Guy rebuilds his house, Seattle socks him for ~$14-15k to build a new sidewalk.
Archive for the 'isms' Category
Sorry about your house – where’s my sidewalk?
24 March 2009Bad Bank
2 March 2009New Planet Money episode on This American Life: Bad Bank. This is Part Three (of a probably non-ending series); Part Two and Part One are online, too. How nationalization won’t save us. Why economists are scared. Why we can’t just wave a wand and fix this.
I think they meant to say “because”, not “even as”
23 February 2009Yahoo is running a wire piece:
Investors pounded most financial stocks even as government agencies led by the Treasury Department said they would launch a revamped bank rescue program this week. The plan includes the option of increasing government ownership in financial institutions without having to pour more taxpayer money into them.
Furthermore, telling people the economy is screwed – a constant drumbeat from the Obama camp – makes people think the economy is screwed.
“The biggest thing I see here is the incredible pessimism,” Springer said. “The government is doing a lousy job of alleviating fears.”
I think I’ve sighted Br’er Rabbit here:
Although the government has said it doesn’t want to nationalize banks, many investors are clearly still concerned that this could be a possibility as banks continue to suffer severe losses because of the recession.
Right. Don’t throw me into that thicket. Please, don’t throw me into that thicket.
Tripwire, Ultimate Tripwire
7 February 2009Joe’s page on “when to resist” points to a couple pages that are no longer available; I’ve taken the liberty of copying them from archive.org, cleaning them up, and reposting them. They are:
Automakers seek price controls on gasoline
14 January 2009What could possibly go wrong? If this happens, I’m done buying autos from the Big Three.
Lynn Moses: we’re from the government, we’re here to help
5 August 2008Read the story of Lynn Moses; he’s going to prison for doing what he was ordered to do by one arm of government, which was not in touch with another arm. Well, they tried to be in touch, but kept getting blown off.
Airlines, telephony, and power
28 June 2008Four links to Chicago Boyz in one day; such is the life of a shill. Carl has a great post up on, as he calls it, “the age of unreliability“. One link he missed, I think, is how much infrastructure could have been built up in the last seventy years if socialism wasn’t fucking our economy over.
Changing the rules of the game
12 June 2008Old law lets developers use old rules, thwarting Puget Sound protection, critics charge:
When it’s done, the Westmark Development Company’s Emerald Pointe condos, planned just above Seahurst Park on Puget Sound, will boast as many as 200 units divided among seven buildings on less than 10 acres, plus a recreation facility.
But under land-use laws meant to protect the environment, the whole project would be illegal.
City zoning would typically allow only about three single-family homes per acre here. And those homes would have to be set back as much as 100 feet from wetlands. Trouble is, the developer filed the permits in 1990. So the developer doesn’t have to follow rules imposed since then.
You’ll never see development if the rules of the game change as you’re building; why would you risk your money building something in Seattle when you might be stopped because you disrupt the natural flow of water?
When is terrorism not terrorism?
4 June 2008Israel says the barrier, which would eventually reach 400 miles, aims at stopping “terror” attacks, while Palestinians call it “the apartheid wall.”
Up in arms about a revolting movement
3 June 2008Retyped from a PDF of a scanned print of the Chicago Tribune.
Chicago Tribune
30 January 1995Up in arms about a revolting movement
By Glenn Harlan ReynoldsRecently, a steady drumbeat of print reports and network news stories has given national attention to what many in the South and West already knew: that some Americans are arming themselves and organizing into militia companies. Part of a so-called “Patriot Movement” that some number at 5 million members, the militia movement is estimated by press accounts as having somewhere between 100,000 and 300,000 members under arms. Their fear, based on all sorts of rumors about “black helicopters” and foreign forces maneuvering in remote areas, is that the feds, perhaps in conjunction with the United Nations, will seize their guns and establish a “new world order” dictatorship that will take control over their lives. Some are even talking about armed revolt.
Militia members believe their actions are authorized by the U.S. Constitution. They’re silly to worry about the UN, which can’t even handle the Serbs. They’re half right about the Constitution – but the part they have wrong could mean trouble. Militia advocates point to the Constitution’s 2nd Amendment, which addresses the right to keep and bear arms, and to the framers’ general views in favor of an armed citizenry as a check on tyrants. Here they’re on solid ground. There is no question that the framers supported an armed citizenry as a way of preventing tyrannical government.
But the militia groups haven’t thought about how the framers defined tyrannical government. The fact is that though there is plenty to complain about with regard to the expansion of government in the last half-century, just about all of it was with the acquiescence — and often the outright endorsement — of the electorate. That makes a big difference. Although many militia supporters can quote the framers at great length on the right to bear arms, few seem aware that the framers also put a lot of effort into distinguishing between legitimate revolutions — such as the American Revolution — and mere “rebellions” or “insurrections”. The former represented a right, even a duty, of the people. The latter were illegitimate, mere outlawry. The framers developed a rather sophisticated political theory for distinguishing between the two.
The most important aspect of this theory was representation. Those who were not represented lacked the citizen’s duty to loyalty. A government that taxed its citizens without representation was thus no better than an outlaw, and citizens enjoyed the same right of resistance against its officers as they possessed against robbers.
But revolting against taxation without representation is not the same thing as revolting against taxation, period. Like it or not, the government we have now is the government that most citizens at least thought they wanted.
If you want to know what the framers considered grounds for revolt, read the list of complaints about George III in the Declaration of Independence.
The framers understood what a dangerous thing a revolution was. They embarked on their effort with trepidation, adn they would not have been suprised to learn that most revolutions that came after theirs either failed or produced a new tyranny worse than the old. They knew that once let out, the genie of revolution often proves destructive and hard to rebottle. As the militia movement says, the framers did believe in the right to revolution. But they believed that such strong medicine was a last resort against tyranny. Today’s militia members would be better advised to organize a new political party, or to work at increasing voter turnout.
Such counsel may seem bland beside the very real romance of revolution. But those on the political right (from which most, though not all, of the militia movement comes) should know better than to yeild to that romance. Ever since the idolization of Che Guevara, a large chunk of the American left has succumbed to revolutionary romance, while those on the right have focused on workaday politics. The relative fortunes of those two movements over the last 25 years, especially after November’s elections, suggest which approach works.
Having said this, I also have a cautionary note for those who are not part of the militia movement. When large numbers of citizens begin arming against their own government and are ready to believe even the silliest rumors about that government’s willingness to evade the Constitution, there is a problem that goes beyond gullibility. This country’s political establishment should think about what it has done to inspire such distrust — and what it can do to regain the trust and loyalty of many Americans who no longer grant it either.
–
Glenn Harlan Reynolds is an associate professor of law at the University of Tennessee.
