Category Archives: Political Commentary

Business, Political Commentary, Science And Society

And So It Begins

24 Comments

The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association is suing the EPA over Climaquiddick:

The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association has filed a petition to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C. to overturn the EPA’s recent greenhouse gas “endangerment” ruling.

The ruling states that gases believed to cause global warming pose a human health risk and is the first step toward their regulation by the EPA under the Clean Air Act. The NCBA and other producer groups fear the ruling could lead to lawsuits and new restrictions on the nation’s livestock industries.

…The cattle group points to Climategate, in which critics allege that e-mails stolen from Great Britain’s University of East Anglia show bias and manipulation of data by scientists on the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The fact that the EPA relied on some of the IPCC’s data to make its finding makes the ruling questionable, Thies said.

Discovery should be quite enlightening. I expect this will go all the way to SCOTUS.

Economics, Political Commentary

Helping Haiti

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The Anchoress has some useful links.

The devastation in that benighted country (our own little bit of Africa in the western hemisphere) demonstrates how deadly it can be to be poor, and why attempts to hold back economic growth in the third world with things like Kyoto and cap’n’tax are almost genocidal.

[Update a while later]

“You hear yells everywhere from underneath the rubble.”

Horrible.

[Update on Thursday morning]

Why is Haiti so poor? Some hypotheses from Tyler Cowen.

[Bumped]

[Update a few minutes later]

History’s most deadly quakes. I expect Haiti will be added to this list, though it’s unlikely to set a new record.

[Update late morning]

Remembering the “good times” in Haiti:

On an official visit to the island in the 1980s, as head of the Latin America/Caribbean Bureau of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), I witnessed a grown man, my 28-year-old executive assistant, a lawyer who had not traveled extensively outside the U.S., cry inconsolably after touring an orphanage and hospital run by Belgian nuns and supported by USAID food and medical aid. The rest of my team consisted of experienced (read: hardened) professionals who had seen famine and desolation in other countries many times. The assistant had been shocked at the sight of the “triage” set up by the nuns, whereby they calmly and tenderly separated emaciated Haitian newborns into those who would not survive the night and those who might. Both groups received the same loving care from the nuns, but the ones born with no chance of survival did not receive precious resources that could be used to save the lives of other, slightly stronger infants with a chance of living another day and perhaps even surviving.

That hospital, run by angelic Belgians and their Haitian collaborators, was a metaphor for the entire country. The U.S. chose to deliver its significant assistance (more than that of any other nation) only through private organizations, because the government of Haiti was deemed either too incompetent or corrupt to deliver it safely.

It hasn’t improved in the interim, and this disaster is unlikely to improve it.

Living in Boca Raton, almost all of the blacks that I encountered were Haitian (many of them checkout and stocking personnel at the local supermarket). They were good people, and obviously very happy to be here.

Business, Economics, Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

Unspeakable Truths

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Thoughts from Victor Davis Hanson:

I am fortunate for a wonderful graduate education in the PhD program at Stanford, but I learned more about the way the world works in two months of farming (which saved a wretch like me) than in four years of concentrated study.

In short, the world does not work on a nine-month schedule. It does not recognize concepts like tenure. It does not care for words without action. And brilliance is not measured by vocabulary or SAT scores. Wowing a dean, or repartee into a seminar, or clever put-downs of rivals in the faculty lounge don’t translate into running a railroad—or running the country. One Harry Truman, or Dwight Eisenhower is worth three Bill Clintons or Barack Obamas. If that sounds reductionist, simplistic, or anti-intellectual, it is not meant to—but so be it nonetheless.

I’ve never been less impressed with Ivy League degrees than I am now.