Month: August 2007

New York, New York, 6.25 pm.

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President Bush just said at his press conference that anybody who has studied the Articles of Confederation knows there are periods of turmoil in an emerging democratic country.

So is he admitting that Iraq is a failed state, as the United States was under the Articles, and that they’ll have to replace their constitution in a few years?

Update: Now that I think about it, we’re probably already at that “few years” point. And if we’re not, it’s coming soon.

No surprises here. I am 79% feminist.

You Are 79% Feminist

You are certainly a feminist – whether you know it or not. You believe in gender equality, at least most of the time. You also believe there are a few exceptions.

In this morning’s Wall Street Journal, my friend Brian Wesbury complains about the "talking head" culture on business television where every interview seems designed to provoke debate. If one of the guests is a bull, Brian says, then the other has to be a bear. If there is only one guest, he says, the interviewer generally plays Devil’s advocate.

The result, Wesbury says, is that viewers are often misled into thinking that there is a great deal of disagreement among economists when in fact there may be a virtual consensus. By seeking out a few incompetents or cranks just to have "balance" and create sparks, news shows may be unintentionally misleading viewers by implying that isolated views that are well outside the mainstream actually have validity. This may encourage investors to pursue unwise investment strategies or worry unnecessarily about extremely unlikely dangers.

This is a pet peeve of my own and a reason why I avoid these sorts of programs. One thing that annoyed me particularly was that the producers would often put me up against some total nobody who had no clue about what he was talking about. In one case–I kid you not–I debated the minimum wage with an honest-to-God, fresh-off-the-streets homeless person. I refused to ever appear on that channel ever again and it eventually went off the air. (Incidentally, it’s also annoying that bookers almost never tell you who you will debating ahead of time.)

I don’t mind debating those whose views are diametrically opposed to mine. In fact, I enjoy a good debate and have any number of friends on the left whom I would be happy to debate any time on any issue. Even though we may come to different conclusions, I know that we can probably agree on the facts and will argue along predictable lines. But too many producers find such sober discussions to be boring, so they try to liven things up by setting up debates with people who make up their own facts, argue illogically, make no effort to be consistent, and, too often, use up most of the alloted air time. Thus you end up wasting your own time refuting the other guy’s errors rather than making your own points.

This is not an ideological problem. I know that my friends on the left are just as frustrated by the system as I am. And the problem is not isolated to economic discussions but extends into every area of news, science, politics, public policy or whatever. It’s why even the most inane, crackpot theories continue to have currency.

I have noticed that over the years there has been a dumbing-down of the talking heads. Whereas previously the two heads would belong to noted experts from respected institutions, today they are more likely to be labeled "Democratic consultant" or "Republican strategist." These people are often so obscure that when I do a Google search on them there is no evidence that they even exist.

I know that the artificial debate format is not going to go away. But maybe it would be possible for the networks to encourage those conducting the interviews to be a little more proactive when one of the guests goes off on a tangent or makes outrageous claims with no factual basis. They should behave more like baseball umpires than boxing referees who just want to keep it clean.

As ever, I couldn’t resist putting this up:

Mitt Romney spent yesterday morning barnstorming the small farming communities of Eastern Iowa, holding a series of “Ask Mitt Anything” events and urging his supporters to turn out for the straw poll in Ames on Saturday.

[…]

“How many counties are in Massachusetts?” she asked.

“Thirteen,” he said. A few feet away, an aide shook his head and said, “Ten.”

Not being from Massachusetts, or even New England, I wouldn’t have a clue how many counties there are in the Bay State. But then again, I didn’t used to be Governor up there.

For the record, Wikipedia says 14. So it seems that neither Mitt nor his aide are too clued up on this one.

Forbes reports:

With the increasingly high public profile accorded to corporate governance issues recently, it is becoming more important for players on all sides to understand the rules of the game in this rapidly changing environment. … For example, the Conference Board says, since the 2002 enactment of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (with the intention of restoring public trust in response to a spate of corporate scandals), there have been more than 20 significant rule changes at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The changes are aimed at enhancing public disclosure and increasing management accountability and oversight.

"The haste and complexity of some rule making has created a strong need for interpretation and guidance in many areas," said Matteo Tonello, senior research associate at the Conference Board’s Governance Center and Directors’ Institute. He is also co-author of the report with Carolyn Kay Brancato, the director of the Governance Center and Directors’ Institute at the Conference Board.

Regular readers of my blog know what’s coming next. That’s right, yet another plug for my book The Complete Guide to Sarbanes Oxley (hey, Andrew said it was okay to plug our books!).

One Amazon.com reviewer gave it 5 stars and wrote:

Professor Stephen Bainbridge’s "Complete Guide to Sarbanes-Oxley" is a well-written, well-organized overview of a very complicated, very intrusive piece of federal legislation. It’s as light as possible on the legal-ese, but heavy on the analysis and practical information.

There are two audiences for this important guidebook. First, this is a useful overview for attorneys who need to be "familiar" with Sarbanes Oxley and how this law may affect anyone with a general commercial litigation law practice, or who may represent corporate officers in matters not directly related to corporate governance. This is not meant to be the definitive, comprehensive treatise for big-firm securities lawyers. The prose would need to be too dense to be meaningful for us "dabblers" in corporate law who may occasionally represent a corporate officer.

Second, this is a useful overview for corporate officers, corporate counsel, and accountants. It would serve the same purpose as a traveler’s phrase book, allowing you to "speak the language" of securities lawyers and corporate auditors in the event that a "situation" arises. I would even recommend that corporate lawyers, as an act of preventive maintenance, stock a supply of this book to pass out to their clients who are officers of publicly-traded corporations or high-profile non-profits.

Am I a feminist (HT: Volokh)? Apparently, no.

You Are 57% Feminist

You aren’t a total traditionalist when it comes to gender roles. But you’re no feminist either. You generally think that women should be treated as equals, but you’re not convinced the world should be gender neutral.

OTOH:

You Are an Excellent Cook

You’re a top cook, but you weren’t born that way. It’s taken a lot of practice, a lot of experimenting, and a lot of learning. It’s likely that you have what it takes to be a top chef, should you have the desire…

Which, if I may say so, will not surprise my regular readers.

A reader with more knowledge than I evidently have in the area of Nevada laws relating to prostitution writes in to make the point that Nevada merely allows certain individual counties to license brothels, and does not recognize contracts related to prostitution.  My mistake (I will freely admit that I am no expert in the realm of prostitution law, but a lawyer friend of mine who knows much more about odd areas of the law had indicated to me that prostitution contracts were enforceable in the Silver State– so a heads up to him).

Nonetheless, I think even if prostitution contracts are not legally enforceable in Nevada, it is logical to think that if that situation were altered, it would not place Utah under a duty to recognize them in its courts, on public policy grounds.  Though that is speculation.

Yeah, well, Stephen, Hugh Hewitt probably considers  me a lefty because, well, anyone who doesn’t think that the sun shines out of Mitt’s [censored] is a godless pinko abortionist communist.  Surely you knew that right?

The important thing to remember is that Hugh has a complete, impartial handle on everything because, well, he wrote a book about how great Romney was and if Romney doesn’t win the nomination and then the White House, he might look a little silly.