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This could be big! Or not. It should be fun in any case.

We’re going to meet next Monday after work at a convenient location in Northwest DC.

If you want to join us, please email me: jonathan at chicagoboyzdotnet.

We are the bloggers we have been waiting for!

Or something.

…if people can’t afford to live there.

Some group has declared that San Francisco rates highest for ease of getting around on foot. Of course they are considering only the people who are already there, not those who have been priced out of SF by its sky-high real-estate valuations, the result of land-use restrictions imposed by the Bay Area’s notoriously anti-growth political culture.

One of the comments on the site where the walkability story appears puts the issue well:

The problem has never simply been walkability. It’s always been affordability. Take New York City. Rent for a studio apartment is $2000. In the burbs? $1000 for a one-bedroom. The $1000 difference pays for an awful lot of gasoline. Oh - and I should mention the 4% income tax New York City levies on its residents.
 
The effect of higher gasoline prices won’t be people moving en masse into marginal inner city areas. Instead, it will be the progressive reduction of property prices in the suburbs to compensate for higher gasoline costs, coupled with the gradual move of businesses to the suburbs to accommodate their employees, and save on real estate costs.

To paraphrase a statement one often hears from the Left, the rich and the poor are equally free to walk on the streets of San Francisco.

(Note that by “monster” I really mean, “about 8 inches long, not including the tail”. This may not seem like much but it is sure to impress the true anole aficionado, as most anoles are much smaller. Unfortunately there was no dewlap action here, perhaps indicating that this specimen is a female.)

Commenting on this outrageous story, about which Glenn Reynolds
and Brendan Loy make the obvious (and correct) points about the need for more accountability, Rand Simberg says:

Should ignorance of the law be an excuse for this man? Call me crazy, but it seems to me that those enforcing the law should be much more responsible for knowing it than those who are being oppressed by ignorance of it.

I would add another question along these lines. Why is it acceptable not only that ordinary citizens (particularly members of racial and ethnic minorities) must behave with extreme discretion, and often show humiliating deference, to avoid being abused or arrested when dealing with police, but also that a significant fraction of police are power-abusing bullies with hair-trigger tempers? Call me crazy, but it seems to me that those enforcing the law should be selected for thick skin and the ability to defuse adversarial situations rather than make them worse. Many police behave decently and even admirably, but there are also so many who are hot-headed jerks that it’s obvious that the police culture has systematic management problems.

UPDATE (July 16): Brendan Loy posts an update to his original post.

Phil Gramm spoke the truth. The economy is in a slow period, but the recession that many of us (including me) anticipated has not happened. IOW, despite significant structural problems in the economy (housing meltdown, inflation, oil prices, weak dollar and other policy mistakes), the economy is holding up. This is good news.

There is a disconnect between the real economy, which is doing OK, and the media picture of an economy about to fall into steep recession if not depression. It’s obvious what’s going on. First, the media industry is consolidating: old media businesses are failing, their employees either being laid off or worried about their jobs; new media businesses like Google are changing the fundamentals of the media industry. So there is a lot of fear and uncertainty among media people, and that uncertainty gets reflected in news reports and opinion columns.

Second, the big media are, as usual, doing their best to get the Democrat elected. This means that the economy is going to be terrible until the election, after which we will (assuming the Democrats win big) experience a remarkable recovery due to the farsighted policies of President Obama and the Democratic Congress.

Gramm was merely pointing out what was already obvious to serious observers. Maybe, for tactical political reasons, he shouldn’t have been as blunt as he was in the Washington Times interview, but that’s hindsight. The problem is that McCain immediately disassociated himself from Gramm in a way that weakens his campaign. Gramm, a former economics professor, is known for having a clue about economics. Indeed he was brought into McCain’s campaign to compensate for the candidate’s widely acknowledged weakness in this area. McCain’s hasty disavowal of Gramm therefore looked like a political panic. He was behaving like the old McCain, whose primary loyalty often appeared to be to the media and Democratic opinion. The media and Democrats decry what they see as a disastrous economy, therefore McCain could not allow Gramm’s reasonable statements to stand. He didn’t even try to spin them but flatly disavowed them. This was McCain at his worst.

The Gramm incident also showed Obama at his worst. While Obama showed consummate political skill in exploiting the McCain campaign’s missteps, he revealed in doing so the glibness and extreme arrogance that unnerve some of us. Here is the key part of Obama’s response to Gramm:

“Senator Phil Gramm, a top economic advisor to Senator McCain, just recently said that this is merely ‘a mental recession,’” Obama said during a campaign appearance in Virgina.
 
“Senator Gramm then deemed the United States, and I quote, ‘a nation of whiners,’” Obama said.
 
“Well, you know, America already has one Dr. Phil,” Obama said, referring to a tough-talking television talk show host and psychologist.
 
“When it comes to the economy, we don’t need another,” he said.
 
“I think it’s time we had a president who doesn’t deny our problems or blame the American people for them, but takes responsibility and provides the leadership to solve them. That’s the kind of president I will be.”

Obama, who appears to know little about economics, blames economist Gramm for denying the existence of problems that don’t exist. The arrogance comes through more clearly on video:

I had thought McCain was due for a bounce, but things aren’t looking good. And of course McCain is his own world of bad policies.

Interesting times ahead.

[I repost below a press release from the Illinois State Rifle Association. Visit this site for more info about the rally. Jonathan]

————————–
Friday July 11, 2008 from 11:00am - 1:00 pm at the
James R. Thompson Center
100 W. Randolph St. in Chicago

The first rally of its kind in the history of Chicago!

Come celebrate the the US Supreme Court’s recent ruling that the Second Amendment to the Constitution protects an individual right.

Join the launch of a renewed push for Concealed Carry legislation in Illinois!

Read the rest of this entry »

Roost with the robins at Chicagoboyz.
Relax with the rhinos at Chicagoboyz.
Sleep with the sloths at Chicagoboyz.
Perch with the parrots at Chicagoboyz.

[UPDATED]

THESE OBAMA skeptics recall a similar time, 1973, when Israel also faced extermination. Prime minister Golda Meir had miscalculated Anwar Sadat’s willingness to go to war and decided against a first strike against Egypt. The Arab nations attacked in October 1973, and within days Israel was facing defeat.
 
The Israelis went to president Richard Nixon with a request for a massive infusion of arms. The Defense and State Departments squabbled. Our European allies, who feared an oil embargo (and would refuse us bases to refuel our planes), inveighed against it, and the Soviets blustered. Many on Nixon’s staff wanted to deny the request, or offer only token assistance. Don’t antagonize the Arab states, they counseled.
 
Nixon persisted and, according to some accounts, doubled the amount of aid Israel had requested. Riding herd on the bureaucrats, Nixon repeatedly intervened to push the transports along. Informed about a dispute regarding the type of air transportation, Nixon at one point exclaimed in frustration: “Tell them to send everything that can fly.” Over the course of a month US airplanes conducted 815 sorties with over 27,900 tons of materiel.
 
Israel was saved due to this massive infusion of military aid. Meir referred to Nixon with enormous affection for the rest of her life. Nixon, despised by many in the US, was hailed as a hero in Israel. And Nixon (who had garnered a minority of the Jewish vote in 1972) received little or no political benefit at home for his trouble, leaving office the following year.

-Jennifer Rubin, “Why more Jews won’t be voting Democrat this year”

The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is soliciting public comment on the regulatory treatment of event (prediction) markets and prediction-market exchanges. These markets allow participants to take positions, in some cases with real-money consequences, on the odds of various events such as the election of particular political candidates, the frequency of hurricanes, and trial verdicts. (Intrade, whose quote board appears on the left margin of this blog, and of whom we are an affiliate, is an outstanding example of a prediction-markets exchange.) There is significant evidence that such markets provide the best available probabilities on the occurrence of many kinds of events and thus benefit all of us.

The central concern regarding prediction markets in the USA is their legal and regulatory classification. Currently it appears that some types of prediction markets are forbidden as “Internet gambling” (thank Congress), and there is uncertainty about others. Executives of offshore prediction-market exchanges have been harassed legally, and on at least one occasion arrested when they passed through this country. The uncertain US legal climate is chilling development of this beneficial industry, and there is interest from the industry in gaining for itself a regulatory safe-harbor similar to that enjoyed by established futures and options exchanges. Aside from the obvious libertarian argument for allowing business between consenting adults, I see no downside to the public and, as I suggested, the potential benefits are large.

The CFTC proposal and instructions for comment (you may comment by email) are HERE.

The CTFC is asking for comment on what its regulatory stance toward this nascent industry should be. IMO, Tom Bell’s proposal, posted at the indispensable Midas Oracle, is a good start. Tom will submit his response to the CFTC in petition form. If you want to sign on, contact him at [tbell at chapman dot edu] before noon PST on July 6. (N.B. Please see his post for complete details before you contact him.) I am going to sign Tom’s petition and I recommend that you do too, unless you have a better proposal — in which case please post it in the comments here or email it to me.

Unfortunately, comments must be received by the CFTC by July 7, which leaves little time for anything other than email unless you are in DC. But better to make your opinion known on short notice, as I will, than not at all.

The prediction-markets industry is a worthwhile cause with prominent enemies including Congressional anti-gambling activists, and significant parts of the established futures industry (nobody likes competition). It would be a great loss if this worthwhile new industry continued to be crippled by outdated regulatory practices.

(For more background, I strongly recommend this post by Chris Masse at Midas Oracle. Ignore the stuff about Wolfowitz, just scroll down to the “BACKGROUND INFO” links and start clicking.)

(Click the image to display a larger version in a new window.)

Insanity: Obama campaign.

Stupidity: McCain.

McCain is clearly the less-bad candidate, but in the scheme of things both candidates are about as bad as it gets in US presidential elections.

(via Babalu and Instapundit)

(via Steve and Aaron)

The optimal situation would be the preservation of nonproliferation — what Barack Obama calls “a world without nuclear weapons”. Unfortunately a nonproliferation regime in practice means a nuclear monopoly by a select few and the disarmament of the rest.
 
Think about it. The two models of law and order are either to concentrate force in the police and disarm everyone else; or allow a universally armed society like the Wild West where the peace is preserved because because even granny’s packing.
 
Barack Obama’s idea is that creating a world without nuclear weapons should begin with an American disarmament, which is a little bit like arguing that a neighborhood without guns starts with the police disarming themselves. Ha, ha ha.
 
So what Barack Obama’s policy will probably result in is an acceleration of the collapse in nonproliferation which is already under way. AQ Khan did his damage a long time ago.
 
So through technological diffusion and polic[y] idiocy, the odds are that nonproliferation will collapse sooner or later. Then what will we have then? I claim that once nonproliferation implodes everyone will want to get a nuke and won’t be shy about using it.

-Wretchard

A while ago I disparaged the Indian government’s backwardness (as I saw it) in considering a ban on futures trading. But now, not a few American pols, journalists and bloggers are sounding like the Indian finance minister, making similarly foolish suggestions in favor of restricting oil speculation.

Everybody always wants to punish speculators. But speculators, by following their self-interest, provide the rest of us with market liquidity, price information and generally lower costs of doing business.

Also, if you believe in freedom, free markets are good in and of themselves. Restricting speculation when prices are unusually high or low is like restricting unpopular speech: there’s generally an expedient argument for it, and it’s generally a bad idea because the long-term harm it does far outweighs any short-term benefits.

Steve H. is in great form with his latest post. I mostly agree with him. Bush screwed a lot of things up, wouldn’t fire incompetents and can’t communicate worth a damn. But on the main issue of our day he showed vision, courage and resolve at a time when anything less would have been disastrous. I doubt that either Gore, Kerry or Bill Clinton would have done nearly as well, and I suspect that Bush will eventually be seen by Americans in a much more positive light than is currently the case.

UPDATE: Ginny points out Glenn and Helen’s interview with Doug Feith, which is probably worth listening to.

UPDATE 2: A commenter points out The Diplomad’s excellent post on this topic. I read it several days ago, it probably influenced me and I should have credited it.

Americans have had it so good, for so long, that they seem to have forgotten what government’s heavy hand does to living standards and economic growth. But the same technological innovation that is causing all this dislocation and anxiety has also created an information network that is as near to real-time as the world has ever experienced.
 
For example, President Bush put steel tariffs in place in March 2002. Less than two years later, in December 2003, he rescinded them. This is something most politicians don’t do. But because the tariffs caused such a sharp rise in the price of steel, small and mid-size businesses complained loudly. The unintended consequences became visible to most Americans very quickly.
 
Decades ago the feedback mechanism was slow. The unintended consequences of the New Deal took too long to show up in the economy. As a result, by the time the pain was publicized, the connection to misguided government policy could not be made. Today, in the midst of Internet Time, this is no longer a problem. So, despite protestations from staff at the White House, most people understand that food riots in foreign lands and higher prices at U.S. grocery stores are linked to ethanol subsidies in the U.S., which have sent shock waves through the global system.
 
This is the good news. Policy mistakes will be ferreted out very quickly. As a result, any politician who attempts to change things will be blamed for the unintended consequences right away.
 
Both Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama view the world from a legislative perspective. Like the populists before them, they seem to believe that government can fix problems in the economy. They seem to believe that what the world needs is a change in the way government attacks problems and fixes the anxiety of voters. This command-and-control approach, however, forces a misallocation of resources. And in Internet Time this will become visible in almost real-time, creating real political pain for the new president.
 
In contrast to what some people seem to believe, having the government take over the health-care system is not change. It’s just a culmination of previous moves by government. And the areas with the worst problems today are areas that have the most government interference – education, health care and energy.
 
The best course of action is to allow a free-market economy to reallocate resources to the place of highest returns. In the midst of all the natural change, the last thing the U.S. economy needs is more government involvement, whether it’s called change or not.

-Brian Wesbury