remained fairly constant since NICE was established and doesn't adjust for either overall or medical inflation.

Proponents argue that such cost-benefit analysis has to figure into health-care decisions, and that any medical system rations care in some way. And it is true that U.S. private insurers also deny reimbursement for some kinds of care. The core issue is whether those decisions are going to be dictated by the brute force of politics (NICE) or by prices (a private insurance system).

Refugee board puts sexual predator's rights before those of teen victims

Raphael Alexander: Refugee board puts sexual predator's rights before those of teen victims - Full Comment

If you were asked a simple question: “Who do you think deserves the greater level of protection, girls under the age of 18 from a sexual predator, or the sexual predator who may face danger if he is deported?” You may have a simple answer. The nanoseconds it would take to make such a decision could possibly be prolonged by a few tenths of a second, depending on whether you had had your morning coffee yet.

But for the Immigration and Refugee Board, they seem to act on a completely different level of time and space:

Read more...

'Free' Health Care in Canada

The Club For Growth - http://www.clubforgrowth.org



h/t Carpe Diem

Charging for pancakes, not a good idea

Memo to Rocco Rossi: Charging for pancakes, not a good idea - Full Comment

The money is pouring in. All those people who lost the address to Liberal headquarters have suddenly found it again. (Hey, it was under the sofa!)

Which is just fine and makes us all happy, because one things Canadians all aspire to is a Liberal party that has oodles of money to spend wisely on its various needs.

Still, maybe someone should have a word with Rocco Rossi, the national director who was hired to get the party out of the red.

Rocco, it's not a good idea to charge Albertans to have pancakes with Michael Ignatieff.

You see, Rocco, Liberals aren't that popular in Alberta. It's been that way for, oh, let me see ... well, I guess eternity would be stretching things, but, anyway, it's been quite a while. So the idea is to be nice to Albertans. Cozy up to them. Pretend to give a crap about issues that are important to them. Never mention Pierre Trudeau.

Charging for pancakes at the Calgary Stampede is the wrong way to go about it. Getting Albertans to be polite to a Liberal is hard enough; trying to soak them 40 bucks for the privilege could be what you'd call counterproductive. It might remind them of all the things that bug them about Liberals -- like just about everything.

Not a good idea Rocco. Definitely not worth 40 bucks.

CARPE DIEM: Cartoon of the Day

Henry Payne of the Detroit News.

Mark Steyn: Behind the Times

Behind the Times by Mark Steyn on National Review Online

There’s something weirdly parochial about Obama, the supposed “citizen of the world.” A recent piece of mine about “the Europeanization of America” prompted Randall Hoven of The American Thinker to respond that this was unfair . . . to Europeans. He has a point. While the U.S. is going full throttle for Scandinavia-a-go-go, the Continentals have begun to discern to the limits of Europeanization.

In 2007, government spending in Europe averaged 46.2 percent of GDP; in America it was 37.4 percent, of which 20 percent was federal. A mere two years later, federal spending is up to 28.5 percent, so, even if state and local spending stand still, we’re at 46 percent: the European average. But, as Randall Hoven points out, the real story is that we’re at 46 percent and climbing, the Continentals are at 46 percent and heading down. In 1993, government spending averaged 52.2 percent in Europe, and 70.9 percent in Sweden. The Swedes have reduced government spending (as a fraction of GDP) by almost a third in the last 15 years. Their corporate tax rates are lower than ours. And that’s before Obama’s raised them. Last week, the donut chain Tim Hortons, which operates on both sides of the border but is incorporated in the state of Delaware, announced that it was reorganizing itself as a Canadian corporation to take advantage of Canadian tax rates.

“To take advantage of Canadian tax rates”? What kind of cockamamie phrase is that? And who’d have thought any columnist south of the border would ever have cause to type it?

The Europeans have figured out you can be too European for your own good, and are trying to re-acquaint themselves with the real world. But not Obama. Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead! Male unemployment has hit ten percent? The stimulus is a bust? It’s stimulating nothing but non-jobs like Executive Stimulus Coordinator for Community Organization Stimulus Assistance Programs? Hey, let’s spend even more, even faster, even less stimulatingly!

President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank, and their chums are spending at a rate that threatens American stability. And, except for the scale and the dollar figure, it’s all been tried before, and it’s all failed before. There’s nothing cool about Obama. He’s a non-stop square dance, swinging us around till we’re dozy and he’s got all the dough. Happy Independence Day.

Evian Roller Babies

YouTube - Evian Roller Babies international version