North Coast Online

Marriage Is A Hurtful Concept

Just when you thought it couldn't get any wackier.

Schools should be banned from promoting traditional marriage in sex education lessons for fear of discriminating against gay and lesbian children, academics claim.

The biggest lecturers' union criticised teachers who champion heterosexual wedlock for instilling "negative images" of same-sex relationships.

That's from the UK.  It will take, oh I don't know, until tomorrow for some educator over here to espouse the same view.  No pun intended, of course.

Self-Fulfilling Investigations

John Edwards makes a bold and brave statement.

Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards on Thursday called for a federal investigation into possible antitrust violations by the oil industry and criticized oil companies for raising gas prices.

Of course, he qualified it in the next sentence.

``There's absolutely no justification for the gas companies to be as profitable as they are and have the taxpayers subsidizing the industry,'' Edwards said.

You're right, John.  Why not campaign to do away with oil company subsidies and then leave them alone?  What?  You say that would take away your justification for using oil as a campaign issue?  Oh, I see.

Shared Misery

Hillary calls for a renewed collective effort.

It's time for a new beginning, for an end to government of the few, by the few and for the few, time to reject the idea of an "on your own" society and to replace it with shared responsibility for shared prosperity. I prefer a "we're all in it together" society.

Scott at Powerline writes, "Not since I was 16 have I wanted so badly to be on my own."

Garbage In, Global Warming Out

I installed my window air conditioner this afternoon.  At the same time, I took care to move my indoor/outdoor temperature sensor from that windowsill to another so the A/C's exhaust wouldn't distort its readings (duh).  One town in Oregon never bothered to do that and global warming data got another shot in the arm.

[UPDATE:] Check this out, too.

A.M.&A.'s

The battle over what to do with A.M.&A.'s is ready to heat up again.

Two prominent local developers are calling for the demolition of the long-vacant AM&A’s department store on Main Street downtown.

And they want the city to take the lead role in razing the deteriorating former store to create a “prime, shovel-ready” site.

“It’s a major eyesore, a blight on downtown,” said Ellicott Development chief Carl P. Paladino. “The time has come to knock it down.”

They're right, of course.  When it looked as if a big New York City developer was going to convert it into apartments, everyone was happy.  But now that the deal's fallen through, expect the preservationists to try and stop any attempts to tear the old pile of bricks down.

They'll claim that it's an excellent example of late 1940's modernism -- well, read for yourself.

The   former J.N. Adam department store, one of the best pieces of modernism on Main   Street, has been a major component of downtown streetscape for half a century.   It presents a masterful play of abstract form, interconnecting horizontal and   vertical elements with the sophistication of a Gershwin arrangement. Unified   horizontal window bands and layered horizontal monochrome materials: travertine-like   stone, buff brick banded with glazed buff tiles, subtly reinforce the linear   precision of the composition. The crowning glory of the whole complex is the   Washington Street elevation three earlier components designed by Buffalo architects:   E.B. Green, 1892 and 1896, and Esenwein &Johnson,1909, are well-preserved.

That's one way of looking at it.  On the other hand it's also a motley collection of very old and very inefficient buildings which have been disguised by a unifying facade.  And that facade, while admittedly created by "the designers of Saks Fifth Avenue,   Bloomingdale's Lexington Avenue and Lord &Taylor's Fifth Avenue", is just that -- a fake covering.

Don't be "guilted' into thinking that tearing it down would forever erase an irreplaceable part of America's architectural history.   It just isn't so.  The building's old and deteriorating and sits on, if we ever can agree to return cars to Main Street, a valuable piece of property. 

Now, I'm not saying that should be in any great rush to raze it.  We can wait a bit -- no reason to have a city block sit empty.  But we should agree now that if a solid proposal comes along like the one that would have seen HealthNow locate there, it'll be promptly demolished.  And an enlightened city planning department might even require that the facade of its replacement echo 1940's modernism.

Hey, fake now is as good as fake then.   
 

I May Switch Brands To Yuengling

Big labor lost one, a Pennsylvania brewery's employees voted to decertify their union. But the word of its  former members' isn't good enough -- the Teamsters are going to ask the government to fix this injustice. 

Depending upon whom you ask, Yuengling’s speech was either a pep talk to urge employees to work harder or an ultimatum to dump the Teamsters union, which is what they did.

The union has been trying to strike back, urging a boycott of the 178-yearold brewery’s product. The company says the effort has fallen flat — with “absolutely zero feedback” from the marketplace, according to chief operating officer David Casinelli.

Now, the Teamsters say they are going to try to get state lawmakers to intervene in what they say has been an unfair fight.

Have you ever noticed that unions always think it's unfair when they lose? 

Only Politicians Would Make A Decision Like This

$225,000 for houses on Sycamore Street?  And the city's the developer?  I'd say this bears watching.

Out Of Character -- But Welcome

Well, knock me down, Albany has voted to let ticket resellers and scalpers operate in a free market.

A measure ending current price caps on how much scalpers and brokers can charge on tickets to sports and entertainment events is moving toward final approval by state lawmakers and Gov. Eliot L. Spitzer.

Now, maybe we can work on liberating the rest of the economy.

Under Siege

Fred Thompson mentions Buffalo.

Let me ask you a hypothetical question. What do you think America would do if Canadian soldiers were firing dozens of missiles every day into Buffalo, N.Y.?

Leaving aside for the moment the worrisome possible answers, read the rest here.

[UPDATE:] USAToday insists that he told them he's running.

The Breck Girl Exposed

I don't know if Democrats will be influenced by tales of John Kerry's supposed discomfort for John Edwards; in fact, I don't even know if they're true (this is Bob Shrum after all).

He was comfortable after his conversations with Gephardt, but even queasier about Edwards after they met. Edwards had told Kerry he was going to share a story with him that he'd never told anyone else—that after his son Wade had been killed, he climbed onto the slab at the funeral home, laid there and hugged his body, and promised that he'd do all he could to make life better for people, to live up to Wade's ideals of service. Kerry was stunned, not moved, because, as he told me later, Edwards had recounted the same exact story to him, almost in the exact same words, a year or two before—and with the same preface, that he'd never shared the memory with anyone else. Kerry said he found it chilling, and he decided he couldn't pick Edwards unless he met with him again.

Delicious stuff.

Saving The Stupid

One year after that Rod Watson's Buffalo News series that criticized rent-to-own stores, Senator Schumer is still out there flogging them.

Nationwide, the fast-growing rent-to-own industry has more than 8,300 stores serving an estimated 2.7 million customers. The industry is dominated by two publicly traded companies — Rent-A-Center of Plano, Texas, and Aaron Rents of Atlanta. There are about 60 rent-to-own stores in the Buffalo area, including 13 Rent-ACenter locations surveyed last week by Schumer’s staff.

Citing that research, Schumer said a 27-inch Toshiba television that retails for $299.99 locally cost $909.35 after 65 weekly payments at Rent-ACenter. That’s a 203.13 percent markup over 15 months.

Similarly, a Whirlpool stove selling at retail for $699.99 was $2,183.09 after 91 weeks or 21 months, while a $299.99 Whirlpool air conditioner sold for $779.70 after 30 weeks and a $529.99 Whirlpool refrigerator cost $1,637.09 after 91 weeks.

If the rent-to-own stores state the terms of payment up front and deliver the product as advertised, then Senator Schumer should have nothing to say about it.  "But, Craig," you ask, "what about those high prices?"   

Look, it's safe to assume that a solid chunk of rent-to-own customers don't follow through on their payments and that the store will have to send people out to reclaim its inventory.  Given their customer base, it's also not a stretch to imagine that a fair portion of that inventory will have been mistreated and damaged to the point that it's not fit to be re-sold.

How else are they to offset those costs but by charging high prices?

No one forces people to buy from these stores.  There are plenty of options:  save up first and then buy, buy used (cheap) or clean up your credit and go into hock like the middle class does.  But Senator Schumer has based his career on treating his constituents as if we all have an extra chromosome (as Al Gore would put it) and with praise like this from the Buffalo News he's not likely to stop any time soon.

 

Is There A Doctor In The Car?

Hypermillers sound like your average, run-of-the-mill obsessive-compulsives to me.

High Hopes For The Richardson Complex

Donn Esmonde lauds plans to restore the Richardson Complex.

We just got more evidence that saving great buildings in good neighborhoods is not just a matter of aesthetics, but economics.

In the case of this building we have no such evidence.  We have the opinion of a bunch of preservationists and a State Assemblyman that it will be a "bridge" between thriving Elmwood and crumbling Grant.

Don't get me wrong, the Richardson building is entirely worth saving; it truly is monumental architecture.

But trying to justify the expense by claiming it will help to revitalize the Grant Street neighborhood is just wishful thinking.  Just next door is Buffalo State College and we know that colleges can be tremendous economic generators.  Amherst around UB and Hamlin Park next to Canisius are illustrations.

But Grant Street's problems of blight and crime have grown so serious that 15,000 nearby students simply steer clear of it and head to Elmwood for shopping and fun.  The hundred or so condo owners and hotel guests at a restored Richardson Complex likely will too.

Albany Republicrats Strike Again

It's bad enough that New York is all but a one-party state, but it sure doesn't help when what's left of the other party seems desperate to join the first.  I'm speaking of Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno who just can't let a Spitzer initiative go by without trying to top it.

Upon the Governor's announcement of a commission to study the effectiveness of the State University system, Bruno upped the ante.

“While this new commission talks about the future of higher education, let’s act right now to provide more assistance to families so they can afford college in the fall,” he said.

He wants to spend another $129 million to increase the Tuition Assistance Program (TAP).   Um, Joe, you're a Republican.  You're supposed to cut spending, not increase it.   

Who Rejected Kyoto?

And here I thought that the rejection of the Kyoto Accords was settled science history, but Captain Ed cites an AP article that once again chastises the Bush administration for it.

President Bush rejected that accord, saying it would harm the U.S. economy and unfair excludes developing countries like China and India from its obligations. Pelosi, who strongly disagrees with that decision and many other of Bush's environmental policies, said Friday she said she wants to work with the administration rather than provoke it.

It's true that Bush has not embraced Kyoto but he wasn't the President when it was rejected.

Once again, the AP has failed to report the history of this treaty correctly. While Bush does not support the Kyoto approach, he had nothing to do with rejecting the pact. The Senate rejected it in 1997, almost four years before Bush took office. When Al Gore pushed Bill Clinton to sign the treaty, the Senate reacted by passing a resolution informing Clinton that Kyoto would not get ratified.

That resolution got sponsored by Chuck Hagel and Robert Byrd, and it passed by a roll call vote in which not a single Senator voted to support Clinton and Gore. The final vote was 95-0, and it included such Democratic luminaries as Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, and Barbara Boxer rejecting Kyoto. I have the resolution itself in the extended entry, and it makes clear that the Senate would not abide a pact which excluded the developing nations of China and India. Since it still does not include those countries, there is no reason to think that the Senate has changed its position, nor should it.

Clinton never lobbied to influence that vote and after the Senate's withering refusal, simply dropped the entire matter.  Either journalists at the AP are stupid and ignorant or they're wily and dishonest -- repeating a lie over and over might just convince enough people that it really happened the way they wish it had.

Vegetables Are Cheap

Some editor at the Buffalo News evidently lost his nerve.

Few things cause the average American more hostility to public assistance programs than the anecdotal sight of a fat parent with one or two fat children in tow buying groceries with food stamps. [emphasis mine]

The "anecdotal sight"? 

It isn't the anecdotal sight (if there is such a thing) of fat Food Stamp recipients loading up a cart with steaks and junk food that galls Americans, it's actually watching them do it.  Fat food stamp recipients exist.  If they were only anecdotes then why would the board publish an editorial claiming that they're hungry and need help? 

Help from the government of course.  Help not only to pay for the food, but help now to choose it too.  Hillary's sponsored a bill to do just that, though as of this posting, they're still expected to anecdotally cook it themselves. 

Taking Chance Home

Chance Phelps was wearing his Saint Christopher medal when he was killed on Good Friday. Eight days later, I handed the medallion to his mother. I didn’t know Chance before he died. Today, I miss him.

Over a year ago, I volunteered to escort the remains of Marines killed in Iraq should the need arise. The military provides a uniformed escort for all casualties to ensure they are delivered safely to the next of kin and are treated with dignity and respect along the way.

Thankfully, I hadn’t been called on to be an escort since Operation Iraqi Freedom began.

Read the rest of Chance's journey home here.

Gasoline Price Blame

While it tickles my heart to see a Bush and a Clinton receive the blame for something, I believe Doug Turner still has it wrong when it comes to high gasoline prices.

Between 1991 and 2000, Democrat Clinton and Republican Bush OK’d 2,600 mergers in all segments of the American petroleum industry.

Clinton and Bush left us with predictably sky-high pump prices and massive oil company profits. Now, five companies control more than 55 percent of gasoline sales, giving them massive regional clout on wholesale prices.

Have you seen the price of oil lately (gasoline is refined from oil)?  It closed at almost $65/barrel today.  That price is determined by millions of investors and there's next to nothing that the oil companies can do to influence it. 

They're not quite the global force they were in the seventies.  70% of the world's oil supply is now controlled by the producing nations and not by the oil companies.   That's why we even have to listen to the likes of Russia, the Arab countries and Venezuela.   They can certainly affect oil prices and thus gasoline's by curtailing production.

Since the gasoline supply crunch in the 1970s, gasoline consumption doubled but no refineries have been built by any of these new “oiligarchs.”

This is probably the most irritating of the Democrats' complaints.  Environmental regulations imposed in the seventies are why we don't have any new refineries, not a lack of desire to build them.  They're almost impossible to get approved and no one wants one in his backyard anyway.  At the moment a little ethanol plant proposed for Buffalo is being fought with lawsuits.  Can you imagine the local reaction if Exxon wanted to build an oil refinery here?

But that's not to say that we're trying to operate on the same refining capacity we had in the seventies. That capacity was fine right into the nineties -- in fact there was excess capacity back then.  But as gasoline usage has increased, the oil companies have spent billions upgrading those facilities and expanding their capacity.

In fact, we probably wouldn't even be having this debate over high gasoline prices if it weren't for another helpful environmental regulation, the one that specifies 20 separate regional blends of gasoline.   This beauty splits up the American gasoline market to the point that excess gasoline in Buffalo, for example, can't be rerouted to St. Louis in case of a shortage there.

To make things even worse, those 20 blends are further separated into winter and summer varieties.   

Summer-blend gas isn't new. It was first sold in 1995, as required by the Clean Air Act's 1990 amendments, and the current, even cleaner, concoction was phased in for the summer of 2000. Since then, there have been sharp spikes in fuel prices every spring as summer blends get rolled out. This is not so much because it's expensive to make the gas—the added cost per gallon is only 1 or 2 cents—but because refineries generally try to sell every last bit of winter fuel before mixing in the slightly more expensive summer batch. Sometimes they draw down the stock too far, creating shortages before the first deliveries of summer blend enter the supply chain.

So refiners have to perform the delicate balancing act of predicting how much winter blend will be required through March while assuring at the same time that it's all gone on April 1st.  During that process they also have to shut down the refinery and retool it for the summer blend.   Throw in an increase in gasoline demand this year and $3.19 gas is what you get.

George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton may both have made mistakes during their careers (both, oddly enough, having to do with lips), but causing gas prices to rise wasn't one of them.  Environmental regulations have a cost.  If we think gas prices are too high, then we should work to get rid of the superfluous ones.  And those who believe that only high gas prices will save the earth should just shut up while they're ahead.

Rolling Thunder

Cole Kayser signs his name on a white shirt for fifth-grader Christian Martin, then rises from the grass outside Rainelle Elementary School, a tall and imposing figure.

He is every inch the retired Marine, from silvery brush-cut hair and camouflage cap to black leather motorcycle boots and the ``USMC'' tattoo on the edge of his right hand, on display when he salutes.

But ask him how it feels to be here, in a sleepy southern West Virginia town where children chase one-time warriors like Hollywood paparazzi, and a tear slides down his cheek.

``I've been holding back for 40 years, keeping all that emotion inside,'' said Kayser, a Vietnam veteran from La Habra, Calif. ``I found a family.''

Read the whole thing.

Memorial Day

IN FLANDERS FIELDS the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

We must not break faith with those who've died.

What If?

If today's media had reported World War II.

May 31, 1941

The sinking of HMS Hood, and the loss of 1,400 British sailors, is only the latest in the series of disasters that have impacted Britain since Mr Winston Churchill became Prime Minister. Our army was forced to retreat at Dunkirk, resulting in a loss of many million pounds worth of heavy equipment. Our cities have been bombed, and something like 40,000 of our citizens have been killed. Even now, merchant shipping is being attacked by U-boats, and it is by no means certain that adequate supplies of military equipment–or even of food–can continue to reach our island nation.

All of these disasters and failures were a foreseeable consequence of the policy of military adventurism pursued by Mr Churchill..a policy very different from the diplomatically-based policy that had been recommended by Lord Halifax. It cannot be stressed enough that this is a unilateral policy–other nations do not seem to share Mr Churchill’s obsessions. The United States, although happy to sell us military supplies, has been most unwilling to commit forces. Even the Communists in Russia have had the sober judgment to come to a diplomatic modus vivendi with Germany, rather than pursuing a military solution.

Read the whole thing.

Treading Water Would Be An Exaggeration

Think about it.  While North Carolina, Alabama and Indiana (just to name a few) are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to lure new industries, we're doing the same just to keep the few we have.  Think we're in a hole?

Some History

The Democrats are still proud of having cut funding for Viet Nam in 1974 and use that as inspiration to "soldier' on in their efforts to do the same for (to?) Iraq.  Pop quiz: how many American soldiers were on the ground in Viet Nam in 1974? 

Find the answer here.

This, Too, Shall Pass

I have to believe that "serious hardship" means something different in 2007 than it did, say, during the Great Depression.

Nearly half the country thinks near-record gasoline prices will cause serious hardship, prompting ever more people to consider trading their gas guzzlers for more fuel-efficient cars, an AP-Ipsos poll says.

Jeez Louise, the damned stuff only costs 10 or 20 cents a gallon more than it did a year ago. For most of us that's an extra $2 to $4 for a fill-up.   A "crimp" perhaps, but a "serious hardship?  Not so much.

Andrew Ferguson

In this age of rampant credentialism, Andrew Ferguson serves as a reminder that a lack of a particular degree needn't stop you.

Three Airmen Walked Into A Bar

Follow the link if the excerpt interests you, but first let's consider how political correctness has mangled the English language.

SPANGDAHLEM AIR BASE, Germany — A Spangdahlem-based airman was sentenced Monday to four months confinement for her part in a sexual act with two other airmen.

Got that?  An airman was sentenced for "her" role in a sexual act with two other airmen.  You probably won't be surprised to learn that one of the other airmen was a woman, too.  The third was, indeed, an air "man."   So, at least there was some measure of diversity, though I'm not too sure about equal opportunity -- but, I digress.

Once upon a time, women who saw to the safety and comfort of airline passengers were known as stewardesses, and men performing the same service were stewards.  But at some point, the word "stewardess" fell out of favor as somehow demeaning to women and an entirely new term, "flight attendant" was coined.  That's fine, but why do we now have to use two words when the concept had previously been expressed more clearly by only one?

In Britain, the terms manageress and doctoress still have wide usage, and why not?  Each provides much more information than its sexless counterpart.  I, for example, might prefer a doctor or a doctoress in different situations.  How handy to know right up front? 

I really can't understand the feminist insistence (and this does all stem from seventies feminism)  that references to sex be expunged from the language.  I mean, they really weren't done away with, the terms for men were simply expanded to include women.  How odd.   

For example, I work with a woman who volunteers for her village fire department.  She's quite proud of that (rightfully so) and her truck even bears a bumpersticker proclaiming that "Real Women Drive Fire Trucks".   But don't you dare utter the word "fireman" in her presence or she'll shoot you a withering glare and correct you with the proper accepted term, "firefighter". 

If you were to refer to her as a firewoman -- and none of has dared yet -- she'd likely be deeply offended, probably angry and (we fear) perhaps even refer the matter to HR.  But if you're proud to be a woman who drives fire trucks, how could it possibly be insulting to be called a firewoman?  It would only accentuate the accomplishment of taking on a job once reserved for men.

I'd have thought that a positive. OK, enough language, class dismissed.  Now, go read the story about the three airmen having sex.

Apt Analogy

Don Boudreaux only just recently learned of the "Fly America Act".  It's a federal law that "requires Federal employees and their dependents, consultants, contractors, grantees, and others performing United States Government financed foreign air travel to travel by U.S. flag air carriers." Boudreaux has written his Congressman to suggest the "Study America Act" which would require all federal government-sponsored research to use only American research.

Why must hard-working, high-wage American researchers compete against foreign researchers - a competition that undoubtedly jeopardizes our nation's defense?  Why, for example, should researchers at the Centers for Disease Control use American tax dollars to pay for subscriptions to the British medical journal The Lancet?  Doing so shrinks the market for American medical research and thereby hurts America's health-care industry and, ultimately, America's children.  Or why should federally funded social-science researchers use tax dollars to buy books on international trade written by foreigners when my own book on globalization will soon be out?

Impeccable protectionist logic.

Forest And Trees

James Taranto points out a rather ridiculous statement from Joe Klein of Time Magazine.

It's not impossible that the Iraqis will eventually remove the al-Qaeda cancer from the Sunni insurgency--which would put a serious crimp in President George W. Bush's current rationale for the war, that we're there to fight al-Qaeda.

Um, that would mean we'd won, Joe, I doubt the President would feel crimped at all.

Now To Find The Money

I've had great fun mocking all the various and sundry ideas for museums that locals have coughed up over the years.  But I've got to say that a weather museum as described in the Buffalo News today would be very cool. 

Imagine an architectural masterpiece on the downtown waterfront that includes an Imax attraction where people become armchair storm-chasers.

If advocates can find the money to build a high-tech weather museum, they’re convinced that it would help draw visitors from across the continent.

Picture tourists from Tallahassee bundling up in borrowed parkas to experience a simulated winter storm, Buffalo-style, on a muggy August afternoon. Or visitors from a desert region peering through a massive window that overlooks Lake Erie, listening to a scientist vividly explain the link between ferocious storms and bodies of water.

I like it because it's significantly different from most of the museum suggestions we hear which typically involve exhibiting relics of Buffalo's past in the expectation that tourists will be motivated to come here and see them.    This idea is good.

I Can Predict How This Will End Up

Town government in Salem, MA is working with its, um, psychic community to determine the proper qualifications for entry into the field.

Lawyers have the bar exam. Accountants have the CPA exam.

Should Salem's fortunetellers have to pass a test of their own to prove they're psychic?

City councilors, hoping to crack down on fraudulent fortunetellers, are trying to define exactly how a psychic can become licensed to set up shop in the Witch City. They want candidates to undergo a criminal background check and to either live or run a business in Salem for at least a year.

But many psychics want the city to go a step further  - make sure they're actually qualified to predict the future.

Look, there's only one way to discern fortunetellers' abilities -- make 'em predict something and see if it comes true.  Wanna bet that won't be part of the licensing process?  The government shouldn't be worrying about silly people who spend money trying to find out the future and then feel cheated.  You can't legislate against foolishness, though we keep trying.

I can understand the desire of the psychics to participate in this exercise, though.  Like every other group of workers, they'll find it in their own best interests to create legal barriers to others trying to  do the same work.  They can charge more if there's less competition for their services.  That's why you need a license to cut someone's fingernails in New York State.

[UPDATE:] I remember when I was a kid, my mom's best friend ran a small beauty parlor out of her home. As a favor, she used to cut my hair for next to nothing.  But she would first draw the curtains and I was always reminded not to tell anyone because her license only permitted her to cut women's and girls' hair and she didn't want a fine.

The barbers' lobby must have been quite strong in New York back then -- though the seventies would eventually put most of them out of business anyway.

Everyone's Allowed One Bad Performance

I'm a huge fan of Thomas Sowell, but for the first time in my memory, he's made some really poor arguments.  They're against immigration and bear in mind that I don't like the immigration bill either.

The first, and perhaps biggest, fraud is the argument that illegal aliens are “doing jobs Americans won’t do.” There are no such jobs.

Even in the sector of the economy in which illegal immigrants have the highest representation — agriculture — they are just 24 percent of the workers. Where did the other 76 percent come from, if these are jobs that Americans won’t do?

All agricultural jobs are not the same.  The best involve owning or managing farms and operating mechanical equipment.  The worst are those which require stooping over all day in a field filling up a  bag of tomatoes for little pay.  Oh, and it's real hot, too.  Americans may very well not find those jobs worth doing.  That's certainly not proven; perhaps if tomato-pickers made more, Americans would do it.  But lumping all farm jobs together is dishonest.

The argument that illegal agricultural workers are “making a contribution to the economy” is likewise misleading.

For well over half a century, this country has had chronic agricultural surpluses which have cost the taxpayers billions of dollars a year to buy, store, and try to get rid of on the world market at money-losing prices.

If there were fewer agricultural workers and smaller agricultural surpluses, the taxpayers would save money.

I'm even more surprised by this one.  The only reason that we've had "chronic agricultural surpluses" (and why would that be necessarily bad?) is that federal price controls and farm subsidies have encouraged them.  Mr. Sowell surely knows that.  If Congress and the President eliminated farm-welfare, the surpluses would disappear as prices decreased.  Immigrants, illegal or otherwise have had nothing to do with surpluses.

As I said, I'm opposed to the current immigration bill, but not for economic reasons.  I suspect that more people in the working in the U.S. only serve to grow the economy.  But I consider myself conservative instead of libertarian for a reason.  The United States must protect its borders and be able to regulate the number of people who come here if only to preserve order.

I'm disappointed that Dr. Sowell didn't come at it from that angle instead of citing easily disprovable economic straw men that would be more expected of someone like Paul Krugman.

Et Tu Roswell?

TechCentralStation has a post on declining rigor in scientific publications.  I was sorry to see Roswell Park included.

Apparently, we can no longer assume that peer review journals are free of "junk science." The peer-reviewed journal Cancer, a publication of the American Cancer Society (ACS), just published a special online supplement that clearly meets the definition of "junk"in every way.

 

This journal, which boasts a long and distinguished list of editorial advisors, featured an article by Dr. Julia Brody, the executive director of the Silent Spring Institute and researchers from the Roswell Park Cancer Institute. The journal supplement section was funded by the foundation Susan G. Komen for the Cure. Brody is the principal investigator of the Cape Cod Breast Cancer and Environment Study -- a study of exposures to "mammary carcinogens" from air and water pollutants, pesticides, detergents, plastics, and cosmetics.

 

Why is this study "junk"? Let me count the ways:

 

First, the conclusions drawn by the authors, namely that environmental pollutants cause breast cancer, are not based on human studies but instead on high-dose animal studies. The authors identify a series of synthetic chemicals that cause breast tumors in rodents and then leap to the assumption that these chemicals also cause breast cancer in women.

 

There is now a nearly-universal rejection by scientists of the use of laboratory rodent data to predict human cancer risks. Thus, it is astounding that this lengthy paper is predicated on the assumption that rodents are just "little women." Indeed, in a companion article in the same Cancer supplement -- this one written exclusively by staff members of the Silent Spring Institute -- the authors recklessly elevate the role of rodent tests by asserting that "identifying chemical carcinogens in animal studies is currently the primary means of anticipating cancer effects in humans." If indeed that statement were true, we would be classifying a whole host of natural foods as "cancer risks" because they naturally contain chemicals that cause cancer in rodents -- including mushrooms (hydrazines), table pepper (safrole), and bread (ethyl carbamate)

 

Second, the authors brazenly conclude that, while they cannot state with confidence how many breast cancer cases annually are due to exposure to trace levels of "chemicals" (including pesticides, ingredients in cosmetics and other "environmental pollutants"), they feel the evidence (what evidence?) is strong enough to warrant "strategies" to reduce exposures in an effort to reduce breast cancer risk.

 

Further, it is clear from the affiliation of the senior author that this "study" was in no way neutrally conducted. In its own description, the Silent Spring Institute claims to be "a non-profit scientific research organization dedicated to identifying the links between the environment and women's health, especially breast cancer." The study was commissioned by the Susan G. Komen foundation's "environmental factors and breast cancer" project. Thus from the get-go the assumption is that breast cancer is causally linked to "environmental" factors -- specifically chemicals in the environment. This article is not science -- it is environmental advocacy.

Read the whole thing.

Electronic Snake Oil?

Would one of you in City Hall please ask Mayor Brown to read this?  He's intent on blanketing Buffalo with free Wi-Fi.  There's a general consensus (not proven at all) that universal Internet access is the road to economic development -- especially for the poor.  But Wi-Fi's not as developed a technology as some seem to think and cities across the country are experiencing cost overruns and unhappy customers as the networks don't meet users' expectations.  Buffalo can't afford many costly mistakes.

Across the United States, many cities are finding their Wi-Fi projects costing more and drawing less interest than expected, leading to worries that a number will fail, resulting in millions of dollars in wasted tax dollars or grants when there had been roads to build and crime to fight.

More than $230 million was spent in the United States last year, and the industry Web site MuniWireless projects $460 million will be spent in 2007.

Without revenues they had counted on to offset that spending, elected officials might have to break promises or find money in already-tight budgets to subsidize the systems for the low-income families and city workers who depend on the access. Cities might end up running the systems if companies abandon networks they had built.

The worries come as big cities like Philadelphia and Portland, Ore., complete pilots and expand their much-hyped networks.

"They are the monorails of this decade: the wrong technology, totally overpromised and completely undelivered," said Anthony Townsend, research director at the Institute for the Future, a think tank.

Municipal Wi-Fi systems as the "monorails of this decade" -- hmmm.

Maybe we'd be wise to think about it some more.  The latest "great thing" often turns out, as did the monorail, not to have been.

Everything Would Be Fine If 'We' Were In Charge

Coyote Blog comments on the phenomenon whereby politicians of one party or the other create an institution that seems wonderful to them -- until the other party gains control.

I am reminded of all this because the technocrats that built our regulatory state are starting to see the danger of what they created. A public school system was great as long as it was teaching the right things and its indoctrinational excesses were in a leftish direction. Now, however, we can see the panic.  The left is freaked that some red state school districts may start teaching creationism or intelligent design.  And you can hear the lament - how did we let Bush and these conservative idiots take control of the beautiful machine we built?  My answer is that you shouldn't have built the machine in the first place - it always falls into the wrong hands.  Maybe its time for me to again invite the left to reconsider school choice.

Read the whole thing. He also mentions the FDA decision to disallow over-the-counter sales of the morning-after pill.  The lust for power is too great to convince modern politicians that they'd be better off removing control from these institutions rather than constantly expanding them.

Gun-Shop Owners Don't Kill People Either

I'm no big fan of Dale Volcker, but I was happy to see his office respond to the nasty op-ed in yesterday's Buffalo News.

Finally -- Real Bipartisanship

It must be bad legislation indeed that both right and left -- albeit for different reasons -- can agree to hate.

NIMFY

You see, we bought this lovely old house in East Aurora fronting a beautiful park, Hamlin Park.  We thought of it as our own private forest -- we never dreamed people would do things there.

Relief Is Just $1.6 Million Away

Buffalo-Lancaster Airport has plans to expand.  It will, among other things, lengthen its runway to allow the landing of corporate jets.  The total cost of the improvements will run around $1.6 million, the majority of which, will be paid by the federal government.

“We are going to be both a more safe airport and an airport that can service more types of small aircraft traffic than we can now,” said Eric Wobschall, airport manager.

Since Buffalo-Lancaster Airport is less than 6 nautical miles from Buffalo Niagara International Airport, he said, it is a designated as a “reliever airport” that can ease air congestion by siphoning away small-plane traffic.

Oh yes, a reliever airport is exactly what we need.  I mean, I just hate flying into Buffalo after a long trip.  It's late at night, you want to get home and the pilot comes over the P.A. and tells you that there's heavy traffic.  And there you are -- stuck in the air for, oh I don't know, two minutes while you wait for the other plane to land.

Soon we'll probably be spending many millions more to improve Niagara Falls Airport.  Why, we'll be so flush with reliever airports, we'll hardly know what to do.  I may have to relieve myself just thinking about it.  I'm pretty sure it will lead to job-creation, too.  Doesn't everything around here?

Legislature In Favor Of Weather Museum

Will its logo be a politician's finger in the air?

How About A Law Against Politicians Gouging

The House passed a law today aimed at gasoline "price-gouging."  They didn't define it, they won't even try to measure it, but they're quite sure they'll know it when they see it.  Rather like obscenity, I suppose, a fine example of which this law is.

Responding to high costs at the pump, the House approved legislation Wednesday that would outlaw gasoline price gouging.

Many lawmakers said that may be easier to say than to detect or enforce.

The legislation would penalize individuals or companies for taking "unfair advantage" or charging "unconscionably excessive" prices for gasoline and other fuels.

Now, you can define a murder or a rape (though determining if the latter actually happened is often another story) and the law's pretty clear on what theft means.  But passing a law against "unconscionably excessive" fuel prices is not legislation -- it's just an invitation to more lawsuits.  If the bill's chief sponsor, the delightfully named Bart Stupak (D-MI), were serious he would have specified a percentage over the prevailing price that qualified as "excessive."

But he's not, of course, and rightfully so.  And besides, the thing won't likely pass the Senate anyway.  It's fascinating, though, that with all we've learned about economics in general and price controls in particular, politicians are still trying to tell supposedly free citizens how much they can charge to sell their own property.  That's what's unfair, unconscionable and excessive.

More On Moore

The London Times reviews Sicko.

He talks to an unstressed doctor who has a four bedroom house in Greenwich and a £100,000 salary from the NHS. He films empty waiting rooms and happy, care-free health workers. He even talks to Tony Benn about how this wonderful marvel came into existence in 1948. What he hasn’t done is lie in a corridor all night at the Royal Free watching his severed toe disintegrate in a plastic cup of melted ice. I have. I’ve spent more hours than I care to remember in NHS hospitals vainly waiting for stitches or praying for the arrival of a midwife.

OK, one Brit's dissatisfaction with nationalized health care, but he's able to put it in perspective.

It’s when he flies a group of 9/11 heroes over to Cuba for free medical treatment they can’t afford back home that the film leaves the rails. Moore can’t resist over-egging the ironies, or revelling in the absurd. He uses a megaphone outside the Guantanamo Bay hostage camp to beg the use of the free medical facilities supposedly offered to Al Queda prisoners. It’s a provocative piece of lunacy. But there’s a strong whiff of sanctimony about Moore’s mighty indignation. It draws the sting from his satire.

American college students will probably love it.  After all, they've never been taught satire.

Cheaper Than Tinfoil

Still not ready to believe the corporate insistence that Wi-Fi and cellphone radiation aren't dangerous?  Well, I've found just what you're looking for.

Ugh, Me Need Meat

The New York Times gives the floor to a vegan who actually admits it's not all that it's cracked up to be.

An adult who was well-nourished in utero and in infancy may choose to get by on a vegan diet, but babies are built from protein, calcium, cholesterol and fish oil. Children fed only plants will not get the precious things they need to live and grow.

Wow, common sense!

Michael Moore -- Dumbing Down Ignorance One Film At A Time

The Instapundit on Michael Moore's evidently autobiographical film, Sicko.

MICHAEL MOORE:  The less you know, the more you like his films!  And vice versa, apparently:

Michael Moore received a standing -- and sustained -- ovation following the screening of his latest documentary, Sicko, at the Cannes Film Festival Saturday. But some critics suggested that in censuring the U.S. health system, Moore was overly generous in his praise of other countries'. At a news conference, Canadian journalists harangued Moore for, as Toronto Star film critic Peter Howell wrote, making "it seem as if Canada's socialized medicine is flawless and that Canadians are satisfied with the status quo." Apparently taken aback by the assault from the Canadian journalists, Moore said, "You Canadians! You used to be so funny! ... You gave us all our best comedians. When did you turn so dark?"

I don't know, maybe  three years on a waiting list for hemorrhoid surgery will do that to you . . . .

But you miss the point, Instapundit.  In Canada, everyone has to wait three years for hemorrhoid surgery (in Cuba it's no doubt much longer.)  But that's the beauty of it to Moore.  Rich people are reduced to scratching their behinds in agony just like the poor.  In fact, if there were ever a better description of socialism, I haven't seen it.

Freedom Of What's That You Say?

In, of all places, California, a court upholds a high school student's right to publish an article opposed to illegal immigration.  Sad that it merits notice, isn't it?

Youtube World

Kos advises his adoring readers to record everything they do.

 

Every appearance by a top Republican official or candidate should be recorded. Every one of them.

 

All it takes is one "Macaca" incident to transform a race or create one where one didn't exist. As the Montana incident blogged earlier today showed, a video can knock out prospective candidates before they even enter.

 

And this is no longer about finding one big blunder to put on a campaign commercial. It's about using video and (free) technologies like YouTube to build narratives about opponents, using their own words, at their own events.

Who, on the left or the right, could disagree?  Of course, leftists, most of whom don't work -- or if they do, work for the government which is about the same thing -- will have much more time for this.  But the stray conservative will be out there, too, and that can only be a good thing.

For years we've been treated to repeated media examples of Ronald Reagan's, Dan Quayle's, George H.W. Bush's and certainly GWB's malapropisms, missteps and verbal blunders.  It all served, of course, to cement the left-wing zeitgeist that conservatives are bumbling fools.  But now, in the age of Youtube, we can highlight the Democrats' mistakes, too.

Rush Limbaugh has been doing it for years, but of course it never broke into the mainstream media.  My favorite has always been the clip of Al Gore and Bill Clinton touring Monticello when Al Gore asked the docent whom a particular bust represented.  Rather flustered, the tourguide responded, "Um, that's George Washington."  This should all be great fun.

Welcome, Y'all!

Don Boudreaux presents his very-libertarian case for unfettered immigration here and there. 

Now, I would support open immigration, myself, as long as the newly-arrived were duly registered and were vetted for past criminal behavior.  And if they agreed that they would not be eligible for any state-provided benefits unless and until they became citizens.  I suspect it's the lack of that latter condition that's driving much of the conservative antipathy towards the proposed amnesty bill under consideration in the Senate.

We've created enough of a welfare state here, that overloading it with potentially tens of millions more might just crush it.

Please, Please, Please, Prove Us Right

The media is hoping desperately for a terrible hurricane season.

Ayn Rand Spins In Her Grave

The Tonawanda GM plant is competing for the production of a new diesel engine line.  The Erie County IDA is planning to kick in between $77 million and $88 million of incentives -- approximately 1/4 of the total investment needed.  And get this -- no new jobs will be created.  But, this is one time I won't fault the Erie County Industrial Development Agency.

I'm opposed to this sort of corporate welfare, but every city and every state is engaged in it, and we have to compete as best we can.  I wish the federal government could outlaw the practice, but the only legal grounds I could see would be a constitutional amendment declaring a separation of state and economics.  And there's fat chance of that.

There's Still An Economic Heartbeat In Buffalo

Finally! Someone's talking about real economic development in Buffalo.  You know, the kind where people can make money -- not the fake stuff where lofts for artists and subsidies for the theater district with a dollop of park space are supposed to cause outsiders to break our doors down for a chance to get in.

Bass Pro Shops has gone from “quarry” to “bait,” as Buffalo leaders look to lure other retailers for the proposed Canal Side project in the city’s Erie Canal Harbor neighborhood.

Among the targets: home furnishings giant Ikea and a powerful urban investment group led by former basketball great Earvin “Magic” Johnson.

Mayor Byron W. Brown is joining forces with Benderson Development Co. to pitch the $275 million mixed use project — to be anchored by a Bass Pro Shops Outdoor World store — at the International Council of Shopping Centers annual convention this week in Las Vegas.

“When Bass Pro is part of a project, other retailers sit up and take notice,” Brown said. “Having a commitment from Bass Pro and a physical plan for Canal Side puts us in a very powerful position to sell Buffalo.”

I love it.  Mayor Brown's my new hero -- as a well-deserved poke in the eye to the meddling preservationists this is better than Fred Thompson's video was to that fat film-maker.

Canal Side will be anchored by a waterside Bass Pro store housed in a period-style building along the Buffalo River, flanked by a public market and museum. It also will include an additional 600,000 square feet of retail/ office/residential/entert a i n m e n t development on adjacent blocks.

The mix of retail, residential and commercial projects will sprout up on the sites of the idle Memorial Auditorium and vacant Donovan State Office Building, as well as the Webster Block, which is currently a surface parking lot. Neither Brown nor Benderson officials would disclose their full list of retail, restaurant and entertainment targets but did confirm they will sit down with Ikea, the popular Swedish seller of sleek furniture and contemporary home decor items. Ikea’s closest stores to Buffalo are in Burlington, Ont., Toronto and Pittsburgh.

Ikea would be a great catch.  Remember all those city-types who pooh-poohed the idea of a "bait store"? Well, I can see them now rushing down to the waterfront in their ubiquitous little Scion xB's to stuff them full of sleek, packaged faux-Scandinavian furniture.  I might even join them. This might be one big-box they could learn to love.

Like every other business proposal (anywhere, not just in Buffalo) this one will probably be scaled down substantially before it gets built -- if it gets built at all.  But it's the best indication I've seen in this town that there are still some people who "get it" when it comes to development. 

And wouldn't you love to be a fly on the wall at the next Preservation Board meeting?  Expect great second helpings of shame-on-us from Donn Esmonde, too.

 

Out Of His Area Of Expertise?

Just-released tapes bring home the horror of one of Canada's worst air crashes.

After years of legal skirmishes, Canadians can finally hear the gripping soundtrack for one of the country's worst aviation disasters.

The Swissair Flight 111 air traffic control tapes, kept under lock and key since the 1998 tragedy, have been released to The Canadian Press following a tortuous court battle that went all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada.

The hours of recordings include 12 critical minutes, starting as the aircrew reports smoke in the cockpit and ending with a last desperate transmission as the aircraft nose dives at high speed into St. Margaret's Bay, N.S., near Halifax.

"Swissair one eleven heavy is declaring emergency," says one of the pilots in a heavy Swiss-German accent, as the second pilot makes a nearly simultaneous transmission in the cockpit confusion: "We are declaring emergency now."

"Heavy" refers to the aircraft's nearly full fuel tanks as it began its transatlantic flight from New York to Geneva on Sept. 2, 1998.

Um, no.  "Heavy" refers to the airliner's size.  It was a "wide-body," it had mor