The themes found in the excellent movie Crash, seem even more relevant now then they did in 2005. Wouldn’t you agree?

America = Awesome.

Seriously America is the greatest country in the world.

This link will take you to a New York Time graphic depiction of all their presidential endorsement since their beginning. Note that after 1956 they have not endorse a republican. This roughly coincides with the prominence of social justice becoming adopted by journalists.

Is a talented artist.

An economist was asked to breifly describe the “wheels of commerce,” and in doing so he sums up the free market in 3 short paragraphs. In his final paragraph he makes a point about redistribution that really made me think.

If a society can promote a set of legal and economic institutions in which there are 1) strong property rights, and in which 2) people are prevented from coercing each other and can only engage in mutually voluntary transactions, you are likely to have the highest-possible standards of living and the most rapid growth of living standards. This optimal outcome is only possible if there is robust competition between both buyers and sellers.   

Monopolies, cartels, and other forms of “imperfect competition” can screw up the whole system, as can poorly enforced or poorly defined property rights. But economists are painfully aware that this “optimal” outcome does not guarantee equality of living standards. It only guarantees two very good things: 1) that our limited supply of resources will be directed toward producing the things that people are most willing and able to pay for, and 2) that those goods and services will be produced at the lowest possible cost. 

But poor people have very little ability to pay for things, so their wants will not be satisfied under a market-based economic system. This can be grossly unfair and can be rectified by some combination of private-sector charity and/or public-sector policies regarding income redistribution.  

He leaves out the fact that redistribution decreases poor people’s incentive to work harder while also decreasing rich people’s incentive to create wealth.  Also, public redistribution policy is coercion, which he argues stands in the way of rapid growth and the highest possible living standards. However, by suggesting private charity could be the redistributor he avoids this hard argument.    Using economic principles to argue for redistribution. What will they think of next.

Barack seems to be demonstrating an ignorance on energy policy by wanting to regulate to death our chief means for generating electricity. If his plan is successful, how does he plan to supply our country with electricity until alternative energy sources are capable of replacing coal? Furthermore, he does not exactly look brilliant in regards to charging people much higher prices for coal generated electricity to subsidize the development of ‘cleaner’ energy sources. In demanding such regulation, he demonstrates an ignorance on economics as such prices hikes will disproportionally affect the poor compared to the rich.

When asked about progressive taxation, Colbert’s guest David Simon, had this to say:

This is the fair share argument. It’s unclear to me why he needs the state to force people to pay their ‘fair’ share. If the share was ‘fair’, then one would think you would not need to use coercion to get someone to pay. This goes back to the idea that liberals support redistribution not because they believe they should pay a fair share, but because they want to force others who disagree with them to pay their ‘fair’ share. Redistribution is not about fairness, its about making people do your bidding.

The bit about the Bush taxes breaks is odd to me. If this David Simon was worried about paying his ‘fair’ share and he didn’t think the Bush administration was taking enough of his share, then he could of donated that money to any number of charities. Given the evidence I read about in this book, I’m going to have to say David Simon most likely did not increase his donation to charity even though he did not think he was paying enough of his share.

Redistribution is not about helping the poor, its about punishing the rich.

Surprise, Surprise.

Comments made by sources, voters, reporters and anchors that aired on ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts over the past two months reflected positively on Obama in 65 percent of cases, compared to 31 percent of cases with regards to McCain, according to the Center for Media and Public Affairs.

ABC’s “World News” had more balance than NBC’s “Nightly News” or the “CBS Evening News,” the group said.

The best part?

Meanwhile, the first half of Fox News Channel’s “Special Report” with Brit Hume showed more balance than any of the network broadcasters, although it was dominated by negative evaluations of both campaigns.

Fox News is closest to being fair and balanced. Now that is some grade A humor.

It’s commonly held that privately funded research is problematic because of the inherent conflict of interest. That’s why this finding is so damn funny.

The analysis was published in The International Journal of Obesity (and financed not by industry but by the National Institutes of Health). The authors, a team of six researchers from the University of Alabama, McMaster University and the University of British Columbia, analyzed what types of data were reported in more than 60 large, long-term randomized clinical trials for obesity treatment conducted between 1966 and 2003. They rated the quality of the data using a standard checklist of the kind of information that ideally should be reported at each stage of a clinical trial.

The researchers found that the quality of data was significantly better in industry-supported research than in nonindustry-supported research, particularly in studies involving drug treatments. The researchers conclude:

Even when the state clearly has an advantage over the private sector because of inherent moral hazard it still manages to lose. Seriously, in the private sector, their is clear and obvious motivation for companies to manipulate the way the data is reported so that their research supports whatever they have invested in. And yet, somehow the quality of the reporting of state sponsored research is less than private research.

If the state can’t even get reporting research right when it’s competition has a direct motivation to manipulate it’s data, then seriously what good is the state? And we are about to elect a candidate who sees only ‘good’ in the state. LOL

If the trend in this research is found in other domains, then it really calls into question the reports on public research directed at global warming. If the quality of the reports of data being generated by public research is already a lesser quality and also clearly supports one political agenda over another one, then its seems quite reasonable to expect systemic problems with the reporting of research emphasizing the perils of global warming.

Via Instapundit, quoting Robert Heinlein:

Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.

This is known as “bad luck.”