Georgetown Professor of Law argues in the New York Times "Let's Give Up on the Constitution"

As the nation teeters at the edge of fiscal chaos, observers are reaching the conclusion that the American system of government is broken. But almost no one blames the culprit: our insistence on obedience to the Constitution, with all its archaic, idiosyncratic and downright evil provisions.

Grotesque. And a fitting culmination to the political world of 2012.

The Obama White House continues the War on Science, suppressing a scientific report on food safety:

The FDA had definitively concluded last spring that the fish would have “no significant impact” on the environment and was “as safe as food from conventional Atlantic salmon.” However, the draft assessment, dated April 19, 2012, was not released—blocked on orders from the White House.

The seven month delay, sources within the government say, came after discussions late last spring between Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sibelius’ office and officials linked to Valerie Jarrett at the Executive Office, who were debating the political implications of approving the GM salmon. Genetically modified plants and animals are controversial among the president’s political base, which was thought critical to his reelection efforts during a low point in the president’s popularity.

The GLP posted a version of the suppressed preliminary approval document on its website, leaked by government staffers upset about the politicization of the process and the White House’s interference.

"Did the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) Lead to Risky Lending?"

Yes, it did. We use exogenous variation in banks’ incentives to conform to the standards of the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) around regulatory exam dates to trace out the effect of the CRA on lending activity. Our empirical strategy compares lending behavior of banks undergoing CRA exams within a given census tract in a given month to the behavior of banks operating in the same census tract-month that do not face these exams. We find that adherence to the act led to riskier lending by banks: in the six quarters surrounding the CRA exams lending is elevated on average by about 5 percent every quarter and loans in these quarters default by about 15 percent more often. These patterns are accentuated in CRA-eligible census tracts and are concentrated among large banks. The effects are strongest during the time period when the market for private securitization was booming.

via Reason, who includes this excellent graphic from IBD:

The problem with overly sentimental popular culture:

Sentiment surfaces fast and runs hot in public life, and it compels our attention. On good days I dimly register this makeshift iconography of people’s sorrows, losses, and challenges. Some of them have been my own, too, but I don’t have ribbons. On my dark days I believe that pink ribbons and 5K runs and temporary shrines and teddy bears and emails exclamation-pointed into a frenzy—the sentimental public culture—is malicious to civil society and impedes in one elegant motion our capacities for deliberation in public life and intimacy in private life. On the days I’m feeling melodramatic I suspect that we are in the grips of death by treacle.

The habit of thought that a pop culture of treacle and a pop culture of anger hold in common is that we needn’t polish the expression of our private feelings and sorrows into a form that’s relevant and useful, even to strangers and fellow citizens in the commonweal. We can take for granted that our treacle or our anger speaks for itself and presume the relevance of private feelings to public discourse. If, in fact, we’re drowning in a public culture of meanness, it is one that the public culture of cloying sweetness unwittingly helped create.

The advantages of stoicism over that of public emotionality to public policy are simple and direct. Emotional cries to "do something" in the aftermath of tragedy quickly become devoid of the critical question-- does the proposed policy actually actually work?

Mass school violence isn't limited to the USA:

The spate of stabbings began in March of that year, when a man in Fujian province went on a slashing spree outside a primary school, killing 8 and injuring 5. The attacker was a jobless doctor who reportedly was venting frustration after a failed romantic relationship. Over the next two months, four similar incidents took place in southern and inland China, leaving more than eight primary and kindergarten students dead and 57 injured. The timing of the four incidents suggested the possibility of a “copycat” phenomena, in which criminals mimic sensational incidents after learning of them from media. The stabbing spree alarmed government authorities, who enhanced security at schools; a Chinese regulation now also requires people to register with their national identity cards when purchasing large knives.

But schools are still coming under attack. Two months ago, three students were killed and 13 injured when a man with a machete rampaged through a private daycare center in Guangxi.

Firefighters don't fight fire:

In fact, fires consist of less than ten percent of the calls:

John Maynard Keynes on taxation:

[T]o create wealth will increase the national income and that a large proportion of any increase in the national income will accrue to [the Federal treasury]...

Nor should the argument seem strange that taxation may be so high as to defeat its object, and that, given sufficient time to gather the fruits, a reduction of taxation will run a better chance than an increase of balancing the budget.

John Lott:

“With just one single exception, the attack on congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson in 2011, every public shooting since at least 1950 in the U.S. in which more than three people have been killed has taken place where citizens are not allowed to carry guns.”

More data on mass killings:

Economists John Lott and William Landes conducted a groundbreaking study in 1999, and found that a common theme of mass shootings is that they occur in places where guns are banned and killers know everyone will be unarmed, such as shopping malls and schools.

I spoke with Lott after the Newtown shooting, and he confirmed that nothing has changed to alter his findings. He noted that the Aurora shooter, who killed twelve people earlier this year, had a choice of seven movie theaters that were showing the Batman movie he was obsessed with. All were within a 20-minute drive of his home. The Cinemark Theater the killer ultimately chose wasn’t the closest, but it was the only one that posted signs saying it banned concealed handguns carried by law-abiding individuals. All of the other theaters allowed the approximately 4 percent of Colorado adults who have a concealed-handgun permit to enter with their weapons.

“Disarming law-abiding citizens leaves them as sitting ducks,” Lott told me. “A couple hundred people were in the Cinemark Theater when the killer arrived. There is an extremely high probability that one or more of them would have had a legal concealed handgun with him if they had not been banned.”

The data on mass killings:

Mass shootings are no more common than they have been in past decades, despite the impression given by the media.

In fact, the high point for mass killings in the U.S. was 1929, according to criminologist Grant Duwe of the Minnesota Department of Corrections.

Incidents of mass murder in the U.S. declined from 42 in the 1990s to 26 in the first decade of this century.

At the NYT, Nick Kristof discovers the Progressive roots of the poverty trap:

THIS is what poverty sometimes looks like in America: parents here in Appalachian hill country pulling their children out of literacy classes. Moms and dads fear that if kids learn to read, they are less likely to qualify for a monthly check for having an intellectual disability.

Many people in hillside mobile homes here are poor and desperate, and a $698 monthly check per child from the Supplemental Security Income program goes a long way — and those checks continue until the child turns 18.

“The kids get taken out of the program because the parents are going to lose the check,” said Billie Oaks, who runs a literacy program here in Breathitt County, a poor part of Kentucky. “It’s heartbreaking.”

This is painful for a liberal to admit, but conservatives have a point when they suggest that America’s safety net can sometimes entangle people in a soul-crushing dependency...

Antipoverty programs also discourage marriage: In a means-tested program like S.S.I., a woman raising a child may receive a bigger check if she refrains from marrying that hard-working guy she likes. Yet marriage is one of the best forces to blunt poverty. In married couple households only one child in 10 grows up in poverty, while almost half do in single-mother households.

Most wrenching of all are the parents who think it’s best if a child stays illiterate, because then the family may be able to claim a disability check each month.

“One of the ways you get on this program is having problems in school,” notes Richard V. Burkhauser, a Cornell University economist who co-wrote a book last year about these disability programs. “If you do better in school, you threaten the income of the parents. It’s a terrible incentive.”

About four decades ago, most of the children S.S.I. covered had severe physical handicaps or mental retardation that made it difficult for parents to hold jobs — about 1 percent of all poor children. But now 55 percent of the disabilities it covers are fuzzier intellectual disabilities short of mental retardation, where the diagnosis is less clear-cut. More than 1.2 million children across America — a full 8 percent of all low-income children — are now enrolled in S.S.I. as disabled, at an annual cost of more than $9 billion.

That is a burden on taxpayers, of course, but it can be even worse for children whose families have a huge stake in their failing in school. Those kids may never recover: a 2009 study found that nearly two-thirds of these children make the transition at age 18 into S.S.I. for the adult disabled. They may never hold a job in their entire lives and are condemned to a life of poverty on the dole — and that’s the outcome of a program intended to fight poverty.

He also points outs a thoroughly conservative remedy:

A growing body of careful research suggests that the most effective strategy is to work early on children and education, and to try to encourage and sustain marriage.

(emphasis added)

US immigration levels near all time high:

via FP.

It should be known that at the beginning of the dynasty, taxation yields a large revenue from small assessments. At the end of the dynasty, taxation yields a small revenue from large assessments.

-Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddimah (via)

USA Today suggests the LEED green building certification is a scam:

Yet the 50-story complex achieved an unlikely and lucrative milestone after opening in 2008. A powerful private organization declared it an environmentally friendly "green" building, the world's largest at the time.

The designation won its owner, Las Vegas Sands Corp., a $27 million tax break over 10 years because a Nevada law puts the private interest group — not the government — in charge of deciding which buildings are green enough for a taxpayer subsidy.

The U.S. Green Building Council, a building industry non-profit, credited the Palazzo for having bike racks in the garage; room cards telling guests when towels are replaced; landscaping that does not use grass, which local law prohibits anyway; and preferred parking for fuel-efficient cars — spots that on a recent week were occupied by Ford Expeditions, Chevy Tahoes, Range Rovers, Mercedes E320s, Chrysler 300s, Audi A6s, vans, sports cars and a Hummer.

The council even sidestepped its own policy and allowed smoking in the Palazzo casino, a 2.5-acre expanse between the hotel lobby and the hotel elevators.

Across the United States, the Green Building Council has helped thousands of developers win tax breaks and grants, charge higher rents, exceed local building restrictions and get expedited permitting by certifying them as "green" under a system that often rewards minor, low-cost steps that have little or no proven environmental benefit, a USA TODAY analysis has found.

Much of the problem has to do with the fact that the certification comes early, and relies only on theoretical projections of energy use:

Designers can earn up to 19 points for projecting lower-than-average energy use. The projections come from computer models that analyze hundreds of features such as insulation and sun exposure. Such models are good at comparing designs to show which would use less energy. But they are bad at quantifying actual energy use, which depends largely on how a building is used and maintained.

"Buildings have a poor track record for performing as predicted during design," the council itself reported in 2007. "Most buildings do not perform as well as design metrics indicate."

The Environmental Protection Agency says "it is a common misconception that new buildings, even so-called 'green' buildings are energy-efficient." The EPA's voluntary EnergyStar program certifies only buildings that prove energy efficiency over a year of occupancy, and rates buildings every year.

A little-noticed study of Navy buildings in January showed that four of 11 LEED-certified buildings used more energy than a non-LEED counterpart. Of the seven others, four were better than their counterparts by 9%, a level of improvement that is insufficient to earn any LEED points.

"Energy savings are not closely related to the number of points received," concluded the study by University of Wisconsin researchers.

Using models for certification is one thing, but the $500 million in tax breaks that we've handed out should be contingent upon follow up reports showing energy use savings have been achieved.

John Cochrane runs down how well-meaning programs meant to help the poor create a Poverty Trap:

That data from the Secretary of Public Welfare of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Gary Alenander. A separate paper by Larry Kotlikoff and David Rapson, “Does it Pay, at the Margin, to Work and Save? Measuring Effective Marginal Taxes on Americans’ Labor and Saving.” study of couples in Massachusetts comes up with this calculation:

Meanwhile, the CBO considers considerably fewer benefit programs and presents this data on marginal tax rates:

A reminder on the cause of the financial crisis:

The crash of late 2008 was caused not by Republican dogma, but by efforts going back many years on the part of both parties to facilitate homeownership on behalf of poor people. It seemed like the right thing to do. It pleased both liberals, who wanted to help the downtrodden, and conservatives, who took to heart the old Jack Kemp adage that rental cars rarely get washed.

In 1995, President Clinton launched his "National Homeownership Strategy" (Bush continued it as part of his "ownership society"), designed to increase mortgage lending to low-income Americans by requiring bankers to make loans to people with poor or nonexistent credit ratings. This drew in people who were unable to pay off their debts, and speculators, who were betting housing prices would keep rising forever. In retrospect, we can see it was bound to implode, and it did...

Twice, Bush tried to rein in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and twice Democrats (Obama included) moved in to stop him. Especially culpable were Barney Frank and Chris Dodd. Dodd claimed that the institutions were "fundamentally strong," and Frank said he wanted to "roll the dice a little bit more in his situation" rather than impose stricter regulation on Fannie and Freddie.

How to cut CO2 emissions:

Over the past six years, the United States has reduced its carbon emissions more than any other nation in the world.

Efforts to curb so-called man-made climate change had little or nothing to do with it. Government mandated "green" energy didn't cause the reductions. Neither did environmentalist pressure. And the U.S. did not go along with the Kyoto Protocol to radically cut CO2 emissions. Instead, the drop came about through market forces and technological advances, according to a report from the International Energy Agency.

Breakthroughs in how natural gas is extracted from underground shale formations were the key factors that led to the reductions, the report said. Natural gas has a low carbon footprint and is widely available in the United States.

Eugene Kaspersky, a wolf in sheep's clothing:

The Italian defense minister isn’t going to determine whether criminals or governments get their hands on your data. Kaspersky and his company, Kaspersky Lab, very well might. Between 2009 and 2010, according to Forbes, retail sales of Kaspersky antivirus software increased 177 percent, reaching almost 4.5 million a year—nearly as much as its rivals Symantec and McAfee combined. Worldwide, 50 million people are now members of the Kaspersky Security Network, sending data to the company’s Moscow headquarters every time they download an application to their desktop. Microsoft, Cisco, and Juniper Networks all embed Kaspersky code in their products—effectively giving the company 300 million users. When it comes to keeping computers free from infection, Kaspersky Lab is on its way to becoming an industry leader.

But this still doesn’t fully capture Kaspersky’s influence. Back in 2010, a researcher now working for Kaspersky discovered Stuxnet, the US-Israeli worm that wrecked nearly a thousand Iranian centrifuges and became the world’s first openly acknowledged cyberweapon. In May of this year, Kaspersky’s elite antihackers exposed a second weaponized computer program, which they dubbed Flame. It was subsequently revealed to be another US-Israeli operation aimed at Iran. In other words, Kaspersky Lab isn’t just an antivirus company; it’s also a leader in uncovering cyber-espionage.

Serving at the pinnacle of such an organization would be a remarkably powerful position for any man. But Kaspersky’s rise is particularly notable—and to some, downright troubling—given his KGB-sponsored training, his tenure as a Soviet intelligence officer, his alliance with Vladimir Putin’s regime, and his deep and ongoing relationship with Russia’s Federal Security Service, or FSB.

Most troublesome of all is his Kremlin backed crusade to get rid of anonymity on the internet, in the interest of "security":

What is mentioned is Kaspersky’s vision for the future of Internet security—which by Western standards can seem extreme. It includes requiring strictly monitored digital passports for some online activities and enabling government regulation of social networks to thwart protest movements. “It’s too much freedom there,” Kaspersky says, referring to sites like Facebook. “Freedom is good. But the bad guys—they can abuse this freedom to manipulate public opinion.”

...The Internet grew from a network of researchers to the global nervous system in large part because practically anyone was able to access any part of it from anywhere—no ID needed. And the values of openness, freedom, and anonymity became deeply embedded in net culture and in the very architecture of the network itself. But to Kaspersky, these notions no longer work: By “protecting our right to freedom we actually sacrifice it! We sacrifice the right to safe Internet surfing and to not get infected by some nasty piece of malware at every step.”

The idea of stripping some amount of privacy from the Internet is gaining traction in many sectors, thanks at least in small part to Kaspersky’s lobbying. In Cancun, he was joined onstage by Alexander Ntoko, a top official at the International Telecommunication Union. “Why don’t we have digital IDs as a de facto for everybody?” he asks. “When I’m going to my bank, I’m not going to cover my face.” In other words, why should things be any different online?

The ITU was once a bureaucratic backwater. In recent years, however, the Russian and Chinese governments have been pushing to give the agency a central role in governing the Internet. Instead of the US-dominated nonprofits that currently coordinate domain names and promote technical standards, they want to turn authority over to a gathering of national governments represented by the ITU. It’s a move that one of the Internet’s creators, Vint Cerf, told Congress risks “losing the open and free Internet,” because it would transfer power from geeks to government bureaucrats.

Questions a Pro-Choice Candidate is never asked:

2. In 2010, The Economist featured a cover story on “the war on girls” and the growth of “gendercide” in the world – abortion based solely on the sex of the baby. Does this phenomenon pose a problem for you or do you believe in the absolute right of a woman to terminate a pregnancy because the unborn fetus is female?

3. In many states, a teenager can have an abortion without her parents’ consent or knowledge but cannot get an aspirin from the school nurse without parental authorization. Do you support any restrictions or parental notification regarding abortion access for minors?

4. If you do not believe that human life begins at conception, when do you believe it begins? At what stage of development should an unborn child have human rights?

5. Currently, when genetic testing reveals an unborn child has Down Syndrome, most women choose to abort. How do you answer the charge that this phenomenon resembles the “eugenics” movement a century ago – the slow, but deliberate “weeding out” of those our society would deem “unfit” to live?

7. Alveda King, niece of Martin Luther King, Jr. has said that “abortion is the white supremacist’s best friend,” pointing to the fact that Black and Latinos represent 25% of our population but account for 59% of all abortions. How do you respond to the charge that the majority of abortion clinics are found in inner-city areas with large numbers of minorities?

The War on Science kills jobs:

Lunny's request for an extension had powerful supporters, including Feinstein, Marin County Supervisor Steve Kinsey and former Peninsula Rep. Pete McCloskey, who put up a major fight to keep the operation going.

Park officials had long contended that the oyster company was harming the ecosystem, but Lunny's supporters accused them of selectively presenting information, misrepresenting facts and essentially fudging data in an effort to oust the oyster company.

The complaints gained momentum when the National Academy of Sciences, and the Interior Department's office of the solicitor found major flaws in Park Service reports, including what they termed mistake-ridden and, in some cases, biased work by park scientists.

"I am extremely disappointed," Feinstein said Thursday in a statement. "The National Park Service's review process has been flawed from the beginning with false and misleading science, which was also used in the Environmental Impact Statement. The secretary's decision effectively puts this historic California oyster farm out of business. As a result, the farm will be forced to cease operations and 30 Californians will lose their jobs."

Russian help for the Indian Navy:

INS Vikramaditya has failed sea trials and its delivery to the Indian Navy may be again delayed by almost a year, Russian media reported citing defence and industry sources.

Seven out of the aircraft carrier’s eight steam boilers broke down when they were run at maximum power to enable the ship develop its top rated speed of 30 knots, an unnamed official of the state arms exporter Rosoboronexport told the Kommersant daily.

The official explained that the firebrick insulation of the boilers crumbled under impact of high temperatures...

The designer explained that the Indian side had objected to the use of asbestos in the insulation of the boilers because of feared health hazards and the manufacturer used other material which turned out to be sub-quality.

Single payer healthcare in Spain:

The sign on the wall tells the story. "Important information. The government of Valencia owe this pharmacy for all the medicine we have dispensed to you in January, February, March, April and May".

And not just this pharmacy. The government of Valencia - which runs the health system - owes a grand total of half a billion euros to the region's pharmacies.

Paula guides me into that back room that exists in all pharmacies, where the prescription drugs are kept. The problem is, now, there are not many drugs left.

"Look, this drawer is usually full," she says, pointing to where the suppositories are kept. Now there are only two packets."

She opens the fridge. "Look," she says, "we are down to our last packs of insulin. We just have no money to buy the stock."

New data on Affirmative Action:

There is now increasing evidence that students who receive large preferences of any kind—whether based on race, athletic ability, alumni connections or other considerations—experience some clear negative effects: Students end up with poor grades (usually in the bottom fifth of their class), lower graduation rates, extremely high attrition rates from science and engineering majors, substantial self-segregation on campus, lower self-esteem and far greater difficulty passing licensing tests (such as bar exams for lawyers)...

Research on law schools by one of us (Richard Sander)—hotly disputed by some scholars when it was published in 2005 by the Stanford Law Review and now confirmed by economist Doug Williams—found that mismatch essentially doubled the rate at which blacks and Hispanics failed bar exams. Under existing preference policies, only one in three blacks entering law school graduates and passes the bar on his or her first attempt (compared with two in three whites). Simply by reducing mismatch, we could get this ratio up to one in two.

This same dynamic turned up when several leading educators wanted to find out why so few black students went on to become professors. Funded by the Council of Ivy League Presidents, sociologists Stephen Cole and the late Elinor Barber surveyed thousands of young African-American students entering a broad cross-section of selective schools. The 2003 Cole-Barber book, "Increasing Faculty Diversity," concluded that large racial preferences and the ensuing mismatch led directly to lower grades and diminished intellectual self-confidence. They found that promising young black students who wanted to become professors abandoned their academic aspirations in droves, while similar black students who weren't mismatched were far more likely to stay the course.

What about improving diversity?

Economics professor Peter Arcidiacono and his colleagues at Duke University found in a 2011 study that students were much more likely to become friends with classmates they saw as academically similar to themselves. Students with large preferences were more likely to self-segregate and find themselves socially isolated.

The reason wasn't racism. At Duke University, for example, large numbers of whites and blacks formed friendships at the outset of college. But for those with large academic gaps, the friendships atrophied. Using their multischool results, Mr. Arcidiacono and his colleagues concluded that smaller preferences at the most selective schools would tend to increase both the likelihood and the number of cross-racial friendships at elite schools in general, despite declines in the numbers of black and Hispanic students at the most elite schools.

What about helping the most disadvantaged?

In the 1970s, when racial-preference programs were getting off the ground, universities went to great lengths to admit black students who were the first in their families to attend college. A majority of blacks attending selective schools in 1972 came from families in the bottom half of the socioeconomic distribution. Over time, however, complacency and the rapid rise of the black upper middle class has changed that; in the 1990s, only 8% of black students at selective schools came from the "bottom half," according to data from the National Educational Longitudinal Study.

Even as social scientists have transformed our understanding of affirmative action, universities don't seem to be paying attention. Consider the University of California system, which since 1998 has been legally precluded (by Proposition 209) from considering race in admissions. Throughout the past 15 years—most recently in a brief submitted to the Supreme Court—university officials have denounced race neutrality and pointed to the substantial drop in freshman black and Hispanic students at the system's two flagship schools, Berkeley and UCLA.

Yet race-neutrality has produced stunning benefits for minorities in the UC system as a whole, as shown in a data set that economists obtained from UC administrators. Black, American-Indian and Hispanic students made up 26% of all U.C. freshmen in 2010, up from 16% in 1997; the number of B.A.s earned by black and Hispanic students in four years rose 55% between 1995-97 and 2001-03, while the number with GPAs above 3.5 rose 63%.

Some details of Sander's research can be found at Volokh:

• After the first year of law school, 51 percent of black students have grade-point averages that place them in the bottom tenth of their classes, compared with 5 percent of white students. "Evidence suggests that when you're doing that badly, you're learning less than if you were in the middle of a class" at a less-prestigious law school, Mr. Sander says.
  
• Among students who entered law school in 1991, about 80 percent of white students graduated and passed the bar on their first attempt, compared with just 45 percent of black students. In a race-blind admissions system, the number of black graduates passing the bar the first time would jump to 74 percent, he says, based on his statistical analysis of how higher grades in less competitive schools would result in higher bar scores. Black students are nearly six times as likely as whites not to pass state bar exams after multiple attempts.
  
• Ending affirmative action would increase the number of new black lawyers by 8.8 percent because students would attend law schools where they would struggle less and learn more, and earn higher grades.
  
• With the exception of the most-elite law schools, good grades matter more to employers than the law school's prestige.

The Laffer curve doesn't exist?

In the 2009-10 tax year, more than 16,000 people declared an annual income of more than £1 million to HM Revenue and Customs.

This number fell to just 6,000 after Gordon Brown introduced the new 50p top rate of income tax shortly before the last general election...

It is believed that rich Britons moved abroad or took steps to avoid paying the new levy by reducing their taxable incomes.

George Osborne, the Chancellor, announced in the Budget earlier this year that the 50p top rate will be reduced to 45p from next April.

Since the announcement, the number of people declaring annual incomes of more than £1 million has risen to 10,000.

However, the number of million-pound earners is still far below the level recorded even at the height of the recession and financial crisis...

Far from raising funds, it actually cost the UK £7 billion in lost tax revenue.

I, for one, would never have predicted this:

“[I]ndividuals who started using cannabis in adolescence and used it for years thereafter showed an average eight-point IQ decline.

“Quitting or reducing cannabis use did not appear to fully restore intellectual functioning among adolescent-onset former persistent cannabis users,” [Professor Terrie Moffitt] said.

Although eight points did not sound much, it was not trivial, she warned.

It meant that an average person dropped far down the intelligence rankings, so that instead of 50 per cent of the population being more intelligent than them, 71 per cent were.

Meier, et al, PNAS, Aug 27, 2012.

Some more indicators on China:

In the past 5-8 years, and especially the past 3, China has built an enormous amount of stuff that nobody wants, needs, or uses. Fueled by a lending boom that began in late 2008 and tripled total lending in 2009, Chinese government at all levels has been spending money like a drunken sailor on leave. What should scare people however, is just how poorly this money has been spent. To give you a few examples:

• The Beijing government admits that 50% of apartments sit empty. A similar number is found in most major cities in China, not to mention the entire cities that sit empty.
  
• After major investment in wind power generation, most wind power capacity was incapable of generating power because...it was not hooked up to the grid.
  
• Housing price to income ratios that would make a California real estate bubble blush. The average home price to income ratio peaked around 12 in California. The China Daily (the Communist party mouth piece) speaks regularly of ratios in excess of 25. One recent article noted that the average price per square foot in Beijing was nearly $300 while monthly per capita GDP was only $435. That means using the long term global average for the income to housing price ratio, the average Beijinger should be able to buy a 91 square foot apartment.
  
• Industrial capacity utilization that is officially at 60%. (If you believe the official numbers I have a 91 square foot apartment I’d like to sell you) This is driven by state owned banks and enterprises that over invested in 2009 due to the stimulus fueled lending boom.

h/t: MR.

Impact of all federal taxes (2009):

Who paid how much in taxes (2007)?

Who taxes the rich the most? Share of taxes paid by the richest 10%

Share the Wealth? Top marginal income tax rates and income tax share for the top 1% of earners, 1970-2006:

How dangerous is professional football to the long term health of its players? Apparently, it is the opposite of dangerous:

That [study], conducted by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (and then peer-reviewed), compared mortality among retired football players and nonathletes matched for age and race and found that the ex-athletes were dying about half as often as one might expect. In other words, the health risks associated with playing football were being more than outweighed by the benefits of being a pro athlete—excellent training and nutrition, a good salary, top-quality medical care, and so on.

William Happer, Professor of Physics at Princeton, on the history of CO2 and warming:

There have been many warmings and coolings in the past when the CO2 levels did not change. A well-known example is the medieval warming, about the year 1000, when the Vikings settled Greenland (when it was green) and wine was exported from England. This warm period was followed by the “little ice age” when the Thames would frequently freeze over during the winter. There is no evidence for significant increase of CO2 in the medieval warm period, nor for a significant decrease at the time of the subsequent little ice age. Documented famines with millions of deaths occurred during the little ice age because the cold weather killed the crops. Since the end of the little ice age, the earth has been warming in fits and starts, and humanity’s quality of life has improved accordingly.

A rare case of good correlation between CO2 levels and temperature is provided by ice-core records of the cycles of glacial and interglacial periods of the last million years of so. But these records show that changes in temperature preceded changes in CO2 levels, so that the levels were an effect of temperature changes. This was probably due to outgassing of CO2 from the warming oceans and the reverse effect when they cooled.

The most recent continental ice sheets began to melt some twenty thousand years ago. During the “Younger Dryas” some 12,000 years ago, the earth very dramatically cooled and warmed by as much as 10 degrees Celsius in fifty years.

The earth’s climate has always been changing. Our present global warming is not at all unusual by the standards of geological history, and it is probably benefiting the biosphere. Indeed, there is very little correlation between the estimates of CO2 and of the earth’s temperature over the past 550 million years (the “Phanerozoic” period). The message is clear that several factors must influence the earth’s temperature, and that while CO2 is one of these factors, it is seldom the dominant one. The other factors are not well understood. Plausible candidates are spontaneous variations of the complicated fluid flow patterns in the oceans and atmosphere of the earth—perhaps influenced by continental drift, volcanoes, variations of the earth’s orbital parameters (ellipticity, spin-axis orientation, etc.), asteroid and comet impacts, variations in the sun’s output (not only the visible radiation but the amount of ultraviolet light, and the solar wind with its magnetic field), variations in cosmic rays leading to variations in cloud cover, and other causes.

The existence of the little ice age and the medieval warm period were an embarrassment to the global-warming establishment, because they showed that the current warming is almost indistinguishable from previous warmings and coolings that had nothing to do with burning fossil fuel. The organization charged with producing scientific support for the climate change crusade, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), finally found a solution. They rewrote the climate history of the past 1000 years with the celebrated “hockey stick” temperature record.

The first IPCC report, issued in 1990, showed both the medieval warm period and the little ice age very clearly. In the IPCC’s 2001 report was a graph that purported to show the earth’s mean temperature since the year 1000. A yet more extreme version of the hockey stick graph made the cover of the Fiftieth Anniversary Report of the United Nation’s World Meteorological Organization. To the surprise of everyone who knew about the strong evidence for the little ice age and the medieval climate optimum, the graph showed a nearly constant temperature from the year 1000 until about 150 years ago, when the temperature began to rise abruptly like the blade of a hockey stick. The inference was that this was due to the anthropogenic “pollutant” CO2.

David Evans, an Australian government consultant on climate change:

Let’s be perfectly clear. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, and other things being equal, the more carbon dioxide in the air, the warmer the planet. Every bit of carbon dioxide that we emit warms the planet. But the issue is not whether carbon dioxide warms the planet, but how much.

Most scientists, on both sides, also agree on how much a given increase in the level of carbon dioxide raises the planet’s temperature, if just the extra carbon dioxide is considered. These calculations come from laboratory experiments; the basic physics have been well known for a century.

The disagreement comes about what happens next.

The planet reacts to that extra carbon dioxide, which changes everything. Most critically, the extra warmth causes more water to evaporate from the oceans. But does the water hang around and increase the height of moist air in the atmosphere, or does it simply create more clouds and rain? Back in 1980, when the carbon dioxide theory started, no one knew. The alarmists guessed that it would increase the height of moist air around the planet, which would warm the planet even further, because the moist air is also a greenhouse gas.

This is the core idea of every official climate model: For each bit of warming due to carbon dioxide, they claim it ends up causing three bits of warming due to the extra moist air. The climate models amplify the carbon dioxide warming by a factor of three — so two-thirds of their projected warming is due to extra moist air (and other factors); only one-third is due to extra carbon dioxide...

Weather balloons had been measuring the atmosphere since the 1960s, many thousands of them every year. The climate models all predict that as the planet warms, a hot spot of moist air will develop over the tropics about 10 kilometres up, as the layer of moist air expands upwards into the cool dry air above. During the warming of the late 1970s, ’80s and ’90s, the weather balloons found no hot spot. None at all. Not even a small one. This evidence proves that the climate models are fundamentally flawed, that they greatly overestimate the temperature increases due to carbon dioxide.

This evidence first became clear around the mid-1990s...

The Earth has been in a warming trend since the depth of the Little Ice Age around 1680. Human emissions of carbon dioxide were negligible before 1850 and have nearly all come after the Second World War, so human carbon dioxide cannot possibly have caused the trend. Within the trend, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation causes alternating global warming and cooling for 25 to 30 years at a go in each direction. We have just finished a warming phase, so expect mild global cooling for the next two decades.

The Audacity of Faith and Obama's discussion of religion.

And this doubt should not push us away from our faith. But it should humble us. It should temper our passions, cause us to be wary of too much self-righteousness. It should compel us to remain open and curious…

These sentences, together with the earlier excerpts, draw out the implications that seem to have been the president’s key lessons for the graduates assembled before him. The message of this complex of ideas (passion, self-righteousness, and humility in the context of a “world of competing claims about [the] right and [the] true”) is unmistakable. It is the familiar rationalistic argument that, only if believers internalize the relativism (“doubt”) of which the President spoke at Notre Dame, can we avoid the intolerance, oppression, and even slaughter that history teaches are the perennial tendency of religion...

This doubt should remind us even as we cling to our faith to persuade through reason, through an appeal whenever we can to universal rather than parochial principles, and most of all through an abiding example of good works and charity and kindness and service that moves hearts and minds.

The contrast here between a doubt-addled “faith” to which we “cling” and which involves “parochial” principles on the one hand, and “universal” “reason” on the other, further suggests that, in its native form—sans infused “doubt”—religion is beyond the sphere of the rational...

The possibility that AIDS activists and Planned Parenthood might be dogmatic, and need to be more “humble” of mind and heart, never crossed President Obama’s lips at Notre Dame. The deeply partisan effect of his own remarks passed largely unnoticed.

The creepy New Deal:

The centerpiece of the conflict between FDR and the Court was a program called the National Industrial Recovery Act, which was challenged in a case called Shechter Poultry v. United States. NIRA was—well, it hardly seems enough to call it a terrible program. The National Recovery Administration, the entity at the heart of the Schecter Poultry case, was quasi-fascist, and I do use that term advisedly. It involved organizing the entire economy into giant business cartels which were basically explicitly encouraged to engage in price-fixing in return for paying higher wages. Businesses that signed onto a NRA code (early version here) got to display an NRA Blue Eagle (fun fact: the Philadelphia Eagles are named after this logo). Americans were supposed to promise not to shop at any business that didn’t display that blue eagle. In a particularly creepy touch, 100,000 school children were apparently marched onto Boston Common so that Mayor James Curley could lead them in a pledge: "I promise as a good American citizen to do my part for the NRA. I will buy only where the Blue Eagle flies... I will help President Roosevelt bring back good times."

The myth of "Social Darwinism" as a right-wing philosophy:

At the heart of Hofstadter's case is the following passage from Spencer's famous first book, Social Statics (1851): "If they are sufficiently complete to live, they do live, and it is well they should live. If they are not sufficiently complete to live, they die, and it is best they should die."

That certainly sounds rough, but as it turns out, Hofstadter failed to mention the first sentence of Spencer's next paragraph, which reads, "Of course, in so far as the severity of this process is mitigated by the spontaneous sympathy of men for each other, it is proper that it should be mitigated." As philosophy professor Roderick Long has remarked, "The upshot of the entire section, then, is that while the operation of natural selection is beneficial, its mitigation by human benevolence is even more beneficial." This is a far cry from Hofstadter's summary of the text, which has Spencer advocating that the "unfit...should be eliminated."

Similarly, Hofstadter repeatedly points to Spencer's famous phrase, "survival of the fittest," a line that Charles Darwin added to the fifth edition of Origin of Species. But by fit, Spencer meant something very different from brute force. In his view, human society had evolved from a "militant" state, which was characterized by violence and force, to an "industrial" one, characterized by trade and voluntary cooperation. Thus Spencer the "extreme conservative" supported labor unions (so long as they were voluntary) as a way to mitigate and reform the "harsh and cruel conduct" of employers.

What is the Bo Xilai case really about: factional infighting, Bo’s notorious egotism, or ideological conflict?

To a certain extent all of the above, though none of these explanations, nor any combination of them, adequately tells the whole story. Something far greater is at stake.

Bo Xilai’s story is certainly linked to China’s present-day factional politics, which I characterize as “one party, two coalitions.” One coalition is led by former president Jiang Zemin’s protégés. While the core of this coalition used to be the so-called Shanghai Gang, “princelings” (leaders who come from high-ranking family backgrounds) have become more central since the fall of Shanghai party boss Chen Liangyu on corruption charges in 2006. Bo Xilai is a princeling, as his father Bo Yibo was a revolutionary veteran who served as vice premier. The other coalition primarily consists of former officials from the Chinese Communist Youth League and is led by President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao. These two coalitions fight with each other over power, influence, and policy initiatives. Bo Xilai’s career advancement can certainly be attributed to his princeling background and his patron-client ties with Jiang Zemin.

Bo’s downfall is also related to his own egotistical personality and notorious ambition. While his ambitions were most recently focused on achieving a seat on the Politburo Standing Committee, it would have not stopped there. In the months preceding the crisis, members of Bo’s staff spread the rumor that he could become China’s next premier. In addition, Su Wei, a scholar close to Bo at the Chongqing Party School, compared Bo Xilai and Chongqing mayor Huang Qifan to former leaders Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai in comments circulated in both the Chongqing and national media.

The Bo episode is also related to ideological conflict, as he was associated with China’s “new left” thinking—especially through his Mao-style campaigns, such as the “smash the black” anti–organized crime campaign—and advocated an ultra-egalitarian and ultra-nationalist development model for China, known as the “Chongqing model.”

PJMedia points to a decent rundown of the problems that Steve McIntyre had with some of the underlying data in the infamous "hockey stick" graph:

The real damage came when a retired Canadian mining engineer, Steve McIntyre, and a professor at the University of Guelph, Ross McKitrick, started digging into Mann’s methodology, and found flaws in both his statistical analysis and data interpretation, and published a paper describing them in Geophysical Research Letters in 2005. They showed that Mann’s methodology would generate a hockey stick almost independently of the data input, by feeding it spectral noise.

McIntyre eventually got all the underlying raw data and was able to recently replicate some of the work:

The list of 17 sites that was finally sent to McIntyre represented complete vindication. The presence of Yamal and Polar Urals had already been obvious from the Climategate emails, but the list showed that Briffa had also incorporated the Polar Urals update (which, as we saw above, did not have a hockey stick shape, and which Briffa claimed he had not looked at since 1995) and the Khadtya River site, McIntyre’s use of which the RealClimate authors had ridiculed.

Although the chronology itself was not yet available, the list of sites was sufficient for McIntyre to calculate the numbers himself, and the results were breathtaking. Firstly, the URALS regional chronology had vastly more data behind it than the Yamal-only figures presented in Briffa’s paper

But what was worse, the regional chronology did not have a hockey stick shape — the twentieth century uptick that Briffa had got from the handful of trees in the Yamal-only series had completely disappeared.

Direct comparison of the chronology that Briffa chose to publish against the full chronology that he withheld makes the point clear:

It seems clear then that the URALS chronology Briffa prepared to go alongside the others he put together for the 2008 paper gave a message that did not comply with the message that he wanted to convey — one of unprecedented warmth at the end of the twentieth century. In essence the URALS regional chronology was suffering from the divergence problem — the widely noted failure of some tree ring series to pick up the recent warming seen in instrumental temperature records, which led to the infamous ‘hide the decline’ episode.

Remarkably, however, Briffa did allude to the divergence problem in his paper:

These [regional chronologies] show no evidence of a recent breakdown in [the association between tree growth and temperature] as has been found at other high-latitude Northern Hemisphere locations.

The reason for dropping the URALS chronology looks abundantly clear. It would not have supported this message.

Under the heading "The Culture that is Japan", Evan Soltas posted this chart:

adding "Japan's disproportionate use of its .jp country code appears to be a digital reflection of very strong underlying cultural currents towards purity." However, several commentators jumped in to point out that this may be the result of population or GDP differences. So, I decided to run the numbers myself. I pulled the same raw data from ISC, and divided the number of domains by population and current GDP, as reported by the CIA World Factbook. Here's how the data holds up:

How well do liberals and conservatives understand each others' beliefs?:

Who is most accurate? It depends on the type of morality:
3a. Conservatives were most accurate about the individual-focused moral concerns of
either side, and liberals were least accurate.
3b. Moderates were most accurate about the group-focused moral concerns of either
side, and liberals were least accurate.
3c. Liberals exaggerate moral differences the most.

The Moral Stereotypes of Liberals and Conservatives: Exaggeration of Differences across the Political Divide, by Jesse Graham, Brian A. Nosek, and Jonathan Haidt

The impact of Obamacare starts to set in:

Recently, the Cook Medical company announced that it was canceling plans to open new factories because of the impending ObamaCare tax on medical device manufacturers scheduled to take effect in 2013. The 2.3% tax on total sales (not profits) will cost Cook $20 million dollars a year. As a result, the company will not be opening five plants that would have employed up to 300 people each.

Cook is not the only medical device company affected by the tax. Stryker (which makes artificial joints) will cut 5% of its workforce. Medtronic has announced the tax will cut into its investments in future products. Jonathan Rennert, chairman of Zoll Medical (which makes advanced cardiac defibrillators) has stated that the tax will mean “less innovation, fewer jobs, and fewer lives saved.”

More from the war on science:

Last week campaigner Luke Steele was sentenced to 18 months in jail for harassing staff at Harlan's laboratories. A second activist, Jonathan White, was given a seven-month sentence, suspended for 18 months. The pair, both aged 22, were members of a small group who terrorised staff at Harlan's three UK sites last year, using hailers to chant "shame on you", "blood on your hands" and "puppy killers" at employees queuing up in their cars to enter or leave their workplaces. They also claimed that animals in the centres were subject to "horrific neglect".

One female Harlan worker told the Observer: "When you arrived in the morning, you would have to queue for up to five minutes to get through the gates. Their loudhailers were deafening. They would scream at you that you were a puppy killer and would bang on your car. It was horrible. I was left shaking for hours afterwards."

A male colleague was equally affected: "It is part of their methodology to equate animal work with paedophilia. If they find out your name, you will appear on their website as a paedophile. It is disgusting." Another Harlan worker found out that his neighbours had all been sent notes claiming that he was a rapist.

Ars Technica brings some silly sensationalist journalism. Mark Stanley and Jake Laperruque report Millions of Americans now fall within government's digital dragnet:

Until recently, average Americans could convince themselves they were safe from government snooping. Yes, the government engaged in warrantless wiretaps, but those were directed at terrorists. Yes, movies and TV shows featured impressive technology, with someone’s location highlighted in real time on a computer screen, but such capabilities were used only to track drug dealers and kidnappers.

Figures released earlier this month should dispel that complacency. It’s now clear that government surveillance is so widespread that the chances of the average, innocent person being swept up in an electronic dragnet are much higher than previously appreciated. The revelation should lead to long overdue legal reforms.

The new figures, resulting from a Congressional inquiry, indicate that cell phone companies responded last year to at least 1.3 million government requests for customer data—ranging from subscriber identifying information to call detail records (who is calling whom), geolocation tracking, text messages, and full-blown wiretaps.

Almost certainly, the 1.3 million figure understates the scope of government surveillance. One carrier provided no data. And the inquiry only concerned cell phone companies. Not included were ISPs and e-mail service providers such as Google, which we know have also seen a growing tide of government requests for user data.

First off, the data includes location tracking provided to 911. From AT&T's response:

Our Privacy Policy makes very clear that we will provide personal information to governmental agencies... To provide information regarding the caller's location to a public safety entity when a call is made to 911...

If AT&T's response is typical, a full 30% of the requests are a result of exigent requests, such as calls to 911.

Still, this is scary sounding, until you put it into a little context. 1.3 million wiretaps sounds like a lot, but in 2006, there were over 1.1 million people convicted of felonies in state courts alone in the US. Add in federal cases, cases where charges weren't brought, or were plea bargained down to misdemeanors, a one to one ratio of wiretaps to crimes really doesn't sound that far out of line. Also consider the possibility of over-counting-- does a request for text messages and voice calls on a cell phone count as two requests, or one? What about requests for historical call records, versus ongoing taps? What about instances where police have requested extensions on the duration of a wiretap, or for multiple phones for a single person, such as in the case of "burner" cells?

Most egregious, however, is this comment later in the article:

The only solution is to ensure that the government’s use of these tools is carefully focused. The best way to do that is to follow the standard in the Constitution and require the government to get a warrant from a judge before intruding in our lives.

(emph in original). First off, the Constitution doesn't actually require a warrant from a judge to conduct a search, it merely requires the search to be reasonable, and have probable cause. Secondly, if they bothered to look at the actual data provided by the cell phone companies, almost all of the requests did have subpoenas or orders/warrants, and weren't part of some mysterious NSA program.

Check your facts people.

A reminder on Bush v Gore:

If the U.S. Supreme Court had allowed Florida's courts to finish their abortive recount of last year's deadlocked presidential election, President Bush probably still would have won by several hundred votes, a comprehensive study of the uncounted ballots has found.

...As a result, under rules devised by the Florida Supreme Court and accepted by the Gore campaign at the time, Bush probably would have won a recount, the study found.

More from the war on science, social issues, edition:

The sociologist Mark Regnerus, at the University of Texas at Austin, is being smeared in the media and subjected to an inquiry by his university over allegations of scientific misconduct.

Regnerus's offense? His article in the July 2012 issue of Social Science Research reported that adult children of parents who had same-sex romantic relationships, including same-sex couples as parents, have more emotional and social problems than do adult children of heterosexual parents with intact marriages. That's it. Regnerus published ideologically unpopular research results on the contentious matter of same-sex relationships. And now he is being made to pay.

In today's political climate, and particularly in the discipline of sociology—dominated as it is by a progressive orthodoxy—what Regnerus did is unacceptable. It makes him a heretic, a traitor—and so he must be thrown under the bus.

Regnerus's study was based on a nationally representative sample of adult Americans, including an adequate number of respondents who had parents with same-sex relationships to make valid statistical comparisons. His data were collected by a survey firm that conducts top studies, such as the American National Election Survey, which is supported by the National Science Foundation. His sample was a clear improvement over those used by most previous studies on this topic.

Over at the Morlock Revolt, they pointed out the latest Obama campaign poster. Well, the crack research staff here at SWR has been able to unearth the real version of that poster:

More from the War on Science. A UCLA professor points out that evidence used to justify state regulations is fraudulent, as is the Ph.D. of the lead researcher, and is fired for his efforts:

Dr. Enstrom, a research professor in UCLA's Department of Environmental Health Sciences, published important peer-reviewed research demonstrating that fine particulate matter does not kill Californians. Also, Dr. Enstrom assembled detailed evidence that contends powerful UC professors and others have systematically exaggerated the adverse health effects of diesel particulate matter in California, knowing full well that these exaggerations would be used by the California Air Resources Board (CARB) to justify draconian diesel vehicle regulations in California. In addition, [Dr Enstrom] argues that he exposed the fact that the lead author of the key CARB Report used to justify the diesel regulations did not have the UC Davis Ph.D. degree that he claimed. Instead, according to the suit, this "scientist" bought a fake Ph.D. for $1,000 from a fictional "Thornhill University." Finally, Dr. Enstrom discovered that several activist members of the CARB Scientific Review Panel on Toxic Air Contaminants have exceeded the legislatively mandated three-year term limits by decades. The suit contends that shortly after Dr. Enstrom revealed this systematic wrongdoing, UCLA not only issued a notice of termination, it denied him any compensation for his work by systematically and wrongfully looting his research fund accounts. Dr. Enstrom worked for more than a year without pay as he in good faith appealed his wrongful termination using UCLA procedures. Ironically enough, the fake "scientist" was only suspended for his misconduct while Dr. Enstrom was terminated for telling the truth.

State and local spending over the past 60 years:

But, how does this square with Obama's recent assertion that the primary thing undermining our recovery is widespread reductions in employment in state and local governments? Josh Barro points out why the public sector isn't "doing fine":

San Jose had an average of 7.5 employees per 1,000 residents from 1986 to 2005, and never dropped below 7.0. But in the last two years, that ratio has cratered -- to 5.6 per thousand this year, with further cuts expected next year.

This is partly because revenue has risen only modestly, with general fund receipts rising 19 percent in a decade. But the main reason is that costs for a full-time equivalent employee are astronomical and skyrocketing. San Jose spends $142,000 per FTE on wages and benefits, up 85 percent from 10 years ago. As a result, the city shed 28 percent of its workforce over that period, even as its population was rising.

A lot of that increase is due to rising required pension payments, as the assets in the city’s pension funds have lost value. But much also had to do with what Mayor Chuck Reed, a Democrat, describes as “irresponsible policy actions” over the last 15 years. Here’s his list:

1. Giving out raises faster than revenues were growing.
2. Giving out raises and increasing benefits when revenues were falling.
3. Giving out raises and benefits retroactively.
4. Allowing employees to cash out unlimited amounts of sick leave when they retire.
5. Providing lifetime health care for retirees.

He also notes that “the City Council and outside arbitrators also significantly enhanced retirement benefits. The maximum benefit for public safety employees grew from 75 percent of final salary to 90 percent, and a guaranteed 3 percent cost-of-living adjustment was awarded to all employees.”

Quote of the day:

The United States symbolises the worst ideologies in the world: growth and freedom.

-Pentti Linkola, writer and environmentalist. (via zerohedge).

US expands aerial intelligence operations in Africa.

Fascinating analysis on Russia's support for Syria from Walter Russel Mead:

The roots of Russia’s support for Butcher Assad go deep. This is much more than nostalgia for Russia’s last Middle East ally from Soviet days. This is about getting back in touch with Russia’s pre-communist foreign policy traditions, and about Putin’s relations with one of his most reliable and important bases of support: the Russian Orthodox Church. The Church has historically exerted a strong pull on Russian policies overseas, especially in defense of Christian minorities in the Balkans and Middle East. Throughout the events of the Arab Spring, Russia has been reluctant — to put it kindly — to join the efforts to unseat dictators like Hosni Mubarak and Bashar Assad. Though these tyrants have often been brutal toward many of their citizens, Christian minorities have, by and large, thrived under their rule.

The Orthodox Church does not drive Russia’s foreign policy by itself, but it is certainly a force to be reckoned with. A few months ago, president-elect Vladimir Putin went to Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, the chairman of the Russian patriarchate’s department of external church relations, with a pledge to support the Church with millions of dollars in donations to Church causes and institutions. The metropolitan did not want money. He wanted the Russian government to protect the Christians of the Middle East. “So it will be,” Putin promised.

Christians make up 10 percent of Syria’s population, about 2.5 million people. Bashar Assad has long protected them, and many of them support him still. Syrian Christians fear the intentions of the rebels fighting the regime. They worry about the anti-minority sentiments espoused by some of the leaders of the Syrian National Council, many of whom are Islamists from the Muslim Brotherhood. Like Syria’s Kurds and other minorities, Syrian Christians prefer the stability of the Assad government to the turmoil that could follow if the regime collapsed...

Russia’s concern for Syrian Christians is also nothing new. Although the Communists were more interested in hounding and enslaving religious believers than protecting them, under the czars Russia was officially recognized by the Ottoman sultans as the protector of Orthodox Christians throughout the Turkish empire. In the 18th and 19th century Russian concern for these Christians (married to a concern for its geopolitical ambitions) frequently shaped Russian policy towards the Ottomans and the West. The Crimean War at one point brought Russia into war with Britain, France and the Ottoman Empire over a quarrel between Russia and France over their rights to represent and protect Ottoman Christians in the Holy Land.

As Putin and the people around him look to rebuild Russian identity and Russian policy in the wake of the Soviet collapse, the Orthodox Church is an important focus for their work. Internally, Orthodox Christianity can replace Marxism-Leninism as a philosophical basis for Russian patriotism and identity. In a country where the principle alternatives to Putinism seem to be fascism on the right and communism on the left, the importance of the Russian Orthodox Church as a mass base for conservative and nationalist but non-crazy Russian politics should not be undervalued. Externally, Orthodox Christians in the Balkans and the Middle East are eager to renew their relations with a power that sympathizes with their needs and world view. Regardless of Putin’s own religious views, an alliance with Orthodoxy is vital to any attempt to govern Russia and to rebuild its foreign influence.

Read the whole thing.

Strategic advice on Syria:

Our objective there should be to tie down Iran and poison its (and its proxies’) relations with the Arab public, the larger Islamic world, and nations in general. We want Syria to become Iran’s Vietnam, a conflict causing it no end of headaches but one it can’t easily get out of.

Bolton offers a “nightmare scenario” wherein “Iran would allow Assad to fall, losing its pawn, and in exchange Obama would agree to do even less than he is doing now to stop Iran’s nuclear-weapons program, allowing Iran to protect its queen.” Hey, anything’s possible, but the mullahs have an extremely strong interest in keeping Assad in charge at almost any price, as evidenced by their assignment of SS troops (a.k.a. Revolutionary Guard) to help crush the uprising in Syria. Instead of dithering, the administration should be pinning everything that happens in Syria on Iran: If there’s a civilian massacre, we need to demand an investigation into whether Iranian forces participated in it; if residential areas are shelled, we must demand to know whether the weaponry was shipped from Iran. The return address of every artillery shell is Tehran; the mullahs are responsible for every dead Syrian child.

More myths of the environmental movement:

According to the standard fable, post-war environmental conditions got inexorably worse until the nation's environmental consciousness awoke in the 1960s and demanded action. State and local governments were environmental laggards, according to this story, and only the federal government was capable of safeguarding ecological concerns. Events such as the 1969 fire on the Cuyahoga River, memorialized in Time magazine with this picture, are pointed to as support for this traditional account. This fire, which helped spur passage of the 1972 Clean Water Act, is constantly cited as evidence of how bad things were before the federal government got involved.

Yet the standard fable is just that, a fable - a fictionalized account with some truth, but fiction nonetheless. Let's start with the 1969 fire. There was a fire on the Cuyahoga River in June 1969, Time magazine did run a photo of a fire on the Cuyahoga, and the story of the fire did help spur passage of the CWA. But that's about where the truth ends. The fire was actually a minor event in Cleveland, largely because river fires on the Cuyahoga had once been common, as they had been on industrialized rivers throughout the United States, throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries. But river fires were costly and posed serious risks to people and property, prompting local governments and private industry to act. The fire was not evidence of how bad things could get, but a reminder of how bad things had been.

Further, the June 1969 fire was far smaller and less significant than the fires of years past. Where there had been some major infernos on the Cuyahoga in years past, the 1969 fire was not among them. The fire burned for less than thirty minutes, and was out before the cameras arrived. (Here's the closest thing to a picture of that fire.) And that picture in Time magazine? It was not of the 1969 fire but of a fire from 1952. Apparently the editors of Time felt the need to dramatize their story of environmental ruin with a picture of a real fire, so they used the best picture they could find, even if it was not of the fire featured in their story. [For those interested, here is an extensive treatment of this history.]

More from the War on Science.

Our creeping regulatory state:

As a new report issued today by the Institute for Justice discusses, more and more Americans now need the government’s permission before they can pursue the occupation of their choice. The IJ report, “License to Work: A National Study of Burdens from Occupational Licensing,” shows that for lower-income Americans, these government-imposed “occupational licensing” hurdles are not only widespread, but often unreasonably high. License to Work details licensing requirements for 102 low- and moderate-income occupations in all 50 states and D.C. It is the first national study of licensing to focus on lower-income occupations and to measure the burdens licensing imposes on aspiring workers.

Are All These Licenses Necessary?

Noted licensure expert Morris Kleiner found that in the 1950s, only one in 20 U.S. workers needed government permission to pursue their chosen occupation. Today, it is closer to one in three. Yet research to date provides little evidence that licensing protects public health and safety or improves products and services. Instead, it increases consumer costs and reduces opportunities for workers.

License to Work provides additional reasons to doubt that many licensing regimes are needed. First, most of the 102 occupations are practiced somewhere without government permission and apparently without widespread harm: Only 15 are licensed in 40 states or more, and on average, the 102 occupations are licensed in just 22 states—fewer than half. This includes a number of occupations with no self-evident rationale for licensure, such as shampooer, florist, home entertainment installer and funeral attendant.

Second, licensure burdens often vary considerably across states, calling into question the need for severe burdens. For instance, although 10 states require four months or more of training for manicurists, Alaska demands only about three days and Iowa about nine days. Such disparities are prevalent throughout the occupations studied.

Finally, the difficulty of entering an occupation often has little to do with the health or safety risk it poses. Of the 102 occupations studied, the most difficult to enter is interior designer, a harmless occupation licensed in only three states and D.C. By contrast, EMTs hold lives in their hands, yet 66 other occupations face greater average licensure burdens, including barbers and cosmetologists, manicurists and a host of contractor designations. States consider an average of 33 days of training and two exams enough preparation for EMTs, but demand 10 times the training—372 days, on average—for cosmetologists. “The data cast serious doubt on the need for such high barriers, or any barriers, to many occupations,” said Lisa Knepper, IJ director of strategic research and report co-author. “Unnecessary and needlessly high licensing hurdles don’t protect public health and safety—they protect those who already have licenses from competition, keeping newcomers out and prices high.”

Walter Russel Meade:

And if Europe cuts Greece loose, Russia may fill the void there as well. There are close cultural ties between these Orthodox countries, and both are like to join in a feeling of bitterness and exclusion vis-à-vis the West.

Americans often don’t “get” the Russia-Greek connection. In Ottoman times, Orthodox Russia was the protector of Orthodox Christians in the great Islamic empire and frequently used its diplomatic clout to defend the rights of its co-religionists. Greece looked to Russia as a reliable ally during much of the troubled period after modern Greece gained independence from the Turks.

The feeling is reciprocal. Russia received the gospel from Greek Christians. The Russian tsars married into the Byzantine royal house; the word tsar (or czar) is the Russian form of Caesar, indicating the strong Russian sense that Orthodox Moscow, after the fall of Constantinople, was the “Third Rome.” Much of modern Russian identity and sense of a unique place in the world is wrapped up in its civilizational connection with Byzantine culture and religion.

Mount Athos, the center of Orthodox monasticism and the spiritual heart of Greece, looms large in Russia. No less a person than President Vladimir Putin has made pilgrimages to this site.

There are other connections as well. Much of the Russian oligarchy’s money has been moved through Greek Cyprus, where the banking system has long been very close to post-Communist Moscow.

FT Alphaville remains quite bearish on China, indicating that China may be suffering from the leading edge of a significant financial crisis from excess renminbi liquidity. But more alarming is the increased sketchiness of China's official trade and GDP numbers. They cite, among a long list of other items, this troubling anecdote in a recent NYT article:

In a series of interviews over the last week, bankers and senior executives from provinces all over China, in a range of light and heavy industries, cited a broad deterioration in business conditions. Two of them said that some tax agencies in smaller cities had been telling companies to inflate their sales and profits to make local economic growth look less weak than it really was, while reassuring the companies that their actual tax bills would be left unchanged.

Jim Manzi has a new book out arguing that we need to leverage randomized control trials to test the efficacy of public policies:

In “Uncontrolled,” Manzi looks at two celebrated model-building exercises. Larry Bartels of Princeton produced a model finding that presidential policies exercise the single biggest influence on income distribution. The authors of “Freakonomics” produced a model showing legalized abortions subsequently reduced crime rates.

Manzi argues that by slightly tweaking the technical assumptions in these models, you eliminate the headline-grabbing results. He also points out that regression models that try to explain crime rates have not become more accurate over the past 30 years. All this model-building hasn’t even helped us get better at understanding the problem.

What you really need to achieve sustained learning, Manzi argues, is controlled experiments. Try something out. Compare the results against a control group. Build up an information feedback loop. This is how businesses learn. By 2000, the credit card company Capital One was running 60,000 randomized tests a year — trying out different innovations and strategies. Google ran about 12,000 randomized experiments in 2009 alone...

Businesses conduct hundreds of thousands of randomized trials each year. Pharmaceutical companies conduct thousands more. But government? Hardly any. Government agencies conduct only a smattering of controlled experiments to test policies in the justice system, education, welfare and so on...

This sounds like an obvious idea, but small steps to do exactly this meet with significant opposition, like this example from last December's New York Times:

The city’s Department of Homeless Services said the study was necessary to determine whether the $23 million program, called Homebase, helped the people for whom it was intended. Homebase, begun in 2004, offers job training, counseling services and emergency money to help people stay in their homes.

But some public officials and legal aid groups have denounced the study as unethical and cruel, and have called on the city to stop the study and to grant help to all the test subjects who had been denied assistance.

“They should immediately stop this experiment,” said the Manhattan borough president, Scott M. Stringer. “The city shouldn’t be making guinea pigs out of its most vulnerable.”...

One critic of the trial, Councilwoman Annabel Palma, is holding a General Welfare Committee hearing about the program on Thursday. “I don’t think homeless people in our time, or in any time, should be treated like lab rats,” Ms. Palma said.

But Seth Diamond, commissioner of the Homeless Services Department, said that just because 90 percent of the families helped by Homebase stayed out of shelters did not mean it was Homebase that kept families in their homes. People who sought out Homebase might be resourceful to begin with, he said, and adept at patching together various means of housing help.

Interestingly, the one example cited in the article of someone who didn't receive government assistance was able to get some elsewhere, showing that this policy, may not in fact be necessary. Back to the first article:

[T]he general lesson of randomized experiments is that the vast majority of new proposals do not work, and those that do work only do so to a limited extent and only under certain circumstances. This is true in business and government. Politicians are not inclined to set up rigorous testing methods showing that their favorite ideas don’t work.

It is not just a matter of wasting money on policies which don't work. It is possible that programs may actually harm their beneficiaries, making these types of studies a moral imperative.

The Chinese growth miracle:

[V]isitors to Chongqing marvel at the soaring skyscrapers and modern infrastructure built during Bo’s tenure there. But do they know that Bo’s administration borrowed the equivalent of more than 50% of local GDP to finance the construction binge, and that a large portion of the debt will go unpaid? Unfortunately, Bo’s case is not the exception in China, but the rule...

Inflating local growth numbers is so endemic that reported provincial GDP growth data, when added up, are always higher than the national growth data, a mathematical impossibility. And, even when they do not doctor the numbers, local officials can game the system in another way.

Because of their relatively short tenure in one position before promotion (less than three years, on average, for local mayors), Chinese officials are under enormous pressure to demonstrate their ability to produce economic results quickly. One sure way of doing so is to use financial leverage, typically by selling land or using land as collateral to borrow large sums of money from often-obliging state-owned banks, to finance massive infrastructure projects, as Bo did in Chongqing.

The result is promotion for such officials, because they have delivered quick GDP growth. But the economic and social costs are very high. Local governments are saddled with a mountain of debt and wasted investments, banks accumulate risky loans, and farmers lose their land.

From what I gather, government debt at the local level is excessively high, and the role of government owned banks is widely unappreciated.