Potpourri
Sorry for the scant posting lately. Last week I was in New Hampshire, this week I’m at my parents’ house, and next week I’m at FreedomFest. Anyway:
==> A great conference on Christian Libertarians. I would go except it’s too close to the Night of Clarity event we’re holding in Nashville, for which I must help with the preparations.
==> Speaking of which, Tom Woods reaches out to the Christian Right. He’s so inclusive, that big softie.
==> A post on the “lost” IRS emails if you’re shocked, shocked that people in DC lie.
==> Interesting take on the Redskins’ ruling.
==> Rob Bradley talks about Henry Paulson‘s latest concern over climate change. (The man is a saint.) At IER I have a post coming out on this, probably next week.
==> My 9-year-old son is writing a novel and actually cares what you people think of it. I don’t know where I went wrong with the kid.
I have a question about your son’s “Growing Wiser” book.
In Chapter Two, when the cell turned into a very small gas, was that Regoheketti farting?
Consider that after this happened, Rego became very less bored; and that farting is pretty entertaining.
I’m shocked by how little effort they put into their lies, and how many people shrug and pretend there’s no big deal.
I’ve seen lots of blog responses where people say their original posting got lost so I think that, based on that scientific sample, our civil servants deserve the benefit of the doubt.
Picture the situation where the IRS is coming to audit some business and the business owner comes up with the story that seven hard drives crashed and they only keep tape backups for 6 months, and the hard drives were sent to be destroyed and recycled. Not only that but they also failed to notify the relevant compliance agencies at the time of this spectacular data destroying coincidence, and generally on close inspection have pretty much failed to comply with the standard record keeping they were legally obliged to do.
The business owner also explains that although this all happened years ago, he only just heard about it recently, but that’s just how we do business round here.
How much of that “benefit of the doubt” do you think this business deserves? How much would the IRS auditors be willing to offer? None? Yeah I agree, none whatsoever.
Tel, you’re going to let me get by with scientific sample and call me out on benefit of the doubt?
Yet everyday there is an article or news bit glorifying the transparency and openness of American government. The media is state owned.
Will the people ever wake up…
http://media.townhall.com/Townhall/Car/b/mrz062614dAPC20140626125243.jpg
“Problem is, the global average temperature today is not appreciably higher today than when Ken Lay penned his op-ed.”
That is odd, since the piece came out in 1997. Every year since except 2 has been warmer. Every year since 2000 has been warmer. How could someone arrived at this odd conclusion that things are not appreciably warmer than they were when he wrote the piece? Ah – I see, he doesn’t use 1997, the year the piece was written, but 1998, the year after. On the face of it this seems odd.
Picking a single year is not good practice – how do you know if you have accidentally picked an outlier? Another way would be to compare the temp 14 years before each of the last say 5 years. That should give a better idea of whether things are generally warmer now. The list for how much warmer recent years were than 14 years earlier is (from 2009 on) +0.17, +0.33, +0.09, -0.04 and +0.4. There was one slightly warmer year earlier, but every other case the recent year was warmer by a larger amount.
On top of this 10 of the last 10 warmest years on record has occurred since 1997.
Instead of picking 1998 as the wrong year, what if we pick a different wrong year? Every year since 1996 has been warmer. Every year since 1999 has been warmer.
If you can conclude that temperatures are not appreciably higher than they were when Lay wrote his piece you have to be looking through some odd glasses. It is almost as if he is deliberately misrepresenting the data.
Very good writing from your son. Can’t wait for chapter 3.
Re Redskins ” The problem is that the Redskins case is just the latest example of a federal agency going beyond its brief to inappropriately insert itself in social or political debates.”
I suppose you could argue that the Govt agency is not inserting itself, but choosing to withdraw itself. They can carry on using the name Redskins, they just won’t have any Govt. protection to stop anyone else doing so, thus removing a restriction to trade.
Was that their intention? To free up trade?
Sure, the results may be that the government has economically or legally withdrawn itself, but at the same time it has inserted itself by withdrawing in an attempt to influence public opinion and bring attention to the debate.
The statement you quoted says that a federal agency has inserted itself into a debate, and does not reference any type of legal involvement.
Very strategically withdrawing trademark protection based on a social or political debate.
If they withdrew trademark protection from all sporting clubs, then yeah your argument about free trade would make sense. To withdraw protection from just one particular club, while also offering protection to all of the competitors of that club is known as “picking favourites” and yeah this implies that the federal government department is very much inserting itself.
Come to think of it, I wonder if the Redskins could just register their trademark with the EU instead?
Fair point about inserting itself in the debate. This is a bit like the Hobby Lobby ruling. A bit of government interference withdrawn, but not for free trade reasons.