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Last week, Pickings selected a post from the English blog Samizdata that argues our countries are in the grip of soft totalitarians;
And so we have force backed regulations setting out the minutia of a parent’s interactions with their own children, vast reams on what sort of speech or expression is and is not permitted in a workplace, rules forbidding a property owner allowing consenting adults from smoking in a place of business, what sorts of insults are permitted, rules covering almost every significant aspect of how you can or cannot build or modify your own house on your own property, moves to restrict what sort of foods can be sold, what kind of light bulbs are allowed, and the latest one, a move to require smokers to have a ‘license to smoke‘. Every aspect of self-ownership is being removed and non-compliance criminalised and/or pathologised.
The same evening a Corner post from one of National Review Online’s blogs reported an example in Pickerhead’s back yard; William & Mary’s anonymous “bias” patrol.
East Germany Hits Virginia [Stanley Kurtz]
I’ve heard of speech codes, but I’ve never heard of anything quite like this: a mechanism to anonymously report “bias related to race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, or other protected conditions” to the university administration, for possible action against the perpetrator. This system has been set up at William and Mary, and a website protesting it can be found here. Is this something new, or at least rare, or is it perhaps more common than I realize?
Now, just one week later, another perfect local example of soft fascism is in the lead article in the Virginia Gazette.
Almost 40 years ago John Fleet Jr. sold his first combine in Toano. Now he needs special permission to move back. Fleet Brothers tractor sales and repair shop on Airport Road has purchased the empty Basketville store on Route 60 to relocate in the heart of the county’s farming belt. The match seems ideal. The old Basketville site is near the last working farms in the county. The farmers would have the greatest need for what Fleet offers: zero-turn lawn mowers and medium-sized tractors.
Not so fast.
The Basketville site is zoned General Business. Ironically, Fleet must plow through a series of requirements to prove that his farming business will suit a farming community. The case illustrates the counterintuitive labyrinth of county planning. …
An innocent business person makes an investment in an improvement and ends up in the snares of the modern world’s version of scribes and Pharisees – the keepers of the PLAN. You can rail all you want about federal and state governments, but you haven’t seen thoughtless incompetence until you meet the malevolent folks who have settled for jobs in local and county governments.
“The sale of medium-size agricultural vehicles does not fit the description of a ‘neighborhood-scale commercial establishment,’†planner Jose-Ricardo Ribeiro wrote … in a memo this month.
Now the unwary must make obsequious suppliance hiring planners and attorneys.
(They) will have to provide a traffic study of trips generated and prove substantial landscape buffers. He has retained AES Consulting Engineers to design the site.
Sad thing is, nobody seems to know anything is amiss. We are in the midst of elections for county board. Candidates should be thundering up and down the county in outrage over the snares in the paths of the people who provide goods and services, and create jobs. But nobody says a word. All three board candidates for the district say they will support the application. They do not understand (or perhaps they do). The problem is the requirement there be an application at all. This story made the front page and will be fixed. What about “applications” that are below the radar? Care to think the county minions are handling those transactions well?
There is only so much energy in an enterprise, and all of us are diminished when it is needlessly diverted to begging before the PLAN.
George Will takes up the Utah school choice vote John Stossel reported yesterday.
In today’s political taxonomy, “progressives” are rebranded liberals dodging the damage they did to their old label. Perhaps their most injurious idea — injurious to themselves and public schools — was the forced busing of (mostly other people’s) children to engineer “racial balance” in public schools. Soon, liberals will need a third label if people notice what “progressives” are up to in Utah.
There, teachers unions, whose idea of progress is preservation of the status quo, are waging an expensive and meretricious campaign to overturn the right of parents to choose among competing schools, public and private, for the best education for their children.
In balloting more important to the nation than most of next year’s elections will be, Utahans next week will decide by referendum whether to retain or jettison the nation’s broadest school choice program. Passed last February, the Parent Choice in Education Act would make a voucher available to any public school child who transfers to a private school, and to current private school children from low-income families. Opponents of school choice reflexively rushed to force a referendum on the new law, which is suspended pending the vote. …
John Fund has the first comments on the last debate.
Democrats who are nervous about having Hillary Clinton as their nominee had their fears confirmed last night. Mrs. Clinton finally stumbled in her seventh Democratic debate once the other candidates decided to chew on her.
Mrs. Clinton responded to the criticism by retreating to her briefing books, giving rehearsed answers to questions in a too loud, slightly shrill voice. She was pummeled for not releasing White House records kept by the National Archives that would shine light on her claim to be the most experienced candidate based on her service as First Lady. …
The Captain is next.
… Voters have never seen a candidate contradict themselves in one 120-second period on national television, and thanks to YouTube, the experience has gone viral. Only somewhat less damaging was the answer on her records, in which she blamed George Bush for a seal request made by her own husband — a request she claims she can’t affect.
Not even her own supporters buy that explanation. It has grown so ugly that Mark Penn, her political sherpa, told callers that Hillary’s problem was essentially that Tim Russert was unfair by asking the questions. He told callers that female voters should be outraged that men were ganging up on her “six to one” to defeat her — as if they should give her a pass because of her gender, or not ask tough questions of the frontrunner. …
Roger Simon in The Politico rates Hillary’s performance.
We now know something that we did not know before: When Hillary Clinton has a bad night, she really has a bad night. In a debate against six Democratic opponents at Drexel University here Tuesday, Clinton gave the worst performance of her entire campaign.
It was not just that her answer about whether illegal immigrants should be issued driver’s licenses was at best incomprehensible and at worst misleading. It was that for two hours she dodged and weaved, parsed and stonewalled. And when it was over, both the Barack Obama and John Edwards campaigns signaled that in the weeks ahead they intend to hammer home a simple message: Hillary Clinton does not say what she means or mean what she says.
And she gave them plenty of ammunition Tuesday night. …
Yes Virginia, there’s still a war. Michael Yon with his latest report. The media will report less and less on the war since -
“Al Qaeda in Iraq is defeated,†according to Sheik Omar Jabouri, spokesman for the Iraqi Islamic Party and a member of the widespread and influential Jabouri Tribe. Speaking through an interpreter at a 31 October meeting at the Iraqi Islamic Party headquarters in downtown Baghdad, Sheik Omar said that al Qaeda had been “defeated mentally, and therefore is defeated physically,†referring to how clear it has become that the terrorist group’s tactics have backfired. Operatives who could once disappear back into the crowd after committing an increasingly atrocious attack no longer find safe haven among the Iraqis who live in the southern part of Baghdad. They are being hunted down and killed. Or, if they are lucky, captured by Americans. …
John Tierney posts on his wager over cheaper oil.
Since I’ve made a $5,000 bet that oil prices won’t hit $200 per barrel in 2010, I’m glad to see a prophet who doesn’t the share the current angst over rising energy prices. In an article in Foreign Policy, the journalist Vijay Vaitheeswaran debunks predictions that oil prices will keep soaring. …
Forbes, as if on cue, forecasts $60 a barrel oil.
War in Iraq, destabilization from Turkey, unquenchable thirst for energy in Asia, millions of fuel-slurping SUVs still cruising American highways. No wonder oil prices have jumped above $90 a barrel on the new York Mercantile Exchange, on their way to $100.
Not so fast. According to some longtime observers, we will soon see $60 oil. Their argument is that the main driver of price spikes is something hardly mentioned these days: a miscalculation by the world’s most important supplier, Saudi Arabia. And within the next two months that miscalculation will be corrected and oil prices will drop. “It’s sure getting set up for a hard fall,” says George Littell, partner at Groppe, Long & Littell, a Houston firm that advises oil drillers and investors on the outlook for crude prices since 1955. …
VDH on the farm bill.
Agribusiness lobbyists fund politicians’ campaigns. In return, grateful politicians promise donors someone else’s federal dollars. Then both groups think up creative ways to keep the money rolling in.
The $280 billion-plus farm bill is not the largest waste of federal funds, but it is the most unnecessary — and dishonest. We are running federal budget deficits — this year’s is about the size of the proposed multiyear farm bill — engaged in two costly wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and spending billions in anti-terrorist security at home.
So why also give away more billions to the affluent of an industry that, overall, is doing quite well?
The shameful thing is not that the farm bill will probably pass, but that it was even introduced.
Pickerhead doesn’t know which is the bigger surprise. An NY Times editorial in Pickings, or an editorial from them that complements George W. Bush. The subject was sugar subsidies.
… Big Sugar is not the only beneficiary of this corporate welfare. The farm bill is larded with subsidies and other rewards for agricultural producers. The eagerness of members of Congress to please their sugar daddies is not surprising. Campaign donations from the sugar industry have topped $3 million in each of the last four political cycles. American consumers and taxpayers, as well as poor farmers overseas, shouldn’t have to pay the price.
President Bush has been on the right side of the debate over farm subsidies. Big Sugar’s sweet deal gave him another good reason to veto the farm bill if it doesn’t cut back on all the goodies.
Walter Williams says most people in the world wish to be as poor as the poor in the US.
People who want more government income redistribution programs often sell their agenda with the lament, “The poor are getting poorer and the rich are getting richer,” but how about some evidence and you decide? I think the rich are getting richer, and so are the poor.
According to the most recent census, about 35 million Americans live in poverty. Heritage Foundation scholar Robert Rector, using several government reports, gives us some insights about these people in his paper: “Understanding Poverty and Economic Inequality in the United States”.
In 1971, only about 32 percent of all Americans enjoyed air conditioning in their homes. By 2001, 76 percent of poor people had air conditioning. In 1971, only 43 percent of Americans owned a color television; in 2001, 97 percent of poor people owned at least one. In 1971, 1 percent of American homes had a microwave oven; in 2001, 73 percent of poor people had one. Forty-six percent of poor households own their homes. Only about 6 percent of poor households are overcrowded. The average poor American has more living space than the average non-poor individual living in Paris, London, Vienna, Athens and other European cities. …