Paul M. Jones

Why do you say that America’s political system is degenerating into crony capitalism?

There is not a well-understood distinction between being pro-business and being pro-market. Businessmen like free markets until they get into a market; once they are in it they want to block entry to others. Pro-marketeers want free markets at all times. The more conservative pro-marketeers are fearful of criticising business, because they assume they will be seen as criticising the free market. But we need to stand up and criticise business when business is not helping the cause of free markets.

In what way?

Take lobbying. Lobbying may once have been reactive but now it’s proactive--businessmen use it to shape policy and ask for tax advantages. This is corruptive of democracy.

Examples, please.

Companies with a lot of money abroad sponsored a bill in 2004/5 that allowed them to repatriate their profits at a low tax rate. Thus $1 produced $220 of tax savings. The Bush-approved drug and Medicare act was a huge bonanza for the drug industry. Their market value increased by several billion dollars when this was announced. I could continue.

I am, of course, pro-markets. (Emphasis in original.) Via Quick study: Luigi Zingales on crony capitalism: When business and government are bedfellows | The Economist.

Regarding oil production in Venezuela, where the state owns the facilities:

While no system of economic organisation will be immune to getting the incentives and deterrents wrong (see Macondo), socialist systems are particularly bad at it, as is reflected in a long, ignoble list of terrible events. Operations in socialist economies are especially compromised by competing priorities made explicit to Operations staff by politicized management. In capitalist economies, organisations thrive by producing benefits for a diverse group of stakeholders. If an Operations person sees a corroded flange and intervenes to shut down production and make the situation safe, they can expect to be recognised and rewarded by private organisations in a capitalist system. In contrast, in socialist economies, there is a single stakeholder – the state – and the incentives are mal-adjusted by highly politicized filters. If the same worker, with the same expertise, is in the same situation with a corroded flange in a socialist economy, they will need to very carefully think whether they will be rewarded for intervening or punished for sabotaging production for the people.

All emphasis mine. (I think this is the first time I've quoted from an article *comment*.) Via Socialism Kills, Venezuela Edition | Via Meadia.

A man was killed and at least 16 others were shot across the city Saturday evening and this morning, continuing a streak of violence that has left dozens wounded in recent days.

In the fatal shooting, a 28-year-old man was found shot multiple times, including in the chest, inside an SUV parked near the corner of 91st Street and South East End Avenue in the Calumet Heights neighborhood on the South Side at about 3 a.m., police said.

The man was identified as Rashad Pratt, 28, of the 9000 block of South Ridgeland Ave., according to the Cook County medical examiner's office. He was declared dead on the scene after paramedics were unable to revive him, authorities said.

Additional details weren't available as district officers and Area South detectives remained on the scene this morning.

At least five people have been shot in the city since 4 a.m., police said:

Tell me again how gun control helps protect the law-abiding citizen? Via 1 dead, 16 wounded in shootings across the city - chicagotribune.com.

Officer Brian Harrision was escorting a funeral procession Friday when he pulled Temple over and wrote him a ticket for breaking into the procession.  According to Phares, that's when Temple attacked Harrison.  Police say Perry Stevens was walking outside of the Auto Zone on Greenwell Springs Road when he heard Harrison yelling for help.  Harrison was reportedly on his back with Temple on top of him.  That's when Stevens went to his car and grabbed his .45 caliber pistol. 

According to Col. Greg Phares, "[Mr. Stevens] orders Mr. Temple to stop and get off the officer.  The verbal commands are ignored and Mr. Stevens fires four shots, all of which struck Mr. Temple."

Perry Stevens fired four shots into Temple's torso.  Officer Harrison had already fired one shot into Temple's abdomen.  With Temple still struggling with the officer, Perry continued to advance toward the scuffle.

"He again orders Mr. Temple to stop what he was doing and get off the officer.  Those commands are ignored and he fires a fifth shot and that hits his head.  The incident is over with, and as you know, Mr. Temple is dead."

Police are calling the shooting death justified.  Perry Stevens has a permit to carry a concealed weapon.

via Bystander Fired Deadly Shot, Not Officer - WAFB 9 News Baton Rouge, Louisiana News, Weather, Sports.

The effort to put a man on the moon was everything the counterculture 60s repudiated: technology, military skill, national pride, American optimism, the sense that the Frontier has to be conquered so we can find a new one, and go there too. Neil Armstrong offered in jest to be the first man to walk on Mars, as well. Buzz Aldrin has been pushing  a Mars jaunt for years. If the space program had kept up its pace and sent a team to Mars in the 90s, of course they wouldn’t have sent Neil and Buzz, but if they had, you can imagine Neil Armstrong holding the door for his co-pilot. I’ve had mine. You first.

He seemed like that sort of man.

Emphasis in original. Via How to Step Away - Ricochet.com.

Nailing someone for using the term ‘legitimate rape’ when there is a distinct difference between a forced, violent, random, stranger-perpetrated rape and one in which the involved woman is sometimes not even sure herself whether or not a rape occurred is pure political gamesmanship.  And it’s a confusion which has been created through the use of fuzzy terminology that is for some reason off limits for discussion.

(As a pre-emptive note: Those of you who know me know I care little for the Republican party, and it is both stupid *and* wrong to suspect me of sympathizing with actual violent offenders, and additionally so to accuse me of wanting to disparage or deny the rights of any person to control over his or her own body. So spare me any faux outrage. Comments will be policed accordingly.) Via A Legitimate Question « Gucci Little Piggy.

Look, if you’ve been unsuccessful, you didn’t get there on your own. If you were unsuccessful at opening or operating a small business, some government official along the line probably contributed to your failure.  There was an overzealous civil servant somewhere who might have stood in your way with unreasonable regulations that are part of our American system of anti-business red tape that allowed you to not thrive.  Taxpayers invested in roads and bridges, but you might have faced city council members who wouldn’t allow you to use them.  If you’ve been forced to close a business – it’s often the case that you didn’t do that on your own.  Somebody else made that business closing happen or prevented it from opening in the first place. You can thank the bureaucratic tyrants of the nanny state.

via CARPE DIEM: Great Moments in Government Regulation: How City Regulations Killed a Dream in Chattanooga.

It's not as if the multitude of disparate opinions and diverse (often mutually exclusive) views about sword fighting out there are all somehow a small part of a larger truth or even anywhere near an emerging consensus. It's more like they represent a near infinite collection of ignorance, faulty cliches, erroneous assumptions, and sheer fantasy mixed with a little actual wisdom.

...

Edged weapons are not pretend lightsabers. They're not springy toys or padded sticks. They were lethal tools for dealing death and violence. For such skills, very often the truth is not "somewhere in between" differing views but is a matter of either being right or wrong on the essentials. For in life or death combat, doing something wrong will get you killed. History is often about the big picture, but ultimately insight into it comes down to knowing what individuals actually did. And the reality of sword fighting is far richer and far more fascinating than our much beloved modern fantasy imagines. That's why sword fighting is not what you believe it is.

Emphasis mine; it's a sentiment I've been trying to put into words (reagrding other topics) for a while now. The whole article is fascinating. Via Swordfighting: Not What You Think It Is.

Border Patrol agents smuggling weed and coke. Immigration agents forging documents and robbing drug dealers. TSA employees caught with child porn. Those are just a few of the crimes perpetrated by Department of Homeland Security employees in just the past year.

Since the creation of the Department of Homeland Security nearly a decade ago, the agency’s inspector general has been tasked with uncovering corruption, waste and criminality within its own ranks. The IG has had his hands full.

According to a newly released DHS inspector general’s summary of its significant investigations, 318 DHS employees and contractors were arrested in 2011 (.pdf). That’s about one arrest per weekday of the men and women who are supposed to be keeping the country safe. The report lets us not only see how corrupt some agents tasked with protecting the homeland can be, it also gives us a scale of the problem. In short: There are a lot of dirty immigration and border officers.

This confirms my priors. I wonder, how does it compare to other Federal bureaucracies, especially those charged with policing and security? Via Child Porn, Coke Smuggling: Hundreds of DHS Employees Arrested Last Year | Danger Room | Wired.com.

My instincts on this story out of Lincoln, Nebraska have panned out.  A lesbian woman falsely claimed that three men attacked her, cut bigoted words into her skin, and lit her house on fire.  Vigils were held; PayPal accounts were set up; outrage was expressed.  But the first giveaway is this:  what would motivate three men to attack a lesbian woman in such a way?  Even homophobic men don’t typically hate lesbians so strongly.  People who are so angry that they would actually carve something in a person’s body are also not likely to leave any loose ends.

(Addendum:  Just for fun, Gawker reports on this too. Comments there should be fun as someone there quickly pointed out that anyone who felt that the case was a hoax when the story was initially reported last month were summarily shouted down. ...)

My question: Why the *hell* did she do it? Malice so strong that she had to harm herself to give it voice? Via Another Hate Crime Hoax « Gucci Little Piggy.