One of my heros, Mike Munger, has a great piece on recycling in Durham here. His case is fairly simple: if it’s a valuable resource, someone will pay you to take it away. If it’s garbage, you have to pay someone to take it away. The price system is the only standard of value we have.
Greens use a different standard, though, one akin to selling indulgences, perhaps. Paraphrasing John Baden: Applying resource economics to recycling is like applying nutrition analysis to taking communion. (See also my piece on the recent trash legislation put out by the NC General Assembly in which I also describe how recycling consumes more resources than it saves.)
-Max Borders
Well, it’s that time again for the results of the latest Elon University "poll" to be released. See this AP article here. (I use the term poll very lightly, it should be more accurately called a survey.)
The media will once again fawn over the poll and report the results as a snapshot of the pulse of North Carolina.
Just remember, when you read about who’s up or down, that this survey is of all North Carolina residents. More or less, they start dialing random phone numbers and then figure out who they have on the line.
*** Update: Download methodology_and_raw_data_elon.doc
(word doc) Here is the actual methodology statement:
The Elon University Poll is conducted using a
stratified random sample of households with telephones in the population of
interest – in this case citizens in North Carolina.
Ok, so how is it relevant or newsworthy to ask people with telephones their political preference without asking 1) if they are registered to vote or 2) if they even plan to vote. If both of these criteria aren’t met, then their opinion doesn’t really matter, does it?
According to U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), “It just isn’t fair” that illegal immigrants can’t receive amnesty and taxpayer subsidized college tuition to boot. The message behind all this … illegal immigrants are a protected class, a victim class. Thus illegals deserve in-state college tuition rates, even in those states where U.S. citizens who have migrated from one state to another are denied access to the lower tuition rates.
Just when did illegal immigration turn into a civil rights issue? This leads us to the single most important question regarding illegal immigration: Do immigrants from one country have a right to immigrate into any country they choose? If so, what is this right based on? International law? But that would be absurd because international law is an attempt to codify the responsibilities that sovereign, independent countries have toward one another. Natural law? … surely Pelosi doesn’t even know what natural law is. Conventional law? But conventional law in the United States prohibits illegal immigration.
In other words, Pelosi can point to no objective standard to support her claim that denying illegal immigrants amnesty — and college tuition — is “not fair.”
In the same report, Pelosi declares that a border fence “is a terrible idea” because it divides local communities. By this she means border towns, such as Laredo and Nuevo Laredo. Again, what is the hidden message here? … National sovereignty is irrelevant. What is important is the sense of community that binds people together. But isn’t this sense of community at the basis of national sovereignty to begin with? You can’t have it both ways. Communities require borders. Communities require a sense of self-identity. Communities, in other words, require fences of one kind or another.
One final word … If you want to read more about why U.S. citizens who actually live on the border want a fence, read this shocking article in Time Magazine.
All this is to say that comprehensive immigration reform must begin with … securing the border.
For some reason, the Charlotte Observer decided to run an old piece from Chris Fitzsimon — one that we debunked more than a month ago! In it, he argues that the General Assembly and Governor haven’t been raiding the Highway Trust Fund. And he’s either lying or ignorant of the truth. I think the former, because surely he read our post.
But also: doesn’t the McClatchy want first rights? And wouldn’t they like their writers not to obscure the truth? (If the Observer wants old crap, I’ve got a few pieces they can run.)
-Max Borders
Jim Waters from the Bluegrass Institute in Kentucky writes today what should serve as a warning to those here in NC that think the best remedy for our health care system is more government.
He recounts Kentucky’s failed experiment with "universal health care" which began back in 1994:
It was called the Kentucky Health Care Reform Act. And it destroyed the state’s health-insurance system. Within a couple of years of passage of this government invasion, all except one of the state’s providers left Kentucky.
Think a move toward "universal coverage" will help reduce the number of uninsured? Think again:
Premiums jumped between 36 percent and 165 percent, which resulted in fewer – fewer – Kentuckians with the capability to afford health care coverage. Ironically, more people went without coverage. Today, 19 percent of working-age Kentuckians – more than a half-million workers – go without.
Mr. Waters is concerned that Kentucky might continue on with their mistaken policy. We should be concerned that North Carolina seems determined to make the same mistake.
Rob Schofield, ever one to drop hyperbole bombs on fact and rational argument, doesn’t get through the first paragraph of this "reality check" before offering us names David Duke and John Birch. Not surprising from the camp that accuses reasonable anthropogenic climate skeptics of being "holocaust deniers" and "flat earthers." (The level of groupthink has reached a fever pitch, and the complicit media are marching in lockstep. It’s the "if it’s on NPR, it must be true" level of reflection.) Here’s a slice of Schofield’s vacuity:
Lately, as the evidence has mounted [has it?], the right has favored the “nothing we can do” [without dismantling civilization] argument: “Well, global warming may be taking place and humans may be playing a role, but it’s not really that big of a deal and, anyway, there’s nothing we can do about it.” Mix in a little of the “nothing we can do” [four Nobel Laureate economists and many more agree] take with the “environmentalist conspiracy” [watermelon groupthink] argument (as in, “the whole global warming thing has been trumped up my meddling tree huggers who just want us to abandon modern capitalism and move back to the stone age”), and you’ve got a pretty good idea of the Locke line in 2007.
At the heart of all of this nonsense, of course, is the right’s messianic [if you call understanding economics messianic] obsession with the genius of “the market” – their notion that when society does anything intentionally or collectively [read: coorcively or bureaucratically] to control the unfettered pursuit and possession of “property,” [or time, or services, or family fun, or philanthropy] it is somehow altering the divinely ordained [no] rules of the universe [yes, laws of organization complex systems].
We can only awe at Schofield’s firm grasp on economics and climatology. He drafts his most recent diatribe with all the verve of a college freshmen who’s just joined Earth Club. It’s no secret that the left’s only instruments of persuasion are smart-assedness and fear-fongering. Schofield, heavy on the former, polishes it off with a little hyperbole and a lot of guilt-by-association allusions verging on the absurd. For those unreflective greenie hoards to whom Schofield provides fodder, real "public policy" would fry their neural circuitry. But if Schofield ever decides to think critically about the issue, there are some places he can go.
-Max Borders
That college seniors know so little about America’s history and political thought is something many of us have long suspected. What we may not have known is that some of the most expensive and highly regarded colleges and universities in the country are some of the worst at teaching about our nation’s history and our public institutions. Those are the findings of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute’s (ISI) Report on national civic literacy, Failing our Students, Failing America: Holding Colleges Accountable for Teaching America’s History and Institutions.
The ISI study, the second such in as many years, reports that the nation’s college freshmen and seniors again scored just over 50 percent, or an F on the exam. The findings hopefully serve to fuel reform efforts on all our college campuses – and especially on some of most expensive, where it is evident money doesn’t buy knowledge. Cornell, Yale, Duke and Princeton were near the bottom in the civic literacy rankings outranked by smaller, lesser-known institutions like Marian College of Wisconsin and Concordia University of Nebraska. The University of North Carolina Chapel-Hill ranked 24th out of 50 institutions. Sobering but necessary reading. To find out more: http://americancivicliteracy.org.
Remember the announcment from a couple of days ago by Eddie Davis (the teachers union’s head grammarian) that he would run for Superintendent of Public Instruction? Over at The Soup, Miss Dish adds a few more layers of irony than we could dig up in our original post.
The Red Clay Citizen was quick to point out the glaring typo in Eddie’s announcement. There is certainly an enjoyable paradox when grammatical errors befuddle candidates promising to improve public schools, but RCC missed the bonus fact that Davis is a former high school English teacher… for 30 years. Every kid that failed grammer can smirk.
As if that weren’t enough…
But wait, there’s more for the “do as I say, not as I do” category. Remember, Davis said the reason for NCAE’s decision to move up its gubernatorial endorsement was, "If we’re going to be worker bees, we can’t wait." But Davis is a taking a much more lackadaisical approach himself, telling the AP he doesn’t plan to step down from his president’s post to campaign. "The rigors of the campaign may cause me to take some leave" only in the weeks leading up to the May primary, he said. Davis also promised he wouldn’t use NCAE’s databases to contact its 70,000 members for politicking. Please.
Good luck with all that, Eddie. (S – u – p – e – r – i – n… where was I?)
(Cross-posted from EnvironmentNC.)
Joel Schwartz dissects the NRDC ozone "study" Heat Advisory with much gusto. Here’s a sliver from his conclusion over at Planet Gore:
Heat Advisory is a cynical exercise in manipulation and fear-mongering masquerading as science. Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that NRDC manufactures bogus increases in ozone in order to scare people (and then dissembles further when someone like me calls them on it). After all, environmentalists derive their power from public fear and outrage. Where there is no legitimate reason for fear and outrage, environmental groups and some scientists have shown themselves to be only too willing to manufacture it.
(Ouch. That must smart.) Read the whole thing.
-Max Borders
In case you missed yesterday’s John Hood post on NC think tanks, here’s a choice bit:
I’ve just started a new assessment, but my guess is that the proportions will not have changed much in the past couple of years. Oddly, many politicos in Raleigh are under the impression that conservative and free-market groups in North Carolina are more numerous and better-funded than their lefty counterparts, neither of which has ever been true.
So is this mendacity or ignorance on the part of these "politicos"? Either way, the left has some explaining to do about "big political money" — and this extends not just to the realm of thinktanks, but also to political campaigns.
-Max Borders