Sarah Haider on Apologism, Human Rights & Islam
04 Feb 2018 Leave a comment
in economics of religion, politics - USA Tags: political correctness
Didn’t realise how regressive the first 100 days of @nzlabour were! 2/8 at best for decent public policy
03 Feb 2018 Leave a comment
in politics - New Zealand, Public Choice, rentseeking
The latest instalment in the withering away of the proletariat
01 Feb 2018 Leave a comment
in economic history, politics - USA, poverty and inequality
The Curley Effect: The Economics of Shaping the Electorate
30 Jan 2018 2 Comments
in constitutional political economy, politics - USA, Public Choice
Boston Mayor Curley had the rare distinction of winning his first election from prison and his last while under federal indictment for corruption which he was soon convicted of while in office.
Curley won his first election in 1904 as an alderman on the slogan “he did it for a friend”. He sat a civil service exam for a friend to get him a job. He quickly then handed out 700 patronage jobs once he once he got out of prison to serve as an alderman.
In 1945, he was re-elected mayor. Truman commuted his 6 to 18 month sentence after 5 months in 1948 at the behest of the Massachusetts congressional delegation and later (1950) granted him a full pardon.
Curley was then defeated by the acting mayor during his prison term in the subsequent Democratic party primary in part because of the high taxes under the Curley regime. Naturally, during his lame-duck period, Curley granted many tax abatements to sabotage the public finances of his successor.
. @DFAT will see this as a lost export opportunity
30 Jan 2018 Leave a comment
in liberalism, politics - Australia Tags: Age of Enlightenment, Iran, women's liberation
PUBLIC TRANSPORT RECEIVES A FAIR HEARING
28 Jan 2018 1 Comment
in applied welfare economics, politics - New Zealand, transport economics
It is not a case of under-investment denying buses and trains their day in the sun. The overseas evidence is rail cost estimates and passenger forecasts are much more politicised than those for roads because of the political pressures to invest in more public transport no matter what (Flyvbjerg et al. 2006).
There is more organised political support for buses and trains and considerable organised (often NIMBY based) opposition to road building. A major driver of cost blow-outs in the road projects reviewed by the Ministerial Advisory Group on Roading Costs (2006) was scope changes to appease local political pressures to mitigate community and environmental impacts. Community group driven litigation under the Resource Management Act to frustrate NZTA road projects is proliferating. Their High Court loss which prevented the building of the Basin Overpass in Wellington is a recent example.
In contrast, light rail proposals such as a billion-dollar proposal in Wellington City for a few kilometers of track including a $400 million tunnel were entertained for far longer than any sensible benefit cost analysis could justify. Quite fanciful fast-rail proposals costing many hundreds of millions of dollars are floated in by-elections and from time to time by the commentariat and rent seekers.
The proposed upgrade the Auckland to Northland railway line and the rail link to the port was costed by the Taxpayers’ Union (2015) at $198 million. Dreams of fast rail receives a generous hearing despite mind blowing costs and incredulous and sometimes impossible freight and passenger forecasts.
Buses and trains are not the forgotten children of urban transport policy. The Greens are passionate about massive investment in buses and trains at the expense of roads. Labour is also competing for the same urban middle-class votes so it too champions more public transport. In an MMP Parliament, all parties have an incentive respond to political pressures in a fine-tuned way when voting on budgets.
Public transport advocates do well in the scramble for taxpayers’ money. The road with the worst benefit-cost ratio of all in the post implementation reviews was the Auckland Northern Busway, which cost $182 million. It had a cost benefit ratio of a miserable 1.2 at approval and a no better 1.3 after its completion. With a benefit-cost ratio rounding down to one with ease, this bus network upgrade must have had political muscle behind it to dam the taxpayers, full steam ahead.
“On an average survey day, 98 percent of people reported not spending any time cycling”
27 Jan 2018 Leave a comment
in politics - New Zealand, transport economics
Alan Dershowitz to Democrats “Face it We Lost!”
27 Jan 2018 Leave a comment
in constitutional political economy, economics of crime, law and economics, politics - USA, Public Choice
#Stolengenerations hit an early legal land mine in #Tasmania
26 Jan 2018 Leave a comment
in economic history, law and economics, politics - Australia
Source: Bringing them Home – Chapter 6 Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission Report, Bringing them Home, Report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families April 1997.
The Best-Concealed Conspiracy in Australian History
26 Jan 2018 Leave a comment
in economic history, economics of crime, law and economics, politics - Australia
Source: KEITH WINDSCHUTTL Why There Were No Stolen Generations (Part Two). Quadrant (January 2010) at http://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2010/1-2/why-there-were-no-stolen-generations-part-two/
Our house too big for ultrafast broadband hook-up @stevenljoyce @TaxpayersUnion @EricCrampton
26 Jan 2018 Leave a comment
in economics of bureaucracy, entrepreneurship, industrial organisation, politics - New Zealand, Public Choice
Your picking loses detector is at maximum when governments are retrofitting infrastructure in the suburbs. We just had Chorus in to retrofit ultrafast broadband to our house. Our house is too big and complicated to rewire.
In addition to stringing a wire from the road to a ATC box, as with everybody, we need to rewire from that box to my office for another ultrafast broadband box next to my computer on the other side of the house 2 floors up. I was told I would need an electrician to do that as the house is already built, most of the wires will probably be external, ugly and I would have to pay for it and the drilling through my floors.
Seems like the political genius behind government paying for ultra fast broadband including fitting it into my house assumed everybody had a nice simple one story house where the office was near the ACT box so there would be minimal rewiring. That would involve minimal internal wiring.
If I want to proceed, I need to bring in an electrician and as the house is already been built, he will need to drill holes, string wires and then the chorus team will come back. The alternative was to have my modem just above the ATC box in the spare bedroom and the rest of the house operate including my desktop in my office on Wi-Fi which seems to very must defeat point of ultrafast broadband indeed.
Slippery @jamespeshaw admits he does not know the cost of #globalwarming. Had to go to ombudsman to get him to admit that. Maybe he should ask for those projections and considered ministerial advice on the same
25 Jan 2018 Leave a comment
in applied welfare economics, global warming, politics - New Zealand, Public Choice
Did banning alcohol in 1837 fit in with deliberate genocide?
25 Jan 2018 Leave a comment
in discrimination, health economics, politics - Australia, Public Choice
Laws banning the sale of alcohol to aboriginals were first passed in 1837. Later that century the ban was extended to opium. In time, all states and territories banned the sale of alcohol to aboriginals.
Australia figures prominently in the Journal of Genocide Research. The black armband theory of Australian history alleges genocidal intent towards Australian aboriginals by the state and territory protectors of aboriginals and their accomplices. Then why the ban on alcohol and the opium?
There were strong temperance movements in Australia in the first half of the 20th century. They achieved considerable political success. Their intention was to save their fellow Australians from the demon drink.
Why then was a policy of alcohol prohibition extended to aboriginals when the state protectors aboriginals were apparently according to the black armband theory of history practising genocide?
A credible theory must make risky predictions and strictly forbid certain things if its fundamental thesis is valid. Temperance movements were well-intentioned attempts to save their fellow man and, in particular, husbands and sons. The pubs closed at 6 for white Australians and were not open at all for aboriginals.
Why was this well-intentioned policy to save people from the demon drink extended to aboriginals in an era of genocide against aboriginals? Certainly, genocidal governments of that time would have known that binge drinking would have helped kill off the aboriginal people. Did they just miss a step? Keep missing that step from 1837 until 1972?
Something does not add up here? Drinking was seen as a serious social evil. The supposedly otherwise genocidal state and territory protectors of aboriginals sought to protect aboriginals from this serious social evil.
Genocidal state and territory protectors of aboriginals, if it is true they were intent on a genocide, must be expected to do little or nothing to promote aboriginal welfare. Yet they sought bans on alcohol and opium.
The Post was a lot better than I anticipated
20 Jan 2018 Leave a comment
in defence economics, economic history, movies, politics - USA, war and peace Tags: Vietnam war, World War II
Second movie this week on it is heroic (Darkest Hour), treasonous (The Post) to fight on in a war you can’t win against murderously evil monsters in the hope something might turn up.
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