The Houston Chronicle interviews a libertarian on Houston's city planning (or lack thereof) and I think it's more interesting than it is intended to be.

In my observation a Q&A of this sort is generally an opportunity for the interviewee to express their thoughts. Part of that is to confront counterarguments, but by and large a Q&A is not supposed to be a debate. But read it and tell me if it doesn't. The interviewer quite obviously seems to prefer Portland's aggressive planning over Houston's laissez faire strategy.

Q: Metro has been criticized for getting into transit-oriented development, but the kind of growth we had here for years — often called sprawl — is also abetted by government policies: The state or county builds a road out in the prairie where a developer puts a subdivision. In both cases, tax dollars are spent to encourage a particular residential pattern.

A: First, roads pretty much pay for themselves, and your toll roads really do pay for themselves. You didn't have to create a huge sales tax to build them like you did for the rail system. Second, about one in five Americans say they would like to live in the city near jobs, transit and shops, but the large majority say they would rather live in a suburban home with a large yard.

Q: Doesn't that one in five have a say, too?

A: In a city like Houston with no zoning there ought to be plenty of housing density for people who want it. But once that market is saturated, the only way to get more density is to subsidize it.

Q: I've been to Portland and it seems really nice.

Look closely and you will notice the distinct lack of a question mark at the end of that last "question".

Anyhow, more interesting than the point-counterpoint aspect of the interview is that the in the debate the Houston Chronicle writer takes the side of Portland against Houston.

Steven Landsburg, guest-blogging at The Volokh Conspiracy, points out the real beneficiaries of disaster recovery:

There has long been an expectation that in Katrina-like circumstances, the government will step in to help. That makes disaster-prone cities like New Orleans (and, among others, San Francisco) more desirable and pushes up land prices in those cities.

So if you own a house on a flood plain, chances are the purchase price included a premium for the disaster insurance that the government insists on providing. That's a boon not to you, but to the former owner, who might live in Montana by now. The wealth transfer goes not to those who are currently in danger, but to those who owned endangered property when the policy went into effect.

I would add one additional effect: the expectation of government help is based largely on precedents; and congressmen voting on emergency relief measures will feel the effects of this. Even if they do not see the connection Mr. Landsburg points out, their land-owning constituents surely do. Thus a vote for New Orleans reconstruction funds made by a representative from, say, California has the effect of rewarding the wealthy Californians at the expense of the poor.

The dean of admissions at MIT is stepping down; apparently, to get the job, she lied on her resume.

There have been a lot of lying-on-their-resume scandals in academia lately, some politically motivated, some just as a result of people poking into the backgrounds of administrators.

The school's findings:

Patti Richards, spokeswoman for MIT, said the school had received information about Jones' credentials and investigated them. "At various times she claimed to have received degrees from Albany Medical College, Rensellaer Polytechnic Institute, and Union College and we confirmed that she had not graduated from any of these schools."

I don't know what I should consider worse. On the one hand, she apparently served in her various MIT positions with distinction, and received awards for being an exemplary administrator. On the other hand, her lying on her resume has cost someone (possibly multiple people) jobs that they otherwise would have had.

I know I'd be pretty teed off if I found out that someone who'd been offered a job I'd applied for got it on the basis of a false resume.

Over at World Politics Watch, an interesting analysis (from Harvard, no less) of how the media sold out in the Israel/Hezbollah conflict.

Journalists did Hezbollah's work, offering little resistance to the Islamic militia's effort to portray itself as an idealistic and heroic army of the people, facing an aggressive and ruthless enemy. With Hezbollah's unchallenged control of journalists' access within its territory, it managed to almost completely eliminate from the narrative crucial facts, such as the fact that it deliberately fired its weapons from deep within civilian population centers, counting on Israeli forces to have no choice but defend themselves by targeting rocket launchers where they stood. Hezbollah's strong support from Syria and Iran -- including the provision of deadly weapons -- faded in the coverage, as the conflict increasingly became portrayed as pitting one powerful army against a band of heroic defenders of a civilian population.

Gradually lost in the coverage was the fact that the war began when Hezbollah infiltrated Israel, kidnapping two of its soldiers (still held to this day) and killing eight Israelis. Despite the undisputed fact that Hezbollah triggered the war, Israel was painted as the aggressor, as images of the war overtook the context.

This is one of the things that was most true during that time period - the media were continually looking for "access", and willing to do anything to get it. The fact that Hezbollah were caught staging "accidents" and faking photographs was amazing: even more amazing was the few media outlets that were willing to expose it. You'll note the highly left-wing and disgusting YouTube, which has suicide bomber videos and Jihad propaganda to this day, has pulled their copy lest someone see Hezbollah's propagandists for who they really are.

At the end of the day, I'm not surprised to see the media sell out; I am, however, disgusted at the lengths to which even Harvard researchers admit the media goes.

Mr. Ahlf's disgust with President Bush and the Republican party generally, expressed below, made me think about the recent midterm election and what message, if any, it contained. In particular, to what extent was it an expression of the unpopularity of Mr. Bush per se?

The notable feature of American politics over the six-year period of one-party rule was the cozy bargain between the executive and legislative branches which existed in fact, though it may never have been formally negotiated. Mr. Bush was notoriously complaisant in accepting congressional budgets and earmarks, including an astounding decision to veto nothing for six years. In short, Mr. Bush let the Republican-controlled congress do as it pleased.

In return, the congress was essentially mute on foreign affairs -- individual Democratic members were willing to give hostile speeches to any willing audience, but the congress as an official body remained passive. The three terms of congress were notable for their lack of initiative; the explosion of earmarked pork was just the most visible symptom of a congress with no issues larger than their individual districts to focus on. (Foreign policy remained a political issue as parties sought electoral support, but never a legislative issue.)

This bargain -- and its implicit subversion of the purpose of separation of powers -- was fortunately repudiated in 2006.

Ok, for those who are on the Dem side (or those straddling the fence), here's your chance.

I'm done with Bush.

What is Bush's record as it stands today?

#1 - in the 2000 elections, he promised to add 3,000 border patrol agents. He never did so. The later goal was increased to a new 6,000, the gap of which was supposed to be filled with National Guard troops while the training happened. This has not happened either.

#2 - Under his watch, the federal prosecutors have established a de facto lower limit on drug smuggling cases of 500 pounds of Marijuana. Anything less, they are simply "not interested."

#3 - Under his watch, Johnny Sutton's office in Texas has been ignoring cases of real drug smuggling, allowing "stash houses" to exist for over a year and a half even after multiple raids. At the same time, they have been ruthlessly persecuting the Border Patrol, going after agents using bogus trumped-up charges, lies, and deception. Friends of the Border Patrol have a lot on this; Sutton's office has also been caught lying to Congressmen about various cases. The phrase "prosecutorial misconduct" describes this office in much the same way "a tall building" describes the Sears Tower, but Bush's administration doesn't care, it seems.

#4 - It is apparently the policy of this administration that when armed commandoes violate the border of the US, National Guard troops are supposed to retreat before them.

#5 - The Katrina debacle still goes on. I do not blame Bush for what went on in the first few days, up to about a month or two. That was the fault of Louisiana's corrupt system, the fact that money that was supposed to go to Levee maintenance got funneled away into the corrupt hands of "committees", and Louisiana's general disarray. However, it's now far longer. Stuff like this is inexcusable, and even as the crime problem in New Orleans is returning to pre-Katrina levels, the crime NO exported to other areas in the evacuation is making problems there as well.

#6 - The lower class in America is being assaulted; wage deflation/suppression due to "under the table" workers and corporate avarice are at an all time high.

#7 - As RAW mentions below, the middle class is also under attack from all sides: corporations are slashing healthcare, raiding pensions, and making work lives worse every day. Wages are being depressed there too as workers try to compete with "outsourcing" to nations where workers' rights laws and environmental laws mean precisely Jack.

#8 - While I agreed with invading Afghanistan and Iraq, I'm now convinced Bush knows so little about the region, and so little about how to manage a proper war, that he's a bumbling moron. He's screwed up Afghanistan by letting the pressure off too early, when he turned around to go into Iraq. He's screwed up Iraq by having no idea of what was around the area, or the underlying pressures (such as the tribalist Sunni/Shia/Kurd internecine warfare that was bound to happen and the Iranian goal of taking the area over) that were going to create chaos after Saddam was removed.

#9 - Worst of all, he's done absolutely nothing good for the economy. In the first few years, there was a crash happening. It actually started under Clinton's watch, so I don't consider Bush responsible for starting it. I do, however, consider him responsible for about the year 2002 onward. What has happened in this time? The housing market is in the process of tanking. Even as wage depression hits the middle and lower classes, the price of goods and gas at the pump are working their way quickly upwards. Gas is almost $3/gallon again. This is the President who stood by his Saudi friends in the early days of his Presidency, and they made an announcement that oil over $30/barrel wasn't good for the Saudis, or America, or the world. At over $70/barrel now, the Saudis are laughing, and Bush has done absolutely nothing to work on getting the prices down.

There you have it. I'm done with Bush. Completely.

So here's the challenge to Democrats, or Democrat-boosters, reading out there: show me a REAL candidate. Show me someone I can trust to do the right thing at least 70% of the time. Show me someone who means what they say and seems to have at least a modicum of common sense.

Do that, and I'll vote Democrat in 2008.

With all the talk of Fred Thompson running or not running in the previous two weeks, it's tough not to forget about The Other Man From Tennessee, former Vice President Al Gore.

Well, apparently some people haven't forgotten:

Mr Gore, President Bill Clinton's deputy, has said he wants to concentrate on publicising the need to combat climate change, a case made in his film, An Inconvenient Truth, which won him an Oscar this year.

But, aware that he may step into the wide open race for the White House, former strategists are sounding out a shadow team that could run his campaign at short notice. In approaching former campaign staff, including political strategists and communications officials, they are making clear they are not acting on formal instructions from Mr Gore, 59, but have not been asked to stop. [...]

The former aide, who has himself signed up with Sen Edwards, said: "The question is: where have all the Kerry people gone? The answer for most of them is nowhere. Now ask yourself why."

Al Gore is like that ex-boyfriend or ex-girlfriend with whom things came so close to working out but ultimately fell apart. This is made all the more tragic if you feel that the bozo that came after wasn't worth your time. Gore was loyal, sturdy, and an all around good guy. What didn't he have that the other dude did? Oh, right, that flare. Was that really important? You're single, you're lonely, and you're given the opportunity to try again. You're waiting at the table for him to show up and you're wondering whether you'll fall in love with him the second he enters the door or whether you will remember all of the things that lead you to break it off with him in the first place.

Really, what was so bad about Al Gore? It's hard to remember. He was stiff, he was dorky, he was wooden, he was supposedly an inveterate liar but really wasn't. But he also came across as earnest, good-natured and smart. He was the kind of guy you could trust to escort your daughter, which his former boss wasn't, and he was the kind of guy that you could trust to sit your house, which his opponent in the eyes of many has turned out not to be. I wonder if the nation isn't that ex-girlfriend, looking at Gore and wondering what might not have been had it not been for the superficiality of bad decisions.

This leaves Gore with an absolutely huge opportunity. The kind that a bland politician with a lack of people skills rarely ever gets. Gore's campaign almost writes itself.

Al Gore: A serious man for serious times.

He's willing to let bygones be bygones. He's not going to say "I told you so." He doesn't have to. All he has to do is be there. Be the steady, reliable guy coming to the high school reunion years after being stood up at the prom. The mistakes this country made by standing him up are utterly apparent. We're at war, the economy is perpetually on the rocks, health care costs spiral out of control, environmental degradation runs rambant, the middle class is getting squeezed from every direction. We chose Bush and when our choice eventually became clear be bowed out, into the shadows, and let life go on without him. But now he's back. Things are bad in ways they wouldn't have been bad if we'd have chosen him in the first place.

I disagree with this assessment of Al Gore in a number of ways. Yet it is compelling on so many different levels that it's hard not to breathe in the intoxicants even if you're not drinking from the cup. Gore appears in many ways to be exactly what this country needs right now in the same way that Bush seemed like what the country needed in 2000. Maybe the results will be better or maybe they'll be worse. But it's his time in a way that it wasn't in 2000 or 2004.

At the same time, Gore was stood up at the prom for a reason. He was at times insufferable. He came across as opportunistic (though compared to Kerry it's easier to overlook now). And whether it was true or not the Republicans were able to paint him as a phony who wore a different mask for each occasion and whose face you never really saw. If they did it before, they did it again. In fact, they have one more reinvention of Al Gore to point to in order to back up their theory. It's possible that a renewed introduction between Al Gore and America will fall apart again because maybe the two were never really all that compatible to begin with. And yet, so close.

On a more practical level, the major Democratic candidates fall into two categories: inexperienced potential lightweights and the heavyweight with a lot of baggage. John Edwards has six years in the senate under his belt and a VP campaign and that's about it. Barack Obama makes Edwards look experienced by comparison. Maybe they'll be able to overcome it because they've "got it". But stick them on a stage with John McCain or Rudy Giuliani or even Fred Thompson, and they'll look lighter by comparison. As GWB proved that's not an insurmountable handicap, but I'm not sure how eager the country is to elect the next President Bush. As for the heavyweight Hillary Clinton, whose air of invincibility has been punctured and who has yet to find a real rationale for running or getting people to vote for her.

And in comes Al Gore. His rationale is clear if unspoken: vindication, a return to competent leadership, honesty, and integrity. Save America, save the planet. And unlike Edwards and Obama he doesn't even have to say these things to say them. Stand him next to John McCain and Rudy Giuliani and he will be the pinnacle of sanity and the promise of a return to normalcy. Stand him next to Fred Thompson and he will exemplify the experience that Thompson can only convincingly convey.

If I were to name the Democrat that I fear the most, it's Al Gore. Without hesitation.

At the same time, if I were in Gore's inner circle I'd tell him not to run. Despite all of his strength and the convergence of moods that bode so well for him almost two years from now, his chances of becoming president are still way less than 50%. It's more than just possible that the people that have fallen in love with him will remember why they never truly loved him the first time around. Right now in the eyes of many he was the guy wronged by an arcane system and suspicious election practices. He loses again and he'll be seen by everyone as a two-time loser. Mostly, though, he seems to have found a piece that will more likely than not unravel if he runs again, whether he wins or loses.

But I guess it's just that hard to come so close to something and not give it your all. Like Fred Thompson, even though he has more to lose than he has a chance of winning, if given the opportunity to serve this country in the greatest possible capacity, I can only imagine how difficult it would be to pass that up.

I hope to have a new post up over here tomorrow, but I posted up a storm over at Ten Second News to the left.

NBC has gotten some bad press for running the videos of Virginia Tech Mass Murderer Cho Seung-Hui. Mickey Kaus sums up the argument pretty succinctly:

Isn't Michael Ledeen right--NBC shouldn't have shown that video. It seems less like an "ethical challenge" than a no-brainer. Why encourage other potential Cho's to try for a similar publicity bonanza? This isn't a Unabomber like case where publicizing a killer's electronic media kit might help identify him.

I don't think I agree that the situation is that black-and-white. I'm not sure I agree with NBC, but I don't think their position is indefensible.

First, ideally speaking it's NBC News's job to show the news. By any objective measure that video was news. It's not a case of the news being caught on video but rather of the video itself being news. Before we saw the video everyone wanted to know "Why?!" and that video is, at least in part, a piece to that puzzle. Should news be suppressed simply because it benefits the wrong people? Sometimes they should, but refusing to show the news should never be the "no-brainer" decision.

The problem is that, as Kaus points out, it arguably encourages "potential Cho's". This is definitely problematic. I'm not sure, however, that I completely buy into it. It assumes that Cho and people like him are rational actors. I think it's more likely to make the next basketcase produce a video in addition to people, but I don't think it's going to be any more or any less an enticement of someone to actually commit the murders than the media's coverage absent the tapes. The same arguments made to suppress the video can be made to refrain from identifying the killer or covering the news story at all.

After Columbine many believed that was going to be just the beginning. It was the first time that the general public really got to know the killers and the killers became celebrities. It was the first one big enough for it to "stick". But instead of being the start of another round of school shootings, it was the high point (or low point, depending on how you look at it). The fact that Klebold and Harris became celebrities counterintuitively seemed to have no bearing on the actions of similarly disaffected young men or whatever bearing it had was overcompensated for by school administrations' measures enacted in response to the tragedy.

It's possible that time will make a clear fool of me on this and there will be more killers and more videos. But I think it's ludicrous to say, as Ron Coleman does, that "The blood of the victims of the 'next one' is on the hands of everyone in the decision-making chain at NBC for this utterly inexcusable decision". If it does happen again I don't think it'll be at all clear that the video is to blame.

I do have some problems with the videos. I believe that in addition to releasing clips they ought to have posted the whole thing online and basically put it in the "public domain" so to speak. The days when news organizations got to decide precisely what bits and pieces of the news we got are (or should be) over. Secondly, I'm not entirely comfortable with the fact that they showed the video before the situation was resolved. I don't buy into the "we were trying to assuage the killer" defense. Whatever merits they had, it's difficult to refrain from questioning their motives as it the whole thing came across as sensationalism at its worse and an attempt not only to report the news, but capitalize on their monopoly over a portion of it.

I don't know what I would have advocated if I'd been in the newsroom. I would be deeply uncomfortable running that video but it also wouldn't feel right to suppress it considering its newsworthiness. And whatever skepticism I had I wasn't there and whether they did it for the best reasons or the worst I'm not as sure as other people seem to be that it was the wrong thing to do.

Update: I'm actually more amenable to this argument:

The important thing is the victims; and yet, it is the madman's name we all know. Newspapers don't print the names of rape victims, by general agreement, so why not perform the same service in the case of shooting sprees?

Video or no video, Cho got what he wanted in the sense of publicity. Even without a video we'd seemingly know every last detail of the guy. The video is, in my mind, the icing on the cake. Refusing to even name the shooter would be a much bigger abandonment of journalistic reporting (which I should point out that I do not believe 'abandonment of journalistic reporting' to be a bad thing some of the time, regarding ongoing military operations and police investigations to name a couple), but it could at least be effective. Refusing to air the video strikes me as a half-measure.

Monday was April 16th. For those who don't know (and those are becoming many), it was Holocaust Remembrance Day.

On April 16th 2007, In the Middle East, in the state of Israel, a day of national remembrance and mourning.

On April 16th 2007, across the Middle East, Arab/Muslim state-sponsored newspapers were releasing editorials in which Jews were called "apes and pigs", and in which the blood libels of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion were repeated.

On April 16th 2007, in "Palestine", the words of Palestine TV's Ismail Radwan from March 30, 2007 were still being repeated as they were quoted from Muslim scripture: “The Hour will not come until the Muslims will fight the Jews and the Muslims will kill them, and the rock and the tree will say: ‘Oh, Muslim, servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, kill him!’”. Protesters took to the street and shouted for death to Jews, support for Hamas and other terrorist entities, and all matter of other nastiness.

On April 16th 2007, on the Daily Kos website, a writer named "Sabbah" was putting up disgustingly anti-semitic videos. He's since changed his link and put up a disclaimer saying he "inadvertently" linked to a neo-Nazi site. "Inadvertently" my ass.

On April 16th 2007, a BBC "reporter" was already trying to spin the killing of longtime reporter Alan Johnston into a "the Jews really did it" story, ignoring the evidence he was killed by Palestinian terrorists.

On April 16th 2007, Syria was busy threatening violence again.

On April 16th 2007, Britain - for the first time since the Holocaust occurred - was not teaching the Holocaust's history in schools out of fear of "offending" Muslim students who are being taught Holocaust Denial in their Mosques.

On April 16th 2007, in America, no news network reported on the fact that it was Holocaust Remembrance Day, because they were too busy with "up-to-the-minute" bullshitting by camera-hogging personalities who all had something to say about Virginia Tech and a deranged shooter.

And yet, something amazing did happen.

On April 16th 2007, a lone man, a man who had seen the worst of humanity, a man who had every right to try to preserve his own life, did the precise opposite. Liviu Librescu - a 76 year old teacher who himself had survived the Holocaust, which the world was supposed to be remembering yesterday - used his own body to block the classroom door and saved his students' lives at the cost of his own.

He should be remembered. How he died, how he lived, the lives he taught, and yes, the horrible tragedy he witnessed firsthand, should ALL be remembered.

And it is a shame to all the world that all the other things I mentioned, went on while he was selflessly showing us the best of humanity with his final act.

For the first time in my taxpaying history, Camille and I had to file for an extension. Unfortunately neither of her W-2 forms came in. Being completely inexperienced with tax extensions I didn't realize that you were supposed to have an idea of how much money you paid in taxes and how much you owe. Well heck, if I knew that I might not have to file for an extension!

Anyhow, that brings me John Edwards's proposal to have the IRS pay my taxes for me:

Under his plan, the IRS would gather tax information for 50 million Americans with relatively simple returns, including those who don't need to file itemized deductions to record charitable contributions or capital gains.

The IRS would calculate their tax bill or refund and mail a final report to the taxpayer. That person would be able to just sign and return the form. Edwards' campaign estimates that process would save taxpayers an estimated 225 million hours each year.

The IRS already collects basic tax information for audit purposes, but Edwards questioned why the service makes taxpayers spend days "gathering their information, hunched over tax forms and tax tables and calculator trying to figure it all out, just to tell the IRS the information it already has and it already knows."

I've always wondered about that myself. It seems to me that a whole lot of information is duplicated between employer and employee. Apparently a program like that was tried in California and was a smashing success.

A few years ago Devah Pager and Northwestern University lead a study on the employment prospects of felons (a drug-related felony that landed them in prison for 18 months) when it comes to entry level jobs in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, advertised either in the local newspaper of the state's job placement posting. Her group employed four testers, two black males and two white males, who applied for various entry-level positions. The two black guys would apply for a job with one admitting to a felony and one not admitting to a felony and the two white guys did the same.

It's no surprise that the felons had diminished prospects when it came to applying for the jobs. Even when the crime they committed did concern misbehavior that would directly adversely affect their job functions and even though Milwaukee actually has laws against discrimination against ex-convicts. For the jobs they applied to, the results went as follows:

White without a conviction: 34% callback rate
White with a conviction: 17% callback rate
Black without a conviction: 14% callback rate
Black with a conviction: 5% callback rate

The aspect of the study that jumps out at me is not so much the relative callback rates between felons and non-felons but rather the rates between the races. If I'd been asked to guess, I would have figured that blacks would probably be called back between 65-80% or so as much as the whites. I would not have guessed less than 50% in a major metropolitan area and I definitely would not have guessed that having black skin would be the statistical equivalent of having a criminal record.

It may not be as simple an issue to say "white racists are picking on black applicants" because we don't actually know the races of the people making the decisions and we're not sure why precisely they made the decisions that they did. For all we know all of the recruiting managers were black. The decision may have hinged more on a fear of the work ethic or moral terpitude rather than race explicitly. But I'm not sure how much that matters. The salient point to me is that young black men without a college degree face more of an uphill climb than do young white men in the same demographic and that's important to know regardless of who is doing the hiring. And even if the recruiting managers are more concerned about moral terpitude and work ethic, they seem to be making the determination of the applicant based almost entirely on race which is a factor the applicant cannot change.

They controlled the study to make sure that the applicants were bright and effective communicators, they made sure that there wasn't a disparity in the resumes, and they applied for the same types of jobs with the same types of recruitment practices in the same areas. The only potential flaw I can see is that the black testers applied for the same jobs as one another but not the same precise jobs as the whites. That could account for some disparity, but given the similarity of profiles of the jobs it seems unlikely that this would account for the wide gulf. Every other objection I can think of was addressed in a section of the study itself.

In regards to the central focus of the study I agree with the study's authors that the seeming inability of ex-convicts to find work is a problem. It's easy to write them off and say that they shouldn't have committed the crime to get convicted in the first place. It's true enough. Nonetheless it creates a drag for society at large to have a segment of society that can't find jobs but has criminal experience. It's setting them up to fail.

I disagree, however, with some of the suggestions that the study makes. They seem to support laws that would allow a potential employee to conceal his or her convictions. I believe that an employee has a right to know and act on the criminal past of its applicants (so I disagree with the Milwaukee law prohibiting it). The right of a potential employer to know who they are hiring trumps a criminal's right to privacy in that regard.

But absent that I'm really not sure what we should do. I'm certainly not opposed to looking into sending fewer drug criminals to prison on a number of fronts, including the disruption that occurs in their employment history. I've seen in other ways how the judicial incarceration-and-release system sets up a class of people to fail. On the other hand I think it's a bit sanguine to suggest that if we just give them a chance they will take us up on it or do less damage. After all, they had a chance before their conviction.

Even though I don't have any firm conclusions, I found both the racial and judicial aspects of the study to be quite fascinating and worth the time it took to read the report. At the very least I will need to hold on to it to use as an object lesson as to the most clear and present dangers of marijuana usage: getting caught.

Russell Arben Fox, in a call for "left conservatism", skillfully phrases its call for government assistance to the right people:

... the wealth that really matters is one that can be generated and held by the productive arts of a community of working people.

Those communities are mostly gone now. If the ideals behind them are to be realized again, it certain won't be the government or a new progressive program which will recreate them--that will happen family by family, community by community, away from the rush to modern media and markets. But families and communities are no longer, if they ever were in our theoretically classless and mobile society, locked in one place, able to allow their dynamism who work them deeper into the land they occupy. To provide some security for those few who do try to lock themselves down for the sake of the future and more permanent things, some assistance will be needed.

The ends thus defined will serve to define "populism" for our purposes.

Note that this populism is explicitly aligned against "creative destruction", which it portrays as the conversion of man to mere homo economicus:

"Oh, the places you'll go," crooned Dr. Seuss, and Americans went and went and went until we became a rootless itinerant people – which, it turns out, is exactly the kind of workers required by an economy built on creative destruction. Nanny-state leftists and corporate-state rightists have long been in bed together promoting the wage-entitlement economy with its instantly mobile and fetter-free worker and 100 percent out-of-the-home servitude.
There is a tremendous cost to the health of the republic, to the common good, that comes with the creative yet destructive power of unlimited economic and political progressivism.

The idea of community-centered life is certainly appealing, and the case that we should attempt to make such a life possible for those who choose it seems compelling. This is the stated aim of modern populism: not enforced agrarian living for all, but a palatable option for those who choose to exit the rat race.

But there is one salient feature about converting people to mobile, insecure economic engines: it works. And governments at all levels now depend on that new plateau of productivity to pay for an increasingly comprehensive buffet of services. The more Messrs. Fox and Stegall and their cohorts manage to extract government financial assistance for those who live differently, the more that same government must demand maximum productivity from all its citizens. This is the paradox which populist leaders have not faced: that their prescriptions, which entail increased governmental outlays, will be self-defeating unless the growth of government dependency is reversed.

It is worth mentioning that this same argument is sufficient to justify the "fusionism" between social conservatives and small-government libertarians -- big government is intrinsically inimical to any way of living that is not maximally productive in measured GDP terms.

President Gerald Ford said, "A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have." This is in fact understated: a government big enough to support your preferred lifestyle is big enough to prefer that you live so as to support it in style.

[HT: Ross Douthat]

Ross Douthat has some solid thoughts on what it means to be in and out of power:

I think there's some truth to the underlying idea, which is that paleoconservatism tends to display the weaknesses you would expect from an intellectual movement that hasn't held power, in any meaningful way, in God knows how long - specifically, a tendency to advance ideas without any regard whatsoever to their practicality, to condemn others for making compromises without pausing the consider the constraints and difficulties involved, and to obsess endlessly over battles that were lost a long time ago. Obviously, movements that are in power tend to succumb to precisely the opposite temptations, accepting an endless series of moral compromises as "the price of power" or "just the way things are," which is why a little Old Right purism can feel like a breath of fresh air in the era of Jack Abramoff and company.

This may even be more true of libertarians. I think that one of the biggest problems with conservatives is that it's so difficult for them to govern on the abstract positions that get them elected. People have a much bigger stomach for "limited government" during an election than they do when they're about to see a social program cut. Those areas where they can get the public on board, a simpler tax code, say, the vested interests in opposition are too great to overcome and the issue so complex that the public loses interests. Liberals sort of have the opposite problem, wherein it's difficult to campaign on bigger government in the abstract but a large number of the places that they'd spend money do have not-inconsiderable support. Of course they'd been potbanging on the deficit as the party out of power usually does and even if they get the presidency in 2008 it won't be easy to deliver in conjunction with their other promises.

So voters are left with a degree of dissonance between what the guy they're going to vote for is campaigning on and what they will be able to do (and what they will spend political capital on) when they get into office. Most specifically in the area of conservatives and smaller government, it's reached the point beyond which cognitive dissonance can bridge the gap. It polls well and there is a deep philosophical rationale for lesser government, but we're way beyond the point where we can consider it plausible.

The question is whether or not Republicans can jettison that idea in favor of market-driven governance. The ownership society is still preferable to me over the Democratic alternative and I would actually feel better about knowing what might happen if "my guy" gets elected. On the other hand a conversation with some conservatives that are committed to smaller government (at least economically) over all else leads me to believe that for every voter like me that they feel more comfortable, they might lose voters like him.

Right now one of my primary discomforts with Fred Thompson is that he's still singing the praises of smaller government. While I'm generally behind that idea, it doesn't tell me very much about what kind of government he will throw his weight behind once he gets into office and the ideal of lesser government evaporates. Whatever his faults have been in 2000 Bush at least managed to answer that question and for the most part has actually tried to implement those ideas (faith-based initiative, privatizing social security, market-based expansion like Medicare Plan D). At least with Mitt Romney and his ill-fated universal coverage plan in California I have an idea of how he would go about government expansion. But a lot of the candidates are hiding behind the idea that we will just make government smaller.

The biggest issue for me is health care. I'm not looking for someone that is against government meddling in it even if the government should meddle in it. People are so dissatisfied with the system something is going to happen with it over the next ten years. Some sort of at least semi-comprehensive reform will take place. I am worried about how exactly the Democrats will go about it if they're given the opportunity. So I'm looking for a Republican that will initiate enough reform to take the issue off the table. I have my own ideas as to which proposals would be preferable over others, but it's hard to gauge where the candidates stand in a primary where the voters and activists that matter the most don't want to hear that they will do anything. Once the general election rolls around the Republican nominee will likely come up with something, but I'd like to know what they will come up with before I vote in the primary.

Slate's got an interesting pair of articles on taxation up today. The first explains why US tax policy has made saving money a sucker's bet for the lower and middle income brackets, offering that up as a possible reason why the US personal savings rate is steadily dropping. The second offers up some rather insane "bold ideas" on how to change the tax code.

The second article offers up some odd ideas - one being a tax system in which a basic threshold of income was tax-free, another bracket taxed at 50%, and anything other than that at 30%, which would make the "richest" pay at a rate that equates to just about 30%, while the poorest paid nothing and those who earned exactly enough to match the 50% bracket were actually paying 25% of their total income. The basic idea is to make "extra work" and "extra income" taxed at less of a rate than the "base" income, not more. Intriguing to play with in theory, but I doubt you'd be able to get most of the US taxpayers to understand the math.

A tax on the middle-aged? Ouch. Seriously; based on general life-cycle, one would expect that the 40-45 year old bracket are the ones trying to pay for their kids' college educations. Slap a tax on them right at that moment, and watch the pain ripple everywhere.

As for the genetics thing, see Gattaca.

The first article is the more intriguing, because it offers up an interesting picture - that people are investing less because they are making a conscious choice that saving money isn't worth it. I'm not quite ready to accept that explanation, mostly because it assumes far too much intelligence on the part of people who've proven (in general) not to have it. Don't get me wrong: the math definitely holds up. However, it's my opinion that the phenomenon of less savings is driven more by conspicuous consumption and a generation of people who've grown up not being taught how to live within their means; thrift, savings, and money management were just something that didn't seem to get taught to the generations who were kids during the 70s and 80s, and society may be paying that price today.

The other thing is that certain investments (indeed, some investments people ought not be making) have become more attractive than personal savings accounts and Certificates of Deposit. Primary among these has been home ownership, the housing market, and the "Home Equity Loan" (a great renaming of the proper term, which used to scare a lot of people off: "Second Mortgage").

People are being told that they are supposed to consume. Movie rental businesses are down, movie buying is up - not surprising when the price of new and used DVD's has become what it is. Instead of a "reasonable" television, a lot of people are spending way too much on a larger screen TV; they also don't do proper shopping research on the make, the model, and the longevity of the purchase. The end result is that people have replaced the old pattern of researching what they needed, finding a product to match, comparing prices to get the price range, saving up money to purchase, and then going and purchasing it from the supplier who offers the best price and options (paying a little more to a company more likely to honor the warranty, for example, might be warranted).

What's it been replaced with? "Ooh, shiny" and the production of a credit card. Not a good economic model for people to live by.

Not dressing Kermit the Frog up in a snappy suit, but taking the reverse approach to energy efficiency; starting with the things people want, and improving them.

When I was younger, the most fuel-efficient cars on the road were made by a company called Geo. Geo's line of cars sported better gas mileage than most. Unfortunately, they were also the butt of ridicule, being unfavorably compared to go-karts and riding lawnmowers in terms of engine power. The end result was disappointing sales and the dissolving of the company.

In like vein, the hybrid car has become a niche market, but it's not become mainstream yet. Attempts by gas-guzzling, energy-inefficient, glory-and-attention-seeking celebrities to get people to all go out and buy hybrid cars haven't succeeded, for the most part. Why? Because people see the hybrid car - incorrectly or not - in much the same way they saw the Geo; an underpowered vehicle that, while fuel efficient, might not deliver when they needed it to.

Schwarzenegger says:

"We don't have to take away the cars from the people. Instead, what we have to do is make those muscle cars and those SUVs and those hummers environmentally muscular."

Ultimately, I think this makes a lot of sense. An engine conversion such as this offers the option to drastically increase fuel efficiency (by reducing engine knock and allowing the use of higher compression on lower-quality fuel). Hybrids, made right, don't have to look like bicycle-wheeled go-karts or odd square-ish contraptions.

Theoretically, once the technology is finished - because the conversion rates aren't there yet - it might be theoretically possible to alter the roofs of vehicles, adding a network of solar cells to them. One imagines that the 8-9 hours a car usually sits in the parking lot is a pretty good amount of sunlight energy that could charge the batteries of a hybrid/electric vehicle.

Will an SUV with a higher-efficiency conversion be as efficient at carrying one person from point A to point B as, say, a two-person hybrid/electric car? Probably not. But if you can't get someone to drive the latter, better to try to get them to drive the former than spend years fruitlessly yelling at them and just making the problem worse.

For some things, defining the "victim" is easy. Someone who's injured, murdered, has their property broken by another, is a victim.

For some things, it's not so easy. In the Duke Lacrosse case, for instance, all charges have now been dropped. That the accuser is a victim - many times over, and having a horrible life, to which she has doubtless contributed but that is likely not all her fault - is certain. It now appears equally certain that the three Lacrosse players, as well as the team and its coach (affected by having their season cancelled and a forced resignation), were all victims too - of a racist and overzealous prosecutor who sought to use the case for political gain. Nifong, the prosecutor, will likely be disbarred in June for misconduct, and civil lawsuits over his behavior are pending. (The charges against Nifong are available here. They're pretty serious.)

In the case of crimes when the perpetrator isn't known, entire communities can become victimized as suspicion causes people to become seclusive and suspicious of their neighbors. This is especially true in the case of gruesome cases, even if a perpetrator is later possibly caught.

A number of people are victims of the crimes of others - by being convicted as look-alikes or people with similar names.

Plenty of people are being victimized by the ongoing question of climate change, whether humans cause it, and a ton of junk science - the idea that ethanol can be the future, for instance - that's pushed as a "solution" while it in reality, it just makes for more problems. The latest is this "carbon-neutral" stuff that's being pushed by people... who fly around in jets all day, run motorcades of a dozen or more cars, and have mansions that could house 200 people in which only 2 live.

TIME has an interesting piece on some odd victims of violent/brutal/sickening crimes: the juries who have to look at the evidence for days but, unlike the police and prosecutors and lab workers and court employees, are given no counseling to help cope with what they're seeing.

A lot of victims to go around.

As anyone who reads this blog ought to know, I love Texas. I used to have the bumper sticker that said that I wasn't born here but I got here as fast as I could. I don't know if it'll happen, but I'd greatly like for my wife and I to settle down in Texas. If my fondness for Texas were any less, though, I would have told the whole state that it can go to Hell courtesy of its medical board.

As it stands right now we're going to be in Austin for at least a year longer than initially planned. I'm not complaining, mind you, but we're largely doing it because my wife was passed up on a couple fellowships out of state. It's possible that she would have been passed up anyway, but she had the huge strike against her that she would not have been able to start on their start date. Why? Because she will be finishing her tour here a month late. Why? Because of the Texas Medical Board that honestly didn't seem to care if my wife set herself up in Texas or somewhere else.

Texas has an impending shortage of doctors and you would think that they would be chomping at the bit to get doctors accredited as quickly as possible (barring legitimate reason for concern) to prevent that from happening. At the very least you would think that they would avoid being antagonistic towards the doctors that want to set up practice in this state. But instead, Texas has the reputation for being a difficult state for licensure and a headache for would-be Texas doctors.

It would be one thing if the purpose of this was to root out bad doctors, but as far as I know Texas's approval rate for doctors seeking licensure is no lower than other states. But they still drag doctors seeking licensure in front of hostile panels over issues where no crimes have occurred, no one has been hurt, and no AMA or state regulations have been skirted. Eric Scheffey ruined bodies and lives for years and they couldn't find a way to do anything about it until 2003, but they nonetheless have a new would-be doctor track down her medical records dating back ten years (from a dozen doctors in three states) and more-or-less strip her of her medical confidentiality (it's all in her file now) for having the nerve to want to practice medicine in Texas with a less-than-pristine medical history of her own back in Oklahoma, a decade ago.

Again, we're talking about things that have affected patient care in the three years she was a resident in Idaho or when she was a medical student making the rounds in Louisiana. All of this for a physician-in-training license wherein even now that she has it she couldn't practice without another doctor's supervision (she's more than a resident, but less than a fully licensed doc).

Since we're going to be staying in Texas, though, she's going to have to do some temp work (also known as "locum tenens") to try to bide time to try again for another fellowship. To do so she's going to have to apply for full medical licensure. As it turns out the Chronicle had an unusually worthwhile article on the subject and how it pertains to Texas's shortage of doctors in general.

Dr. Kimberly Bingaman, a pediatric neurosurgeon at San Antonio's Christus Santa Rosa, tells a different temping tale.

The 39-year-old mother of three moved to San Antonio from Augusta, Ga., last May, expecting to begin working in June. The license she applied for in February, however, did not arrive until October.

"I have licenses in nine other states, so I started traveling" to places like Missouri and Minnesota in order to support her family, she said.

A month before Bingaman began working at Santa Rosa, she read a news article about a shortage of neurosurgeons in San Antonio.

"Meantime, here I was, ready, willing and able to work and traveling all over the country, essentially, providing coverage when people in San Antonio couldn't get treated here," she said. "It was very ironic."

Some states are promoting a fast-track process for temporary licensure, though of course Texas isn't one of them. The powers-that-be say that they just hadn't thought about it. Fair enough, as who would expect the Texas Medical Association to try to think of ways to address the doctor shortage?

The fact that a doctor who wants to work a temp job in Texas has to have a Texas license in hand or go through the long approval process, just like a doctor seeking permanent posts, is such an "inhibiting factor" that Staff Care has mostly given up trying to get out-of-state doctors licensed in Texas, Miller said in an interview.

Of the some 200,000 doctor days Staff Care filled in 2006, assignments in Texas account for 18,000 days, he said.

If the licensure turnaround in Texas were 90 days, like it is in many states, Staff Care estimates it would have twice the number of doctors working in Texas than it does now — which would lead to roughly twice as many days filled per year, Miller said. [...]

Texas ranked 42nd out of 51 in the American Medical Association's 2005 measurement of patient-care doctors per capita, said Marcia Collins, director of the medical education department at the Texas Medical Association. The ranking includes the District of Columbia.

On October 3, 1951, the New York Giants' Bobby Thomson came to bat in the bottom of the ninth with two out, and the Dodgers leading by two runs. He pulled Ralph Branca's inside fastball into the left-field stands, abruptly winning the game, the series, and the pennant with the Shot Heard 'Round the World.

In 1992, Don DeLillo wrote about this event, and focused not on Thomson or even Branca, but on Dodgers left fielder Andy Pafko, over whose head the ball flew. "Pafko at the Wall", which became the introduction to Underworld, zooms in on Pafko just as the rest of the world ceased to notice him:

He tomahawked the pitch and the ball had topspin and dipped into the lower deck and there is Pafko at the 315 sign looking straight up with his right arm braced at the wall and a spate of paper coming down.

This shifting of focus to the unnoticed or absent is Mr. Delillo's unmistakable signature. Another example is provided by the quiet climax of "Long Tall Sally", the next section of Underworld:

I look at the Lucky Strike logotype and I think target.
I watched men in moon suits bury drums of nuclear waste and I thought of the living rocks down there, the subterrane process, the half-life, the atoms that decay to half the original number. The most common isotope of uranium is bombarded with neutrons to produce plutonium that fissions, if we can generate a verb from the energy of splitting atoms....
But the bombs were not released. I remember Klara Sax talking about the men who flew the strategic bombers as we all stood listening in the long low structure of sectioned concrete. The missiles remained in the rotary launchers. The men came back and the cities were not destroyed.

Mr. DeLillo's characters are sometimes incomplete, but this makes them more rather than less realistic: they sense their own incompleteness, and search for some means to redress it. These quests, which drive the plots of his novels, are ill-defined and may change course in midstream, like the mutating assassination plot in Libra or the intermittently homicidal Jack Gladney in White Noise. No one is more aware of this uncertainty, of the tentativeness of identity, than Mr. Delillo himself. Consider the haunting prologue to Mao II:

The thousands stand and chant. Around them in the world, people ride escalators going up and sneak secret glances at the faces coming down. People dangle teabags over hot water in white cups. Cars run silently on the autobahns, streaks of painted light. People sit at desks and stare at office walls. They smell their shirts and drop them in the hamper. People bind themselves into numbered seats and fly across time zones and high cirrus and deep night, knowing there is something they've forgotten to do.
The future belongs to crowds.

Time magazine's got an interesting piece today to examine. Their headline is, "Should Incest Be Legal?"

It's not quite what you'd think. The article's actually an exploration of the aftermath of Lawrence V. Texas (the striking down of Texas' sodomy laws on privacy grounds). At the time, there were those who said this laid open the grounds for lawsuits on a host of other subjects. From the article:

It turns out the critics were right. Plaintiffs have made the decision the centerpiece of attempts to defeat state bans on the sale of sex toys in Alabama, polygamy in Utah and adoptions by gay couples in Florida. So far the challenges have been unsuccessful. But plaintiffs are still trying. Even using Lawrence to challenge laws against incest.

The article examines a case of something that would be illegal in one state, but not in others - a case of a man who had (consensual) sex with his (adult, age 22) stepdaughter. Yes, it's weird. But on such weird grounds do such cases often float. The larger part of the article has to do with what a "compelling state interest" - the grounds on which Lawrence V. Texas was decided - might be. I'm not too interested in the Incest example, though there's a plethora of jokes - in Hollywierd and other places - about people who get together, make a couple bad decisions, and then find out later that they are blood-related cousins or somesuch.

Alabama's got a ban on sex toys. Specifically, a ban on devices sold for the purpose of "the stimulation of human genital organs." While it was overturned in 2002 (on LvT grounds), it was restored in 2004 by the 11th Circuit. Should this be the case? Alabama's legislature says this would open the doors for other, worse things. Most sex toys look more like something you'd laugh at. Besides, Alabama (to be fair, along with a host of other states) already lets cousins marry freely.

The other interesting thought about this is what, if anything, it does to the idea of polygamy/polyandry and group marriages. My major beef with polygamy is that, uniformly, it has just about always been a method by which men exploited women. Multiple marriage in ancient dynasties was limited to the rich and powerful assembling themselves a harem. The "prophet" Mohammed went around catching wives wherever he could, including telling his son to hand over his wife because he thought she was hot (Zainab bint Jahsh), marrying and having sex with a prepubescent girl (Aisha), and raping a girl the night after ordering her tribe's men(including her husband) slaughtered, calling it a marriage only the next day (Safiya). To this day, one of the threats a Muslim man can give to his wife for being "willful" in Muslim nations is the threat to go get another wife. (see Nonie Darwish's commentary here for a starter.)

Mormon marriage - especially the kind of child abuse practiced by the fundamentalist mormons - I consider to have been just as bad in the past. There are, however, some people who claim it's a good thing. My take on this is that first, the marriage laws have to be equal - if a man can have more than 1 wife, then the wife should be allowed more than 1 husband. Of course, this can get tricky (marriage records would get insane the more in a marriage there were). If a group of people can make it work, I can't really tell them no - but the prerequisites HAVE to be that it's consensual, and all are of age to make the decision of their own free will.

Should all of these be struck down on the basis of Lawrence V. Texas? I'm not sure. I think the Alabama lawmakers who came up with the sex toy ban probably have too much time on their hands, and the ban offends my libertarian bent. I think that incest laws straddle the line pretty closely, again predicated on the consent/age factor. Most of the court cases likely to come up with relation to this, alas, are going to be the kind of creepy cases people want to throw the book at anyways, so don't expect it to be settled.

As for the polygamy thing? The US has a ban on polygamy, but it's state by state. If one state allowed it, the rest aren't legally allowed to show it equal treatment, as per the wording of the "Defense of Marriage Act." If one state did, expect uproar. Unlikely to happen short of a really bizarre court ruling, but possible on those accounts.

A loyal Marginal Revolution reader, attempting to once again tempt Tyler Cowen into a Dear Abby moment, asks:

Tell us how "Knightian [i.e., unquantifiable] uncertainty can be made operational"...

This obfuscatory term reminds me of the Dire Straits lyric:

History boils over, there's an economics freeze,
Sociologists invent words that mean industrial disease

If you want chance to "be operational" for you, then be alert to events and analyze them for opportunities. Louis Pasteur has already said the final word on this topic:

Chance favors the prepared mind.

Mr. Cowen takes the bait, here.

Eugene Volokh draws our attention to an interesting article about a bunch of students suing anti-plagiarism site Turnitin.com for copyright infringement:

Turnitin.com is a commercial service that aims to help educators catch plagiarism in student papers. Schools require that student papers be submitted to the site, which (1) checks each student paper against its database, and (2) adds each student paper to its database so that future papers can be checked against it. I take it that the database already contains papers from commercial term paper mills, encyclopedia entries, and the like; but adding student papers helps spot students who are copying from classmates, or from friends at other schools, as well as students who are copying from publicly available sources.

But, the high school student plaintiffs say, step 2 violates our copyright: You folks are making money by copying our papers onto your servers. The consent you get from us is inadequate because we are coerced to give it (especially plausible, I take it, when the students are students at public high schools, and when they are within the compulsory school attendance age range). And your use is not fair use, chiefly because it's commercial. (Here's turnitin.com's legal analysis, which argues that the use is indeed fair.)

I had always thought, erroneously it seems, that when you turn in a paper for a grade you are "compensated" for it by getting a grade and so you no longer hold the exclusive rights to the paper. I assumed that the teacher, professor, or school had rights to do such things as reproduce without permission (as an example to future classes or part of some compilation) and I would have thought that this fell into this category. But I hadn't really considered the fact that a company is theoretically profiting off of students' work, which adds another element to it.

The lawsuit itself is ironic because the plaintiffs are trying to prevent something that would (theoretically) prevent someone else from stealing their work.

The question is what kind of recourse should a student have? The plaintiffs in this case are resentful of the guilty-until-proven-innocent stance that the site (and use of the site) takes. First they investigate the author's work (accusing him of cheating) and then if it's a-go they put it in a database to make sure that no one else uses it (accusing them of selling their papers). Should a student have a choice as to whether or not his work is part of that enterprise? Particularly when school attendance is compulsory, leaving no way to opt out at all?

I don't know what the law says so I will leave that to Volokh, other lawyers, and the judges. But despite compulsory attendance and any objections the students may have, I think that ethically Turnitin is in the clear. If a student demands his work be protected, he shouldn't turn it in for credit.

Addendum: Note that by "not turning it in for credit" I am referring to the specific paper whose copyright the student is interested in protecting. I am not advocating that he or she not turn in anything at all. As an example I was under the impression while in college that any paper that I turned in was no longer solely my intellectual property and so I would not have turned in something that I might want to make money from later. Turns out the precaution may not have been necessary, but I don't see it as an unreasonable state of affairs for academic papers.

...is paved with good intentions.

Or so the old story goes.

This isn't news to those who have been paying attention - the price of a can of corn is up. The price of milk is up, the price of beef and pork and chicken are all up. The price of tortillas is up. Why? Because they are primarily fed by or made from corn, and if you haven't noticed, over 50% of this year's corn crop went to producing (dum dum DUMMMMM) - Ethanol. Pretty much the entirety of the US is now on the 90/10 gasoline/ethanol blend, which in addition to reducing gas mileage, also causes more problems for automobile engines. Why? Because ethanol is caustic and eats away at the fuel lines, producing materials to clog the valves and the fuel injectors.

The end result's been a nightmare. Far from "reducing" the dependency on foreign energy, all Ethanol production is doing is speeding up inflation and raising the price of basic dietary staples. What's worse, the production of Ethanol has yet to produce an energy "profit" from the oil and coal burned in its production, and worldwide, rainforests and other arable land are being burned to produce the "biofuel" plants.

It's a sad day when, in the cause of environmentalism, we harm the environment far worse than we otherwise would.