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More on Thailand from David Warren.
There is much to be said for ignorance. My reader is to understand I don’t mean a mere inability to answer the sort of quiz questions that can be graded to generate educational statistics. No, I mean a more thorough, peasant ignorance of the way the world works, and in particular, of the way it works today.
Or alternatively, let’s say: there is much to be said for freedom from a world-weary cynicism; and from all the spite, malice, and violent reprisal that it spawns.
I have been thinking this in relation to Thailand: a country that was once my second home. Or let us call it Siam: the name was changed for very political reasons on June 23, 1939, changed back after the world war, then changed to Thailand again in 1949. When people start changing the names of things, you know trouble is brewing.
My acquaintance with the country goes back to childhood, when my father was working as an adviser to the Royal Thai Government, …
Mark Steyn starts at Greece and extrapolates to our country.
From the Times of London: “The President of Greece warned last night that his country stood on the brink of the abyss after three people were killed when an anti-government mob set ?re to the Athens bank where they worked.”
Almost right. They were not an “anti-government” mob, but a government mob, a mob comprised largely of civil servants. That they are highly uncivil and disinclined to serve should come as no surprise: they’re paid more and they retire earlier, and that’s how they want to keep it. So they’re objecting to austerity measures that would end, for example, the tradition of 14 monthly paycheques per annum. You read that right: the Greek public sector cannot be bound by anything so humdrum as temporal reality. So, when it was mooted that the “workers” might henceforth receive a mere 12 monthly paycheques per annum, they rioted. Their hapless victims—a man and two women—were a trio of clerks trapped in a bank when the mob set it alight and then obstructed emergency crews attempting to rescue them.
Unlovely as they are, the Greek rioters are the logical end point of the advanced social democratic state: not an oppressed underclass, but a pampered overclass, rioting in defence of its privileges and insisting on more subsidy, more benefits, more featherbedding, more government.
Who will pay for it? Hey, not my problem, say the rioters. Maybe those dead bank clerks’ clients, assuming we didn’t burn them to death, too. The problem facing the Western world isn’t very difficult to figure out: we’ve spent tomorrow today, and we can never earn enough tomorrow to pay for what we’ve already burned through. When you’re spending four trillion dollars but only raising two trillion in revenue (the Obama model), you’ve no intention of paying it off, and the rest of the world knows it. …
Mort Zuckerman continues his Jeremiad about public sector unions and their elected enablers.
… How did we get into such a mess? States have always had to cope with volatility in the size and composition of their populations. Now we have shrinking tax bases caused by recession and extra costs imposed on states to pay for Medicaid in the federal health-care program. The straw (well, more like an iron beam) that breaks the camel’s back is the unfunded portions of state pension plans, health care and other retirement benefits promised to public-sector employees. And federal government assistance to states is falling—down by roughly half in the next fiscal year beginning Oct. 1.
It is galling for private-sector workers to see so many public-sector workers thriving because of the power their unions exercise. Take California. Investigative journalist Steve Malanga points out in the City Journal that California’s schoolteachers are the nation’s highest paid; its prison guards can make six-figure salaries; many state workers retire at 55 with pensions that are higher than the base pay they got most of their working lives.
All this when California endures an unemployment rate steeper than the nation’s. It will get worse. There’s an exodus of firms that want to escape California’s high taxes, stifling regulations, and recurring budget crises. When Cisco CEO John Chambers says he will not build any more facilities in California you know the state is in trouble.
The business community and a growing portion of the public now understand the dynamics that discriminate against the private sector. Public unions organize voting campaigns for politicians who, on election, repay their benefactors by approving salaries and benefits for the public sector, irrespective of whether they are sustainable. And what is happening in California is happening in slower motion in the rest of the country. It’s no doubt one of the reasons the Pew Research Center this year reported that support for labor unions generally has plummeted “amid growing public skepticism about unions’ power and purpose.” …
Peter Wehner pays homage to Campbell Brown’s candor.
… The entire statement is honest, unvarnished, devoid of spin, and gracious — and therefore quite impressive. The problems she faced rested more with her network than with her. But in exiting CNN, Ms. Brown set a standard others in the media, and in politics, should strive for.
Rand Paul gets the once over from Jennifer Rubin. You would think politicians from Kentucky would have more horse sense. OK, we know the following isn’t possible, but it’s beginning to look like Rand Paul may be the demon spawn of the union of Ron Paul and Jim Bunning.
Rand Paul is learning what it means to have the bright, hot light of national media on him. After an obnoxious outing on ABC, during which Paul whined and railed at the mainstream media for outing his views on federal anti-discrimination legislation, he changed his tune and told Wolf Blitzer on CNN point blank that he would have voted for the 1964 Civil Rights Act. With little explanation of the quick evolution in his views, he said he’s a definite yes on whether he’d have voted for the Act in 1964. On the Americans With Disabilities Act, he flailed around for a bit, and then came down on the side of maybe.
Should we be surprised, then, that Paul abruptly cancelled on short notice his appearance on Meet the Press? I suppose he could try to hide from every unsympathetic reporter in the country, but such a decision will simply underscore the fact that he can’t be trusted to go out in public. …
Ayaan Hirsi Ali has written a new book reviewed by Tunku Varadarajan.
On a recent visit to Washington, I hopped into a cab at Union Station. Those who have used such transport in D.C. will be aware that the chances of landing an African cabbie are 9 in 10, and this African cohort is predominantly Eritrean, Ethiopian, or Somali. My driver on this occasion was Somali, and after a few pleasantries—How long have you lived in America? Do you still have family in Mogadishu? How old are your children?—I asked the man a less banal question: “What do you think of Ayaan Hirsi Ali… you know, the Somali lady?” He swiveled his head to fix me with his gaze, and then turned it back to the road. “Very bad person,” he said, after a strained pause. “We think she is a bitch. We hate her.”
We did not exchange another word for the rest of the brief ride to the Willard Hotel. …
The Economist illuminates the activities surrounding the oil spill in the Gulf.
IT IS not the invasion of Normandy, but by peacetime standards the flotilla stationed about 65km (40 miles) off the Louisiana coast is a mightily impressive one. Where once the ill-fated Deepwater Horizon drilling rig floated in solitary splendour, there are now two similar rigs, along with the Discoverer Enterprise, a drilling ship; the Viking Poseidon, which knows how to install things on the sea floor; four mother ships for remotely operated underwater vehicles; various barges and supply vessels; and the Q4000, a rig that specialises in repairing and closing wells. If the well that the Deepwater Horizon was in the process of closing off four weeks ago continues to spray oil into the sea for months to come, it won’t be for a lack of expensive, sophisticated and improbable-looking hardware a mile up above it.
It is that mile which is the problem. The oil industry has been fixing blowouts for more than a century. The challenge is doing it under 150 atmospheres of pressure with the tools and lights of a robot mini-submarine that gets its power and instructions by way of a cable. Under these conditions well-laid plans can come to naught, as they did when icy methane hydrates that form when natural gas gets mixed up with cold water at high pressure scuppered plans to funnel the leaking oil up to Discoverer Enterprise. The hydrates did not just clog the pipes, they also buoyed up the 125-tonne cofferdam that had been lowered over the leak, lifting it right off the sea bed. ”’