Month: October 2009

She’s demanding $100,000 just to give a speech to a Republican group in Iowa:

Tim Albrecht, spokesman for the conservative, Iowa-based American Future Fund, said his group “has a policy not to pay speakers to come to Iowa,” and, like Failor, hinted at what those guests get in return. “We are proud to host conservative leaders from across the country, providing them an audience across the state and nation to share their conservative vision,” Albrecht said. Like the other Iowa political hands, he could not recall a single instance where a potential candidate had been paid to speak.

A reader writes:

How laughable and hypocritical that Sarah Palin would attack Levi Johnston for "selling his body for money." This coming from a former beauty pageant contestant… a well established industry built on 'selling bodies'.

Another writes:

Can you ask around if Levi just opened himself up to a world of legal trouble?

I'm no lawyer, but if he is saying he knows about Palin's illegal actions as governor but he isn't going to say, doesn't that make him an accessory or accomplice to a crime and couldn't he be forced to testify if she were prosecuted? If he doesn't tell the whole truth wouldn't he then possibly face perjury?  Ouch. I think he may have opened a can of worms on national TV.

Who knows where this will end up? The only thing I'm sure of is that the MSM has no interest in finding out the actual truth behind Sarah Palin, whatever it is. But the truth nonetheless will eventually come out (just don't expect it from Harper Collins, Katie Couric or Oprah Winfrey).

Chart via Yglesias. Free Exchange says not to get too giddy:

[At] long last, the American economy is growing again. Jobs, however, are still tricky to come by. Initial jobless claims declined by 1,000 from the previous week, but remain 10,000 about their level on October 10. Continuing claims fell to their lowest level since March, but this primarily reflects the exhaustion of benefits; workers receiving extended benefits are not counted in the total. So while the end to contraction has stopped the labour market bleeding, recovery has yet to begin the healing. Growth is good, but absent job creation it is difficult to get too excited.

Jon Hilsenrath of the WSJ is worried that the rebound is unsustainable. But please try and get some perspective. Only six months ago, we were afraid the entire global economy would be in a continued death spiral by now. It isn't. One reason is that the Bush and Obama administrations pushed through emergency – and expensive – programs to prevent a second Great Depression. They may not be enough; and the deleveraging of the Bush debt (public and private) may take a while. But this is a real and tangible gain, given the very real likelihood of total meltdown only a few months ago. It is not cheer-leading to note that. Much much more is needed to tell if this recovery is self-sustaining. But a 3.5 percent gain is better than a 6.4 loss. In fact,

The two-quarter swing in the rate of growth of 9.9 percentage points was the largest since 1980.

Peter Boockvar has some bad news:

With 85% of 1st time home buyers who were eligible to collect the tax credit planning to buy a home anyway, the Brookings institute estimates that the $8,000 credit equates to a cost to the taxpayer of $43,000 per home. This is based on the belief that 85% of the almost 2mm buyers are getting free money. Edmunds.com…is estimating that the Cash for Clunkers program cost taxpayers $24,000 per vehicle sold. They estimate that 82% of sales would have happened anyway and thus the handout of up to $4,500 really only enticed 18% of the buyers of 690k vehicles sold under the program.

My own support for the idea is looking less and less valid as the assessments come in.

I was hoping for more details on the accused spy-wannabe and embezzler of government funds in the latest piece. But there’s nothing much there – certainly no mention of this credible report that Nozette had worked for Dan Quayle, or that he had a long history of donations to the GOP. He also seems to have been mightily interested in spying for either India or Israel. I guess I hoped the MSM would get some real data on the guy – even if to debunk some of the web assertions. Wrong again. But is there a way to confirm or rebut the claim that he did indeed work for Quayle? And what are or were Nozette’s connections to the Republican party? Or was he just a supporter?

Calculated Risk worries:

[N]ew home sales are far more important for employment and the economy than existing home sales. When an existing home is sold, the housing stock doesn't change, and the only direct contribution to the economy are the transaction costs. When a new home is sold, the housing stock of the nation increases, and there is a significant amount of spending on material and labor.

During the housing bust, new home sales fell much further than existing home sales (as a percent of sales). I've jokingly referred to the difference in percentage declines as the "Distressing" gap, because of all the distressed sales of existing homes.

His bottom line:

The ratio could decline because of an increase in new home sales, or a decrease in existing home sales – I expect a combination of both.

"I don't have a strict allegiance to "journalism," as much as I have one to the written word. Perhaps there's no difference. But my point is that to the extent blogging makes it possible for more people who are "on fire" to employ the written word, than it's good for the written word. It's true that it creates a situation in which anyone, for $15 a month, can say their piece. But I have more faith in the market of ideas, than in a brain-trust of editors, to separate the wheat from the chafe. Moreover, while there are an incredible number of bloggers out there, with no institutional support, who suck. There are a truly shocking number of writers, who have all the institutional support in the world, and not only suck, but bring nothing save cynicism, incuriousity, and cold poisoned hearts. And the institutions enable them. To the extent that blogging exposes these frauds, I am all in," – TNC.

Jacob Sullum points out other drug sentencing absurdities:

Back in 1993, I wrote a piece for Reason in which I highlighted the ridiculously unjust results of including the "carrier medium" for LSD (typically blotter paper) in calculating the drug's weight for sentencing purposes:

Under federal sentencing guidelines, selling 100 doses of LSD in pure form triggers a minimum sentence of less than a year, but selling the same amount on paper will get you a sentence of at least two years, three months. And if you were old-fashioned enough to drop your acid onto sugar cubes, you will end up behind bars for no less than 15 years, eight months.

Like the Minnesota ruling, this interpretation of the law elicited amazed dissents. "All this seems crazy," the 7th Circuit's Richard Posner wrote in 1990. "To base punishment on the weight of the carrier medium makes about as much sense as basing punishment on the weight of the defendant." The arbitrary, incomplete fix that the U.S. Sentencing Commission devised for that problem—counting each dose in a carrier medium as 0.4 milligram to avoid "unwarranted disparity among offenses involving the same quantity of actual LSD"—is still in force, to judge by this 2006 sentencing manual (PDF).