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Calling Karl Rove
Posted by on 2.28.13 @ 4:22PM
Nothing, and I do mean nothing, could me more divisive to the conservative cause or to the Republican cause (two different things at times, but not in this case) than to have a third-party gubernatorial bid in a key swing state currently governed by Republicans, against a duly nominated candidate who is the sitting attorney general, with a history of punching way above his weight politically, a history of political canniness, and a record of being way ahead of the curve in promoting thoughtful, sensitive reforms for mental-health law and also being ahead of the curve in fighting human trafficking. What Bill Bolling is threatening to do in Virginia, against the superb Ken Cuccinelli, is an abomination. It creates conditions significantly more likely to hand the governorship over to the despicable Terry McAuliffe — a man who deeply slandered this very journal, and then had neither the guts to defend his slander nor the integrity to admit his manifest error . (Please do read that link, where our founder, R. Emmett Tyrrell, lays out the amazing story of McAuliffe’s perfidy.)
According to the very principles claimed by Karl Rove in defending his new venture for helping the GOP choose the rightward most electable candidates, Cuccinelli absolutely merits support, and Bolling merits strong opposition. It is thus incumbent on Mr. Rove to use all his influence to dissuade Bolling from running, and, if he runs anyway, to do absolutely everything humanly possible to marginalize Bolling and support Cuccinelli.
Otherwise, all of Rove’s self-defense will have been shown to be, uh, rather less than entirely on the up and up.
Mr. Rove, we await your intervention on Cuccinelli’s behalf in this most serious of battles, especially considering the high stakes in this off-year gubernatorial race that will enjoy the rapt attention of the political nation.
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Major Victory for School Choice in Colorado
Posted by on 2.28.13 @ 3:51PM
In a 2-1 decision, a three-judge panel of the Colorado Court of Appeals threw out a lower court’s injunction against the Douglas County School District’s voucher program, an injunction which has been in place since 2011.
The majority ruled that the plan does not violate the state constitution (by allowing students to attend religious schools) and that those suing don’t have standing because they can’t show any harm.
The case will be appealed to the Colorado Supreme Court, which has a history of leftist activism.
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Ross on TV and Radio Today
Posted by on 2.28.13 @ 2:55PM
This afternoon, I’ll be on the Jerry Doyle Show, heard on radio stations around the country, to discuss my article for The American Spectator today regarding the stock market and the sequester. I’ll be on live just after 6:30 PM EST, 4:30 PM here in the Rocky Mountains. (You can find a local station which broadcasts Jerry here.)
And less than an hour later, at 7:20 PM EST, 5:20 PM MST, I’ll be on CNBC’s The Kudlow Report discussing the same topic with Larry Kudlow, a great capitalist and greater human being.
I hope you’ll be able to tune in to one or both!
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Me on the Rusty Humphries Show
Posted by on 2.28.13 @ 2:53PM
I’m late in posting this, but here’s me on the Rusty Humphries Show discussing sequestration a couple days ago:
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Maxine Waters: Sequester Could Cost 170 Million Jobs
Posted by on 2.28.13 @ 2:45PM
Her figure seems a little bit low to me. With all the aircraft carriers coming home and nursery schools being shuttered, who’s to say it won’t cost 300 billion jobs?
In other news, Bryan Preston over at PJ Media has the scoop on another sequestration horror story falling apart.
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Fact Checking Feinstein (and Friends)
Posted by on 2.28.13 @ 1:56PM
As your intrepid correspondent reported yesterday, Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) has built her argument for a new assault weapons ban on two major premises, the first and most important of which merits careful scrutiny: Mass shootings have increased in the past few years.
Is she correct?
The answer seems to be a qualified no. The Federal Bureau of Investigation distinguishes a mass shooting as the killing of four individuals in a single incident, not including the assailant. In the past few months, Mother Jones has spearheaded the progressive technocratic campaign to demonstrate that mass shootings are increasing. However, criminologist James Alan Fox of Northeastern University has repeatedly pushed back, against Mother Jones and in general.
His recent analysis of FBI Crime Statistics concluded that mass shootings were fairly flat between 1976 and 2010, with no remarkable recent increase (his chart here). 2010 is the most recent year for which data are available. 2012 may have been a particularly bad year — Mother Jones places the number of mass shooting deaths at 151, more than any year on record — but Fox questions the magazine’s methodology. Even if there were 500 such deaths last year, they would comprise a tiny proportion of total gun homicides, which have, if anything, gently fallen in recent years (chart here; note that the horizontal axis is not to scale). Fox speaks as a man of science, not ideology. He authored a post called “NRA’s flawed strategy” and reflected in his response to Mother Jones:
The only silver lining to the tragedies of 2012 is that they have generated considerable momentum for tackling the root causes of mass murder. Whether the sense of urgency is sustained long enough for change in law or policy to be implement remains to be seen.
He concluded a January 2011 op-ed for USA Today by saying:
Notwithstanding the worn-out slogan that “guns don’t kill, people do,” guns do make it easier for people to commit murder. And semi-automatic guns, like the Tucson assailant’s out-of-the-box spanking-new Glock, make it easier to commit mass murder.
The FBI appears to be two years away from releasing statistics that would authoritatively ground this debate in fact. In the meantime, Dr. Fox’s admonishment against alarmism appears prudent.
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A Spectre is Haunting Virginia: Braess’ Paradox
Posted by on 2.28.13 @ 11:08AM
The great Tim Carney, the Washington Examiner’s muckraking Mozart, lays into Virginia Governor and alleged conservative Bob McDonnell for supporting a new raft of tax increases and infrastructure improvements:
The transportation bill McDonnell supports would hike sales taxes to 6 percent in Northern Virginia (up from 5 percent), rejigger the gas tax and index it to inflation and increase taxes on home sales. This tax revenue, along with more money from the general fund, will provide what the Fairfax Chamber of Commerce calls a “sustainable fund” for transportation, with the hope of alleviating traffic congestion.
But even if the plan fleeces ordinary people, they stand to spend less time in traffic. Right?
If you think all this new pavement will mean less congestion, consider these other supporters of McDonnell’s plan. The Virginia Automobile Dealers Association signed on, presumably expecting more people to buy cars if there are more lanes. The Home Builders Association and the Virginia Association of Realtors back the bill, too, foreseeing more homes in Loudoun and Fauquier counties. So you get more lanes, but also more commuters and more drivers. The result could be the same amount of congestion.
Carney’s suspicion is well-grounded in economic theory. The time we expect to spend in traffic is the price we are willing to pay for the convenience of using the roads at a given point each day. Increased capacity may simply mean more time spent on the road as more people use it. The previous equilibrium may be reached again.
As someone formally trained in economics, it is my vocational duty to disclose an even more dismal possibility: Braess’ paradox. If capacity is added to a network, such as a road system, the actions of the self-interested individuals using it may, under certain circumstances, actually increase transit times. As with any such economic theory, there is a ceteris paribus assumption: All else is assumed to remain equal. No construction of additional housing or increase in the user base. And both can be expected thanks to this plan.
To be clear, the mathematics behind this theory are far over my head, and estimating the risk in this case without specific information is virtually impossible. But real-world cases of this phenomenon have been observed. Virginians must steel themselves against the prosaic insult of injury compounded upon injury.
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Controversial Words
Posted by on 2.28.13 @ 6:00AM
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Richard Street, R.I.P.
Posted by on 2.27.13 @ 11:07PM
Richard Street, former lead singer of The Temptations, passed away today of a pulmonary embolism. He was 70.
Street was the lead singer of The Distants, a vocal group which included future Temptations Otis Williams, Melvyn Franklin and Elbridge Bryant. After a stint with a shortlived Motown group called The Monitors, Street was recruited by Otis Williams to sing Paul Williams’ parts from off stage. Williams’ voice had weakened due to alcoholism and sickle cell anemia. Street became a full fledged Temptation in 1971 and remained with the group through 1993. His most notable vocals were on “Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone”.
In recent years, Street fronted various Temptations lineups and frequently collaborated with former Temptation Damon Harris. Street’s passing comes nine days after Harris died of prostrate cancer.
Here is Street talking about his high school girlfriend, Diana Ross.
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Woodward Claims White House Threat
Posted by on 2.27.13 @ 10:52PM
[Update: Even though I still enjoy the “threat” headlines, the details of the e-mails at issue in this story make Woodward’s claim of being threatened seem overstated.]
[Update 2: When you have a Chicago thugocracy, it’s not surprising that more stories of threats start to percolate out, such as from former Clinton aide Lanny Davis…]
Ain’t it just grand to see the Obama administration pick a fight with a well-respected (but still quite liberal) reporter?
This bunch of petty tyrants in the White House is looking more like who they really are with each passing day. The question is when most of America will realize it. The answer to that probably has something to do with when the media starts telling the truth.
Picking a fight with Bob Woodward seems like an especially stupid move for an administration which relies on the media hiding the administration’s true nature, but par for the course for a government filled with bullies.
More at The Hill web site, with CNN video at RealClearPolitics.com
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Van Cliburn, R.I.P.
Posted by on 2.27.13 @ 9:53PM
Renowned concert pianist Van Cliburn has passed away of bone cancer. He was 78.
Cliburn was a child prodigy who enrolled in Juilliard at 17 and made his Carnegie Hall debut at the age of 20.
But Cliburn took the world by storm in 1958 when he won the inaugural International Tchaikovsky Piano Competition in Moscow. The competition was intended to show Soviet supremacy in music but Cliburn’s rendition of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 and Rachimaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 made a fan even of Nikita Khrushchev.
Upon his return to the United States, Cliburn received a ticker tape parade and the cover of Time Magazine (when the cover of Time actually meant something). His recording of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 went triple platinum. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Cliburn’s popularity rivaled that of Elvis Presley. Yet Cliburn was equally popular in the Soviet Union and performed there and throughout the world over the next 20 years.
After a decade long absence, Cliburn was brought out of retirement by President Reagan who invited him to the White House in 1987 to perform during Mikhail Gorbachev’s first visit to the United States. He subsequently returned to active performing and made a new generation of fans in both the West and the East.
I leave you with Cliburn performing the third movement of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1.
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Bernanke Says State and Local Budgets Seem Stable UPDATED
Posted by on 2.27.13 @ 5:00PM
Ben Bernanke claimed that state and local government budgets seem to have stabilized, in response to a question by New York Rep. Gregory Meeks about why the economy lost 600,000 public sector jobs. Meeks claimed this would be the equivalent of one percent of the unemployment rate.
Later on in the hearing, Congressman Dan Kildee (D) of Michigan discussed the topic in greater depth:
“We’ve seen recently over the last couple years and even in the last few weeks a significant number of downgrades in municipal debt…which represents a symptom of a much larger problem—municipal insolvency generally. We’ve seen Vallejo, California; Harrisburg Pennsylvania; Camden New Jersey; my own home town of Flint, and now we see Detroit facing this insolvency. The state based solution to these problems typically have been replacing the existing management with diffe