You’d think that’d be enough… But the hits just keep on a’comin… Researchers at my alma mater, Purdue, suggest that the increased land usage necessary to meet the demand for ethanol might disrupt migration patterns for dozens of species of migratory bird:

A new Purdue study suggests the demand for ethanol could fuel the decline of migratory birds by driving the elimination of small woodlots on farms, which many birds use for protection during migration.

…

Over two years, researchers found 76 species of migratory birds using those small wooded landing zones during their flights between Canada and South or Central America.

Dunning and Packett’s study suggests that the woodlots are as important to protect as larger forests.

Those trees are among the limited stopover areas birds have as they migrate over land. Open fields or cities could leave the birds susceptible to predators. The wooded areas also provide food, not just shelter.

But Dunning said there is concern that with the increased demand for ethanol, farmers and others may not see the value of the wooded areas and may cut down the trees to make more room to plant corn there.

“There are strategies for conserving forest for migratory birds, but those strategies emphasize the largest patches of forest,” Dunning said in a news release. “We found that even very small woodlots were filled with migratory birds at times. It makes us believe we also need to conserve the little patches of forest, not just the big ones.”

Sometimes I think it’d be hard to come up with a worse policy than ethanol.

But rest assured, as long as we have a Congress, I’m sure we’ll have plenty of contenders.

Nongqawuse was a teenager and a member of the Xhosa tribe in South Africa.  One day in April or May of 1856, she went down to the river to fetch water.  When she returned, she said that she had encountered the spirits of three of her ancestors who told her that her people must destroy their crops and kill their cattle.  In return, the sun would rise red on February 18, 1857, and the Xhosa ancestors would sweep the British settlers from the land and bring them fresh, healthier cattle.  (Some of the Xhosa cattle had been suffering from a lung ailment, which may or may not have been brought by the British settlers’ cattle.)

Astonishingly, the Xhosa chieftain, Sarhili, agreed to do exactly as this young girl urged.  Over the next year, a frenzy occurred in which it is estimated that between 300,000 and 400,000 cattle were killed and crops destroyed.  Historians sometimes call it the “Great Cattle Killing.”

But on February 18, 1857, the sun rose as usual.  It was not red.  And the Xhosa ancestors did not show.  But the Xhosa people had destroyed their livelihood.  In the resulting famine, the population of the area dropped from 105,000 to less than 27,000.  Cannibalism was reported.  Following Nongqawuse’s advice was a calamity of staggering proportions for the Xhosa people.

Like Nongqawuse, Gore tells us that the sun will soon rise red over the land.  Well, maybe.  But already the models that he relies on have been proven wrong.  The intense period of warming that these models predicted over the past ten years never came to pass.  Yet we are repeatedly told that it’s still coming and that it’s just a little late.  Apparently, we should pay no attention to the fact that the polar ice is expanding again.  Instead, we must put the brakes on our use of energy–the very thing that makes the modern world possible–to avoid antagonizing the spirits of our ancestors, I mean to avoid climate disaster.

The most infuriating aspect of the fear-mongers’ movement is that their solution to climate change is for humanity to adopt an economic system that has brought misery and death nearly every time it has been tried.  From the tropics to the poles,  free markets have brought prosperity, comfort and longevity to the masses.  No matter how well intentioned they are, the fear-mongers threaten to wreck the engine that allows the Earth to support a human population in the billions.

The Earth’s climate is in a state of flux. The notion that humanity should doom itself to privation and famines in a futile attempt to maintain climactic parameters within a set of narrow bands is the height of folly.  If we kill our cattle, we too will starve.

So you can imagine I’m not a big fan of HOA’s, and there’s a little bit of schadenfreude in watching them get their hands slapped… But I still can’t support this (via Ezra Klein — hence calling this “good” — on Waxman-Markey):

Lots of small tweaks were added in the past day or two. And some of them were good! Rep. Dennis Cardoza, for instance, added a smart amendment to discourage neighborhood associations from prohibiting solar panels of aesthetic grounds.

So, they can tell you not to paint your door green, but they can’t stop you from filling your roof with a solar array the size of a tennis court.

I have a coworker facing this issue right now. He lives in Newport Beach, CA, and his HOA has some waterfront homes. One of his neighbors with oceanfront (cliff, not sand) is planning to put solar panels down the face of the cliff to electrically heat his pool. This, of course, is California. There are environmental laws, and the HOA doesn’t want to see this happen either. But being California, they ALREADY have laws that stop the HOA or anyone else (including the Greens) from interfering, because solar energy takes precedence. Now it sounds like this will extend nationwide.

This is one of those issues that gets thorny for libertarians. It comes down to property rights, but the question of what legitimate hindrances can be placed on the owners by HOA’s. After all, an HOA is a contract that a buyer of a house willingly enters into. But it doesn’t seem to me like an issue in which Congress has any right to intervene.

As a renter who is waiting for the complete collapse of the market before I buy a home, I know that I may be faced with a tough decision regarding my purchase based upon whether or not I’ll choose a neighborhood with an HOA, and whether the existence of an HOA is enough to dissuade me from the house we otherwise find desirable. But I know what I don’t want, and that is for Congress to be the one telling my HOA what it can or cannot do.

Congressman Mitchell and I disagree about a lot of things. Abortion, social security and government health care, school choice and education policy, many economic issues, government intervention and regulations in general, and the overall wisdom of his party leadership and the DNC…

However, I have to give the man some credit. He has generally been good on energy policy, and on guns since he came to congress (as a local politician his record on guns was mixed). He was also against the auto industry bailout, against TARP, and especially against the unconstitutional TARP bonus tax. He’s even reasonable on national security issues, and veterans affairs.

I believe he has ably represented the interests of his district within the congress; and bucked the leadership when he thought it was best for the district (if perhaps not bucking them enough outside of issues of direct interest to the district).

Today, he voted against his leadership; choosing to vote for the greater good of Arizona, and of the nation; against the Waxman cap and trade bill.

Unfortunately, we all lost in that vote; but senate leaders are already saying it’s dead on their floor… so we’ll see.

Last week, and again this morning, I urged congressman Mitchell by telephone to both his offices, and by email, to vote against the bill; as it was against the interest of both the district, and the nation. This evening, having found out how he voted, and reading his statement on the issue, I called to thank him.

We may disagree with our elected representatives, we may have voted for the other guy, we may think they are the wrong person to be in that chair; but once they are there, they are OUR representatives. The peoples representatives.

Letting them know how you feel about something, how important it is to you, what benefit or harm it will do you personally; it works. It may not seem so much of the time, but most congressmen really do care about what the people of their districts think; if for no other reason that it improves their chances for reelection.

So participate. Let them know. After all, it can’t hurt; and it just might make a difference.

Via Dave Weigel and Matt Yglesias comes the depressing news that the vast majority of the public doesn’t know what cap and trade” is. And I don’t mean in the sense that they don’t understand the auctions. They have no idea what problem the policy actually refers to.

“Given a choice of three options, just 24 percent of voters can correctly identify the cap-and-trade proposal as something that deals with environmental issues. A slightly higher number (29 percent) believe the proposal has something to do with regulating Wall Street while 17 percent think the term applies to health care reform. A plurality (30 percent) have no idea.”

Sounds like a perfect time to properly articulate it to the American public. And to do this, I’m going to steal borrow an explanation I commonly here on my weekend listening from the Financial Sense News Hour (which I highly recommend you download or subscribe to the podcast — great stuff).

It’s not cap and trade, it’s Cap And Tax. It caps economic growth, and it taxes just about everything.

An AIG report to the Treasury Department last month warned that if the government didn’t come to its rescue again, its collapse would trigger a “chain reaction of enormous proportion” that would “potentially bankrupt or bring down the entire system” and make it impossible for AIG to repay the billions it already owed the U.S. government.

Four days later, AIG was given $30 billion in federal aid on top of the $130 billion it had already received.

Read the AIG Report to the Treasury Department here.

A draft of the report, obtained by ABC News, was marked “strictly confidential.” It said, “The failure of AIG would cause turmoil in the U.S. economy and global markets and have multiple and potentially catastrophic unforeseen consequences.”

The draft was dated Feb. 26. On March 2, the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve system announced that AIG, which lost $61.7 billion in the fourth quarter of 2008, would receive $30 billion in new government help.

AIG warns in its report of the “systemic risk” that a potential collapse posed. It describes a “systemic risk” as one that “could potentially bankrupt or bring down the entire system or market.

Considering how easy it is to come with $30 billion of other people’s money, I thought I’d try the same approach.  Of course, I’m not as greedy as AIG — I only need a million bucks to stimulate the parts of the economy in which I’m interested.

I also think my request deserves special consideration for two reasons.  The first is that it was very difficult to write on toilet paper with a magic marker.  Have you ever tried it?

The more important reason is that I only used four squares of singly-ply toilet paper for my request.  Not only are my sheets smaller than those used by AIG, but the total cost to the taxpayer will only be $250,000 per sheet.  Considering that I’m saving everyone $1,428,321,428.57 per sheet as well as saving the rain forest, I’m certain my request won’t be denied.

Instead of TARP funds, perhaps we could call them CRAP funds, instituting a new Crappy and Reckless Assets Program.  For a few extra trillion dollars,  I could also be appointed the Crap Czar, so I can mismanage toxic assets as well as the fine folks in D.C.

The bottom line is that if I don’t get the money, millions of people will lose their jobs, it will impact countries around the world and every bank in America will go under.  And, as evidenced by my request for stimulus largesse, it’s obvious that I’m way too big to fail.

A tip of the hat to Andrew Sullivan.

The national obsession with soft paper has driven the growth of brands like Cottonelle Ultra, Quilted Northern Ultra and Charmin Ultra — which in 2008 alone increased its sales by 40 percent in some markets, according to Information Resources, Inc., a marketing research firm.

But fluffiness comes at a price: millions of trees harvested in North America and in Latin American countries, including some percentage of trees from rare old-growth forests in Canada. Although toilet tissue can be made at similar cost from recycled material, it is the fiber taken from standing trees that help give it that plush feel, and most large manufacturers rely on them. [snip]

The country’s soft-tissue habit — call it the Charmin effect — has not escaped the notice of environmentalists, who are increasingly making toilet tissue manufacturers the targets of campaigns. Greenpeace on Monday for the first time issued a national guide for American consumers that rates toilet tissue brands on their environmental soundness. With the recession pushing the price for recycled paper down and Americans showing more willingness to repurpose everything from clothing to tires, environmental groups want more people to switch to recycled toilet tissue.

“No forest of any kind should be used to make toilet paper,” said Dr. Allen Hershkowitz, a senior scientist and waste expert with the Natural Resource Defense Council.

There is an upside in all of this, however. Greenpeace has published a guide which will probably serve consumers actually looking for more cush for the tush. It will also help those who don’t like a raw, red nose when suffering from a cold or allergies, too. All the reader has to do is pick a product from Greenpeace’s “to be avoided” list.

Key line: “So, why don’t we ever talk about the suns contribution to global warming? …Well, because we can’t regulate it, tax it, or make it feel guilty for what it’s doing“.

Got it in one there friend.

There’s no profit, political gain, or power to be grabbed from acknowledging the real causes, and real effects of whatever global warming there actually is. So, the interested parties simply ignore all that, shout down anyone who disagrees with them, and go about seizing as much power as they can, in a disorderly fashion.

From “What You Oughta Know“, a website with videos explaining an assortment of general, and sometimes esoteric knowledge.

Oh and here are the links he mentioned in the video:

Pacific Research Institute:
the documentary, more information

Reid A. Bryson – scroll down for ice cap article

Solar Activity: A dominant factor in climate dynamics – scroll down read sections in blue

BBC’s The Great Global Warming Swindle

Other possible causes for global warming

Oh and just for fun, here’s the same sites take on “Liberals vs. Conservatives“… which is really a pretty solid explanation of the foundations of minarchist positions:

And a great take on the bailout:

“Because there is no disaster that immediate, decisive, wrong action cannot make worse”

WASHINGTON — The capital flew into a bit of a tizzy when, on his first full day in the White House, President Obama was photographed in the Oval Office without his suit jacket. There was, however, a logical explanation: Mr. Obama, who hates the cold, had cranked up the thermostat.

“He’s from Hawaii, O.K.?” said Mr. Obama’s senior adviser, David Axelrod, who occupies the small but strategically located office next door to his boss. “He likes it warm. You could grow orchids in there.”

Does anyone remember what Obama said back in May ?

Pitching his message to Oregon’s environmentally-conscious voters, Obama called on the United States to “lead by example” on global warming, and develop new technologies at home which could be exported to developing countries.

“We can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times … and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK,” Obama said.

“That’s not leadership. That’s not going to happen,” he added.

Apparently, though, wearing a sweater and turning down the heat is just for the little people.

And, oh yeah, Obama may have been born in Hawaii, but he spent the last several decades in Chicago. He should be used to the cold by now.

Cross-posed from Below The Beltway

I had remembered learning, years ago, that it had something to do with making life easier on farmers. Which I never understood, because farmers live far more based on the earth’s clock than man’s. But even so, I never quite understood why the rest of us would be stuck going along with it, when we no longer live an in agriculture-dominated society. Then, they changed the deal, making the duration of DST shorter in the hopes of being more “green”.

It turns out, though, that DST is actually rather pointless AND it is an energy-waster.

The Daylight Savings idea was one of Ben Franklin’s worst. He thought we’d all save candles if, in the summer, we started the day earlier on the clock, leaving more sunshine for the evening.

Politicians made it official: Move the clock one hour forward in the summer, to hoodwink people to get up earlier and leave more daylight hours for after work.

…

But now it turns out that Daylight Savings Time doesn’t save energy. Matthew J. Kotchen and Laura E. Grant, writing in the New York Times, report on their recent study in Indiana, where implementation of Daylight Savings has been county-by-county, a perfect statistical testing ground.

They found that Daylight Savings cost one percent extra. Franklin didn’t figure on morning heaters and daytime air conditioning.

I lived in Indiana before DST was in effect there, while I attended Purdue. Half the year, I would be on the same time as my parents in Illinois, and half the year I’d be an hour ahead of them. While it was largely an annoyance, it wasn’t that big of a deal. I often chided my hoosier friends* about the residents of their state simply being incapable to comprehend DST and change their clocks.

But — and believe me, it pains me to say it — maybe Indiana was right? Could it be finally time to put an end to DST once and for all?

UPDATE 10:30 PM: Okay, folks… Mea culpa. I said I never quite understood the whole deal about DST, and then I proved myself completely correct. I’m still not a big fan of it, but thanks for pointing out my mistakes.

* For those of you not from the Midwest, you may not understand why those of us from the Chicago area would make fun of Indiana. And for those of you in Indiana, no offense is intended. But Chicagoans speak about Indiana like hoosiers speak about Kentucky… Not kindly.

This is incorrect. Rather, the progressives who support nationalization are being very short-sighted and are threatening to return society back to feudalism and are threatening to destroy the development of new technologies, technologies that will be vital to improving our standard of living while reducing the amount of pollution and natural resources needed to maintain such comfort. This not hyperbole but rather simple fact.

The problem, which has plagued all fascist and socialist economies throughout history, is that nationalization destroys the ability of the economy to rationally allocate capital goods and invest in the future. It is this incapability that is behind the phenomenon where communist countries seem to become mired in the past with stagnant technology, bare shelves in shops and factories that routinely fail to meet production quotas.

If asked, a manager of a factory in a communist country will explain that his inability to meet quotas arises from some combination of three factors:

1) Lack of tools or equipment that is in poor shape.

2) Insufficient labor.

3) Lack of inputs such as raw materials or semi-finished goods.

4) Sabotage.

We can set aside aside sabotage, which should equally affect capitalist economies (since according to socialists, they should have a larger share of disgruntled or exploited workers).

It is safe to concluded that any failure of centrally planned economies to meet consumer demand should be primarily due to the impact of the first three reasons. As we shall see, like electricity and magnetism, these three factors are really the manifestation of a fundamental failing of centrally planned economies, one which progressives ignore at their peril.

Under central planning, rational economic calculation becomes nearly impossible. It is impossible for a manager to calculate whether one process or another is ‘better’. Complex processes become unwieldy, and slowly, as capital equipment deteriorates, the economy grinds to a halt.

Economic Calculation: Chapter 2

The explanation as to why this occurs may be found in a paper written by the economist Ludwig von Mises in 1920 titled, Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth.  In this post, I will summarize some of his arguments.  I highly recommend that everyone who is curious read the original paper.  For a more in-depth analysis of how prices are used in economic production, I strongly recommend Chapters 4 – 7 of Murray Rothbard’s Man Economy and State.

In a free market, most economic activity consists of a cycle of a person or firm acquiring the inputs for some form of production, using them to make something or provide some service, and consuming or exchaning the result of the production to others.  In acquiring the inputs, and disposing of the produced goods or services, the producers typically engage in indirect exchange, trading money for the inputs, and selling their product for money.  The use of money trades for inputs and outputs gives rise to prices.  These prices play a critical role in allocating resources and promoting investment.

Everything economic activity that people perform is intended by the actor to satisfy some need.  The higher the value that individuals assign a particular need, the higher the price they are willing to pay for the goods they must consume to satisfy the need.  This attracts producers who wish to manufacture these consumption goods  and sell them.  These producers must acquire the inputs from which these consumption goods will be manufactured.  The prices that these 1st order producers are willing to pay for the inputs they desire will be impacted by the prices that they expect for their product. The producers who intend to produce consumption goods that are in high demand will be willing to bid higher prices for the inputs they desire.  There may be producers who wish to produce goods that are not as highly demanded.  This latter good cannot profitably employ the inputs whose prices were bid up by the former group of producers.  They will look for substitute inputs. If continued indefinitely in the absence of technological change, this process will lead to a sort of equilibrium where the inputs available to producers are being used to support the satisfaction of the highest priority needs as expressed by individuals.  And this process is repeated for higher order goods: the inputs needed to produce the goods that are inputs to lower order processes.  When one considers that the same good can be simultaneously useful in processes that are lower order or even intended for consumption and higher order processes.  For example, stainless steel can be desired by a man who wants to make cutlery, a person who intends to use it to make reactors for a pharmaceutical plant, who wants to produce artworks etc.

The production matrix required to produce three consumer goods. Note that the same high order good (green) is required to produce the three goods. In the absence of a price system, the planner has to guess when and how much of various goods he must produce - an impossible task for an economy consisting of millions of goods and people.

The existence of prices mediates between the wide range of uses the goods can be put to.  The prices also inform investors, advising them of weaknesses or shortages in the matrix of production.  It informs them of whether a proposed new business or factory will be socially useful or a waste of resources.  In a free market, shortages are signaled by high prices, and activities that will satisfy the most urgent of needs are rewarded by high profits.  Moreover, while no individual or group of people can simultaneously hold in their heads all the information needed to rationally allocate a complex basket of goods to their optimal uses, the price system allows a single individual to rationally allocate the goods that he or she controls trading them.

When an industry is nationalized, these price signals are at a minimum distorted, and – in extreme cases – can even be lost entirely.

A nationalized industry no longer needs to worry about prices.  The state commandeers resources and awards them to the nationalized industry.  It decrees the prices at which suppliers must sell goods to the industry and issues quotas as to how much they will have to supply.  It decrees the quantities and price of the produced goods.  It makes production decisions politically, ignoring the unmet needs in greater demand to satisfy lower priority needs.  If only one industry is nationalized, but the rest of the economy remains free, the managers of the nationalized firm may still have access to prices as set by the economic activity of the free sectors with which they deal.  However, the more thorough the nationalization, the less dependable the prices are, and the less information managers of the nationalized industry have available to them when deciding how to allocate production.

This is the reason why shortages appear.  A shortage in a free market leads temporarily to higher prices, which encourages other producers to enter into the market and spurs existing producers to increase production in an attempt to capitalize on those prices. When a shortage does not result in a higher price, it takes the instructions of a central planning board to order the producers to increase production.  In the absence of such orders, there will be no meaningful attempt to increase production to mitigate the shortage.

Even if the planners do give the orders, it is much less likely that the orders will be obeyed.  All actions come at a price to the actor.  A factory manager who decides to extend the factory’s hours of operation by four hours a day must spend time making arrangements for this change.  He must monitor the extra hours of work.  In order to do this, he sacrifices leisure time.  The laborer who works harder to increase production must sacrifice something to achieve that extra burst of effort (a person will not limit their work voluntarily if they would value harder work more).  This phenomenon is called the disutility of labor. The disutility of labor acts as a brake on economic activity.  In the absence of a reward for extra effort, people will not forego other uses for their time.

Immediately after nationalization, the workers and managers can continue executing the activities they did prior to the nationalization.  However, the world is not static.  Peoples’ needs change. New sources of raw materials are discovered and old sources dry up.  In a free market, these changes would result in price changes that would signal to producers and consumers which goods were more available and which were more scarce, pointing the way to more efficient allocation of the available resources to their current needs.

In the absence of prices, these changes would be manifest themselves with shortages and gluts.  One would see factories producing unwanted goods that filled up warehouses, while goods that were desired would go unproduced.  We would see workers assigned not to the factories that would make the most profitable use of them, but to factories that used them less profitably.   The result would be shortages in labor in some industries, while other industries were so well staffed that they were assigning people make work.

This misallocation of labor and production does not explain the fact that heavily nationalized economies seem to have very few gluts and a great deal of shortages.  Under the above model we should be seeing the shelves of markets with too much milk and too little meat, instead of bare store shelves.  Why should nationalization, in practice, be associated with shortages and not surpluses?

In the absence of a price system, there is no way to rigorously determine if a new venture will be usefully productive or not.  There is no way to rational way to calculate whether or not a new idea for producing existing goods is a good idea.  Nor is there any way to identify whether a new class of goods is worth producing.  There is no way to rationally decide when to pause production to replace or upgrade equipment.  There is little incentive to invent or make improvements.  People who do come up with good ideas have little incentive to put them into practice.  In many cases they lack the means to do it – they lack access the the planners who decide what it to be done.

This is why a nationalized industry typically will stagnate, with necessary improvements not being made and innovations being largely absent.  Without the information conveyed by present prices, it becomes impossible for managers to invest wisely in preparation for the future.  A nationalized industry will typically struggle to maintain production – using factories that are aging and using methods that are not evolving with time – to produce goods that are often of no better quality than those produced when the industry was nationalized.

What innovation that does take place is the innovation recommended by the central planners.  The central planners typically have only a rudimentary sense of the impact of the innovation they want to see made.  they have trouble judging how much effort to allocate to R&D, and how much to maintain their capital stock.  The central planners can foster innovation or make improvements – as has happened with the U.S. and Russian space programs.  But they will neglect vast areas under their purview.   The lack of incentives to preserve the value of capital goods such as land is also the reason why in nationalized economies there is a high degree of environmental degradation.

And, being human, the central planners will make their decisions based on what profits them personally.  A manager who identifies a method to manufacture the same number of cars with one quarter the employees would in a free market profit hansdomely by so cutting his manfuacturing costs.  A manager who would lose status and take a pay cut for supervising fewer people would not make adopt such a plan.  In fact, he might torpedo attempts to adopt such a plan in order to preserve his empire.

Thus we see why central planning is associated with stagnation, inefficiency and privation.  The lack of innovation and declines in production inevitably lead to poverty.

If we apply this to the auto industry, it would not be surprising to see car companies producing first generation hybrid vehicles that require massive subsidies while not making any effort to produce second or third generation cars that would be more environmentally sound and easier to maintain.  Rather than trying to attract customers with improvements in the product, they will attempt to placate the oversight boards appointed by the U.S. congress.  Consumers will choose to purchase vehicles from competing companies who are making decisions independently of the planning board.  Naturally the planners will call for and be granted legislation that handicaps these competitors or forces people to purchase vehicles from the car companies that are under oversight.

The result is inevitable,  a smaller selection of more shoddily built and undesirable vehicles that only meet the most basic of needs.

But let’s step back a moment. There’s another question to be had. Let’s posit that global warming is occurring but isn’t humanity’s fault. How do we deal with it?

So… forget about AGW. If the oceans were to rise a meter for natural reasons, how would people respond? If ocean currents and wind patterns changed to bring lasting drought to Western Europe, what would Europeans do about it? If glaciers covered the NFC North as they did just 20,000 years ago, would we just surrender that territory without a fight? What kind of a fight would be feasible or even possible?

The only thing constant about climate is that it’s changing. Irrespective of the cause, is there any debate that can be had about how to deal with such change? I know my position (economic growth will make us better able to adapt and deal with it than economic restriction), but what do you folks think?

It is a unique moment for the idea of national service. You have two presidential candidates who believe deeply in service and who have made it part of their core message to voters. You have millions of Americans who are yearning to be more involved in the world and in their communities. You have corporations and businesses that are making civic engagement a key part of their mission.

If “millions of Americans” wish to be “more involved” in service to others and “their communities” what’s stopping them? Do we really need a President McCain or President Obama to force “inspire” these Americans to serve their fellow Americans? Is their really a “volunteer” deficit?

In Stengel’s original article on this subject A Time to Serve he seems to suggest the opposite:

Polls show that while confidence in our democracy and our government is near an all-time low, volunteerism and civic participation since the ’70s are near all-time highs. Political scientists are perplexed about this. If confidence is so low, why would people bother volunteering? The explanation is pretty simple. People, especially young people, think the government and the public sphere are broken, but they feel they can personally make a difference through community service.

I fail to see the problem here. If people do not have confidence in the government, this is a very good thing*! Ordinary Americans are helping others on their own volition, not because some politician told them to do so.

Despite this seemingly positive news, this isn’t enough for Stengel:

[T]he way to keep the Republic — is universal national service. No, not mandatory or compulsory service but service that is in our enlightened self-interest as a nation. We are at a historic junction; with the first open presidential election in more than a half-century, it is time for the next President to mine the desire that is out there for serving and create a program for universal national service that will be his — or her — legacy for decades to come. It is the simple but compelling idea that devoting a year or more to national service, whether military or civilian, should become a countrywide rite of passage, the common expectation and widespread experience of virtually every young American.

Am I missing something here? How does a president “persuade” people who otherwise would not be inclined to national service without using some form of coercion? Toward the end of the article, Stengel offers a 10-point plan on how the next president should implement a national service agenda:

1. Create a National-Service Baby Bond (a.k.a. forced wealth distribution)

2. Make National Service a Cabinet-Level Department (a.k.a. taking money from citizens to pay for another Bureaucracy)

3. Expand Existing National-Service Programs Like AmeriCorps and the National Senior Volunteer Corps

4. Create an Education Corps

5. Institute a Summer of Service (a.k.a. teenagers serving the government to learn that all great things come from government)

6. Build a Health Corps (a.k.a. “volunteers” helping low income people access government healthcare programs which they are not already taking advantage of such as SCHIP)

7. Launch a Green Corps (similar to FDR’s Civilian Conservation Corps but would improve infrastructure and combat climate change).

8. Recruit a Rapid-Response Reserve Corps (a.k.a. volunteers doing the job the National Guard traditionally does in the wake of natural disasters).

9. Start a National-Service Academy (a.k.a. a school to train government workers)

10. Create a Baby-Boomer Education Bond (a.k.a. forced wealth distribution).

In one way or another, every one of these proposals requires government to use force**. While this form of coercion is not as visible as directly “drafting” people into government service, make no mistake, coercion is still very much part of the equation.

To Time’s credit, the magazine did offer a counterpoint to Stengel’s article. Michael Kinsley calls B.S. on this whole notion of national service (particularly on the part of young people):

One of the comforts of middle age — a stage that the editor of TIME and I have both reached — is that you can start making demands on young people, safe in the knowledge that they won’t apply to you. Having safely escaped the Vietnam era draft ourselves, we are overcome by the feeling that the next generation should not be so lucky. Many of these young folks are volunteering for socially beneficial work, and that’s good. But it’s not good enough. “Volunteerism” is so wonderful that every young person should have to do it.

[…]

I’m perfectly prepared to believe that today’s young people are deplorable specimens, ignorant and ungrateful and in desperate need of discipline. Or I am also prepared to believe that they are about to burst with idealism like a piñata and only await somebody with a giant pin. But they aren’t the only ones who could use a lesson about social obligation. What about grownups? Grownups, who still have some hope of collecting Social Security and Medicare before they go broke, who have enjoyed the explosion in house prices that make the prospect of home ownership so dim for the next generation; who allowed the government to run up a gargantuan national debt, were miraculously bailed out of that, and immediately allowed it to be run up a second time; who may well have gone to college when tuition was cheap and you didn’t automatically graduate burdened by student loans. We are not in much of a position to start dreaming up lessons in social obligation for the kids.

As I pointed out in my last post, many people are in favor of “service” and “sacrifice” if it is being done by someone else. Kinsley also points out that the answer to serving the needs of others is good old fashioned Capitalism!***

Let’s be honest. If you really want to “serve your country/community/world,” again I ask you: What’s stopping you? Your level of service has not one thing to do with who occupies the White House at any given time.

*Though I am not optimistic that this is the case. It doesn’t seem to matter how many problems the government creates, these same people likely are looking to government to solve these problems. The very fact that John McCain and Barack Obama are the leading candidates to be the next POTUS seems to bear this out.

**This will be the subject of a future post. Anytime the government does something it does one of three things: (1) Applies force to make individuals respond in a certain way, (2) Removes force to allow individuals to do as s/he wishes, or (3) Keeps the same level of force in place.

***Where have we heard that before? Its good to see that there are MSM pundits who still understand Adam Smith’s concept of the “Invisible Hand.”

From the Governator on down, nanny statists in California are more than willing to use force to make your life more expensive, and are quite happy to gloat about it the whole while:

Today, the California Building Standards Commission announced the unanimous adoption of the nation’s first statewide “green” building code. The code is a direct result of the Governor’s direction to the Commission and will lead to improved energy efficiency and reduced water consumption in all new construction throughout the state, while also reducing the carbon footprint of every new structure in California.

Unanimous? There’s nobody willing to step up and say “maybe we should let individuals decide how their houses should be built”? You can argue day in and day out whether building codes for safety purposes are a legitimate form of government coercion, but this is just nanny-state do-gooderism. It’s the logical next step to a government that won’t allow any market forces the freedom to develop the energy people want to use, so simply requires that they use less. Allowing market forces to price water, for example, might suggest to people that they should save water for their own sake. But government regulation artificially keeping water prices low means, of course, that they must either ration water, mandate regulation to reduce use through the building code, or both. Throwing bad government after bad? I’d say so.

“Once again California is leading the nation and the world in emissions reductions and finding new ways to expand our climate change efforts,” said Commission Chair Rosario Marin.

Sometimes being first is a good thing. Sometimes it’s not. Something tells me that increasing housing prices in a place like California, already far too expensive with other taxes and regulations (and market forces) for the average person to survive comfortably, will not end up helping the state.

“The commission should be commended for bringing everyone to the table including representatives of the construction and building trades industry, environmental groups and labor organizations, and achieving something no other state has been able to.”

“We railroaded this through in a bipartisan manner. Therefore it’s obvious that it’s futile to resist.”

The new California Green Building Standards Code goes well beyond the current building standards. These new statewide standards will result in significant improvements in water usage for both commercial and residential plumbing fixtures and target a 50 percent landscape water conservation reduction.

Plumbing fixtures? Better buy a plunger. Maybe even an auger when they get through with your house. Oh, and I hope you like Xeriscapes, because you’re going to see a lot more of them. (Again, this is a result of government artificially pricing water too low, and then enacting use restrictions that natural market forces could already have arranged).

They also push builders to reduce energy use of their structures by 15 percent more than today’s current standards.

Again, in many ways this is a good thing. But it’s not something that most people had deemed necessary to pay for in the past, or it wouldn’t need to be regulated.

They also push builders to reduce energy use of their structures by 15 percent more than today’s current standards.

I guess they thought this was really important to point out, since they repeated the sentence in the press release. Or perhaps they are just experts on “being green”, and not so much into the whole proofreading thing…

The new standards declare the minimum California will accept in environmentally friendly design – local jurisdictions and builders who wish to do more are applauded.

[clap clap clap]Yay, Berkeley! You go girl![/clap clap clap]

In addition to the new codes adopted today, Governor Schwarzenegger’s Green Building Initiative (Executive Order S-20-04) (http://gov.ca.gov/executive-order/3360/) directs state agencies to reduce energy use at state-owned buildings 20 percent by 2015, while also reducing the impact state buildings have on climate change.

Please tell me they’re going to do this by reducing quantity of state buildings and number of state employees by this much!

His executive order directs that new state construction and major renovation projects should meet a minimum of the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Silver certification in order to save energy, conserve water, divert waste from landfills and cut greenhouse gas emissions. To date, 13 state buildings have achieved LEED certification.

I guess that’s the end of major renovation projects to state buildings. Oh, wait, they’re spending our money? Never mind.

And wow, 13 whole buildings so far? What size bucket does that drop fall into?

According to the U.S. Green Building Council, buildings nationwide account for 70 percent of electricity consumption, 39 percent of energy usage, 12 percent of potable water consumption, 40 percent of raw materials usage, 30 percent of waste output (136 million tons annually), and produce 39 percent of associated greenhouse gases (CO2).

I thought I learned from the NRA that buildings don’t waste energy, people do. Up next, Washington DC outlaws private ownership of buildings!

California’s new building standards will result in increased water and energy savings through a combination of more efficient appliances, use of efficient landscapes and more efficient building design and operation.

Again, I’m sure they’re not doing anything to increase the efficiency of government.

The code also encourages the use of recycled materials in carpets and building materials, and identifies various site improvements including parking for hybrid vehicles and better storm water plans.

Hey, so you get primo parking for your 20 mpg Chevy Tahoe Hybrid, while the guy with the much more environmentally-friendly 36 mpg Honda Civic languishes at the back of the lot. I’ll bet he produces a lot less smug, too.

Additionally, the new code contains standards for single-family homes, health facilities and commercial buildings. The code is composed of optional standards that will become mandatory in the 2010 edition of the code. This adjustment period will allow for industry and local enforcement agencies to prepare for, and comply with, the new green building standards.

This is why the construction industry went along… Anyone with half a brain will be pushing for their construction to be complete by 2010! After all, what California really needs is MORE real estate being developed, because we don’t have quite enough of a surplus now!

Moving forward after 2010, the California Green Building Standards Code will be updated on an annual basis to ensure that the latest technology and methods of construction have been incorporated to always maintain a high level of standards.

And here’s the giveaway to lobbyists. Just think how much money is going to be spent at the state capital ensuring that pet technologies get implemented into the code. Oh, and I’m sure regulations that change yearly will require a lot more inspectors and training, another fun way to spend taxpayer money. Sacramento should be a boom town over the next few years.

For more than 20 years, the California Building Standards Commission has established California as an international leader in areas such as energy conservation, water conservation and seismic strengthening—resulting in some of the most efficient and sustainable buildings in the world.

Ahh, the final buzzword. “Sustainable.” As long as they keep taxes and regulation just shy of killing the goose that laid the golden egg, Sacramento’s economy should remain sustainable. But just imagine if the local government was trying to pull this sort of shit in a state without beautiful scenery and picturesque beaches… They’d call it Detroit.

* Yes, I realize this measure is largely perpetrated by the forces of environmentalism, not about the housing crisis. But by artificially reducing the supply of homes, they may artificially raise the cost of housing. That’s very good for property taxes.

** Energy-efficiency is a money-saver in the long term. But apparently some of the trade-offs they’re proposing aren’t worthwhile, or consumers would already be demanding them. Of course, with heavily regulated water and electricity, it’s mainly due to artificially low prices that they need to mandate lower usage, so market forces aren’t being allowed to work at all.

One main problem here. Americans don’t use much diesel. So they’re subsidizing foreign, not domestic, use. In fact, they’re simply sending money for non-American-produced diesel that won’t be consumed on American soil to foreign fuel companies:

The problem began when Sen. Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa), the friend of farmers, inserted the so-called “Blenders’ Credit” into the Jobs Act of 2004. The idea was to increase biofuels production and consumption in the U.S., as biofuels were thought to be environmentally friendly and a viable alternative to fossil fuels. The credit provides $1 for each gallon of biodiesel that is mixed with regular diesel in the United States. The provision has not dramatically increased domestic consumption, but it has increased production and exports to Europe’s thriving and subsidized diesel markets.

Under World Trade Organization rules, the U.S. government cannot extend the credit only to American companies or to fuels produced in America. Thus, foreign companies are eligible whenever they bring their biodiesel stateside for mixing. But the limited American market for the fuel has given birth to an unintended consequence known as “Splash and Dash.”

Rep. John Shadegg (R., Ariz.) demonstrated the concept’s simplicity last week by referring to an article that received little attention when it was published last year. It works like this: A foreign tanker carrying 9 million gallons of biodiesel from Brazil or Malaysia sails to an American port. While it waits, 9,000 gallons of American diesel is added — that’s right, a .1 percent blend — so as to earn the blender a $9 million tax credit. The tanker heads to Europe, where diesel cars are far more common and biodiesel is further subsidized.

In some cases, tankers have reportedly made round trips from Europe to the U.S. simply to collect the subsidy. Thus we “import” and “export” the same fuel from and to the same country.

“Just think of it,” said Shadegg. “If I produce biodiesel anywhere in the world where the cost of shipping it to the United States before shipping it to the end consumer is less than a dollar a gallon, then I’m going to take advantage of this subsidy.”

(Emphasis added).

Does lowering the cost of fuel for Europeans really seem like a great use of our tax dollars (and those of our children/grandchildren, since we’re borrowing the money anyway)? Now, you’d think that this program would be universally opposed in the United States…

But you’d be wrong:

Last week, Shadegg proposed a bill (H.R. 5713) to end “Splash and Dash” by limiting the blenders’ tax credit to biodiesel that is actually consumed in the United States. But domestic producers are already upset by this idea: Although they resent foreign firms’ use of “Splash and Dash” to take away their competitive advantage, they still want their subsidy for the biodiesel they export to Europe. Grassley, the original author of the tax credit, wants to make Splash and Dash less profitable but continue those subsidies for American exporters that have so angered the Europeans.

Of course oil producers don’t worry that much about ending the subsidy to foreigners. While an infintesimal proportion of their tax dollars support the foreign subsidy, a far greater amount of our tax dollars go right into their own pockets.

But hey, I’m sure if we just elect Obama/McCain/Barr/Cthulhu, he’ll solve all these problems and “reform” the government!