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Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Samizdata quote of the day

· North American affairs

“During the ’08 campaign, the same media that reported breathlessly about an old used tanning bed I purchased to get some sun during the dark Alaskan winter, couldn’t be bothered to investigate Barack Obama’s associations, statements or even his voting record as a state senator.”

– Sarah Palin. It continues to amaze me how, whatever one thinks of her views, she is portrayed by a large chunk of our MSM as stupid or crazy. Really?

March 16th, 2012 | 22 comments - (Comments are closed)

So much for the Tea Party…

· North American affairs

I see that Mitt Romney, a big government Republican statist who partially nationalised healthcare in his state and gave Obama the opening for more grandiose Federal healthcare nationalisation, is closing in on the Republican nomination.

Well so much for the influence of the Tea Party. If Romney wins, I can only hope Obama wipes the floor with him for exactly the same reasons I was delighted McCain was defeated… and do not see Romney as any less loathsome than McCain, so I am all for the Greater Evil winning again.

And I hope a large number of Tea Party figures make it clear they will be staying home next election day if Romney gets the nod.

March 7th, 2012 | 63 comments - (Comments are closed)

Samizdata quote of the day

· North American affairs

“Romney is right about the futility of many current policies, but being offended by irrationality is insufficient. Santorum is right to be alarmed by many cultural trends but implies that religion must be the nexus between politics and cultural reform. Romney is not attracting people who want rationality leavened by romance. Santorum is repelling people who want politics unmediated by theology. Neither Romney nor Santorum looks like a formidable candidate for November.”

– George Will

February 23rd, 2012 | 12 comments - (Comments are closed)

Hard questions about UK-US extradition arrangements

· Civil liberty, Law & Regulation · North American affairs · UK affairs

A retired businessman by the name of Christopher Tappin is to be extradited to the US for allegedly trying to sell batteries for Iranian missiles. Serious stuff, you might agree. But as I read in a long Times (of London) article on Saturday (behind a paywall and no, I am not writing it all out), one of the most disturbing features of this man’s indictment in absentia is that no attempt has been made to establish, in the UK, any sort of prima facie case that he might be guilty. Instead, a grand jury in the US has ruled, apparently, that he is suspected of being involved in something dodgy. As a result, he faces two choices: admit guilt and face a short, but nevertheless, tough prison term in the US and have a criminal record for the rest of his life, or, plead not guilty and take his chances in the US legal system and face a 35-year jail term, as well as bankrupt himself in trying to get legal representation.

Even worse than the abuse of due process involved (the man apparently was not even aware of the grand jury ruling) is that the UK government, despite some alarm being raised by MPs, seems quite happy to transfer British citizens to the US in this way without any significant legal safeguards. This is all of a piece with how, as I have written before, the US is also bullying other countries in the name of halting tax evasion by forcing foreign financial institutions to undertake all kinds of onerous compliance checks to ensure that all American clients are accounted for. What makes such issues so sensitive is that this appears to be a one-way street: far more Britons, it seems, are getting packed off to the US for various alleged offences than is the case with Americans being extradited to stand trial in the UK.

It is a good feature of friendly relations between countries that there should be mutual recognition of important principles. And the cavalier treatment of certain principles of due process of law in the extradition case of this Mr Tappin character is a sign that the extradition treaty of 2003 between the US and UK is not working as intended, is oppressive, and should be scrapped or significantly reformed without delay. There may not be many votes in this issue, but it is important.

A lot of articles have been written on this subject. Here is a good item in the Daily Telegraph back in 2009.

February 19th, 2012 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)

Samizdata quote of the day

· North American affairs · Slogans & Quotations

“As someone known for writing defenses of chain stores and explaining Plano, Texas, to puzzled pundits, I agree that way too many smart people, particularly on the coasts, are quick to condemn middle-American culture without understanding why people value one or another aspect of it. But they were even worse in 1963.”

– Virginia Postrel, writing a review of Charles Murray’s latest book. In a nutshell, she skewers his central thesis that America is so much more fractured than in the past. That rather depends on what the chronological starting point is.

Murray is most famous, or depending on your point of view, infamous, for his role as co-author of The Bell Curve. More recently, I waded through his tome, Human Accomplishment, which uses various metrics to measure the fecundity of Western civilisation in particular. He’s certainly not afraid of the gods of political correctness.

February 13th, 2012 | 3 comments - (Comments are closed)

Immigration issues

· Economics, Business & Globalization · North American affairs

As regular readers here know, immigration is an issue that even people who are libertarians with a strong hostility to state barriers to movement disagree about. The nub of the issue can be expressed thus: immigration+welfare state+weak indigenous culture = social discord. Or: immigration+free market capitalism+strong sense of civil society = strong, dynamic country.

Over at the CATO think tank in Washington DC, a number of writers, such as Bryan Caplan, Daniel Griswold, Richard K Vedder and Joel Kotkin argue that immigration, particularly without the distortions and false incentives of a big welfare state, is a force for good and an expression of the desire of people to better their condition not just materially, but in other ways, and that believers in liberty ought to be on their side. In as much as immigration, legal or otherwise, causes certain costs, then there are ways of dealing with this other than a simple blanket ban, which is what some people, mostly, but not exclusively on the right, are calling for.

This is an impressive collection of essays and provides a bit of a counterweight to cultural pessimists, some of whom, ironically, are immigrants themselves.

Another good thing about this collection of essays is that with the exception of Caplan, I had not heard about any of these authors before, so I was pleased to find a large assembly of such insightful writers to follow in the future.

Here is a paragraph from one of the essays, by Joshua C. Hall, Benjamin J. VanMetre, and Richard K. Vedder:

When examining these various views on immigration it’s important not to fall subject to the all too common misperception that one’s immigrant status dictates one’s position in the debate, viewing immigrants as pro-immigration and nonimmigrants as anti-immigration. This is clearly not the case as Brimelow (1999), Hoppe (1998) and Borjas (1999) are some of the most prominent skeptics of immigration and are immigrants themselves – anti-immigrant immigrants.

In fact, the anti-immigrant immigrant is not a new phenomenon. It stems from the growing instinct for individuals to think that their generation is the Great Generation and that those who follow are somehow inferior. So it goes with immigration. One can speculate that the individuals who arrived on the Mayflower lamented newcomers arriving to Massachusetts on subsequent boats in the 1620s as lacking the motivation, the ingenuity, or some other positive attribute allegedly possessed in abundance by those arriving earlier.

In the 18th century, Benjamin Franklin lamented the allegedly deleterious effects of new German arrivals to Philadelphia by disparagingly speaking of how Pennsylvania was being “Germanized.”

In the mid-19th century, the great American inventor Samuel F. B. Morse denounced new arrivals from Ireland and spoke of the dangers to America arising from the Roman Catholic faith of the newcomers. A half-century later, Woodrow Wilson pronounced that new arrivals from Italy and eastern Europe were of an inferior stock compared with those coming earlier from the northwestern part of the same continent. So it is not surprising when Borjas (1999) and Brimelow (1999) lament the arrivals to America after 1965 as inferior to those coming in the 1950s or early 1960s. The question that ultimately arises then is, if conventional political ideology does not explain differences in opinion on immigration then what does?

I should add that these essays have a strongly American flavour, but some if not all of the arguments the authors make apply to certain other countries as well.

January 31st, 2012 | 11 comments - (Comments are closed)

Dumpster diving in the name of “security”

· North American affairs · Self defence & Security

This is one of the more ridiculous incidents of security theatre that I have read. I know it is preaching to the converted to post such a link to Samizdata, and the increasingly farcical nature of the United States government surprises no one who reads here, but the post deserves to be spread far and wide. Reading Mike Masnick’s account of how the knuckleheads providing “security” at the US Capitol conduct themselves, one can better visualize the inherent idiocy of the entire operation.

January 28th, 2012 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)

Samizdata quote of the day

· Internet · North American affairs · Slogans & Quotations

[W]hile SOPA/PIPA may be stalled for now, a big part of the reason is that tech companies got into the lobbying game, too…That’s right, slowly but surely, Congress is sucking the tech industry into their world, making us play by their rules. We have to pay them off, literally with cash, or we get slaughtered.

…Well, we’re now playing by big government rules. Congress can set up a fight pit with Hollywood in one corner and Silicon Valley in the other. Who cares what happens. The money will just roll right in.

This is how criminal organizations run protection rackets. Congress is doing just that, only it’s completely legal.

– TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington on the spanner thrown into the works of SOPA/PIPA (for now)

January 28th, 2012 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)

How I got by without watching the State of the Union Address

· North American affairs

“Well, I didn’t watch the State of the Union, but I did fix the dishwasher, and teach a fairly decent class on the non-delegation doctrine, and edit some page proofs of a forthcoming law review article. So it was a pretty good day.”

– Glenn Reynolds

In my case, being a Londoner, yesterday, I attended an excellent Institute of Economic Affairs talk by “Bleeding Heart Libertarian”, got a plumber around to deal with a blocked pipe, picked up a suit from the cleaners, discussed a finance matter with my Dad and typed about 4,000 words at work. I did later skim a few lines from the Obama speech, though. I see he’s taking tax policy advice from Warren Buffett, whom I am increasingly bracketing alongside George Soros as prime James Bond villain material.

January 25th, 2012 | 20 comments - (Comments are closed)

Another reason why (some) Americans like Dr Paul

· North American affairs

In a good article at The Atlantic, Conor Friedersdorf (now that is a name to remember) has this zinger of a response to a recent desperate attempt by Andrew Sullivan to try and claim that Mr Obama has been pursuing a brilliant, long term strategy. He asks, how would any Obama voters feel had their man promised to do the following prior to his election:

“(1) Codify indefinite detention into law; (2) draw up a secret kill list of people, including American citizens, to assassinate without due process; (3) proceed with warrantless spying on American citizens; (4) prosecute Bush-era whistleblowers for violating state secrets; (5) reinterpret the War Powers Resolution such that entering a war of choice without a Congressional declaration is permissible; (6) enter and prosecute such a war; (7) institutionalize naked scanners and intrusive full body pat-downs in major American airports; (8) oversee a planned expansion of TSA so that its agents are already beginning to patrol American highways, train stations, and bus depots; (9) wage an undeclared drone war on numerous Muslim countries that delegates to the CIA the final call about some strikes that put civilians in jeopardy; (10) invoke the state-secrets privilege to dismiss lawsuits brought by civil-liberties organizations on dubious technicalities rather than litigating them on the merits; (11) preside over federal raids on medical marijuana dispensaries; (12) attempt to negotiate an extension of American troops in Iraq beyond 2011 (an effort that thankfully failed); (13) reauthorize the Patriot Act; (13) and select an economic team mostly made up of former and future financial executives from Wall Street firms that played major roles in the financial crisis.”

Now I don’t, as readers know, like everything about Ron Paul, who is opposed to every single thing mentioned in this paragraph. But the reason, surely, why even those who might have the odd doubt about him are giving this man respect is for the sort of facts as contained in this paragraph. It is, if you think about it for a few minutes, truly shocking, even though someone like me is not really all that easily shocked by politics and politicians any more.

And here are further signs that Sullivan’s infatuation with Mr Obama is a joke:

“Over the years, Sullivan has confronted, as few others have, American transgressions abroad, including torture, detainee abuse, and various imperial ambitions. He’s long drawn attention to civil-liberties violations at home too, as a solo blogger and as lead editor and writer of a blogazine. When I worked for Sullivan, he not only published but actively encouraged items I found that highlighted civil-liberties abuses by the Obama Administration, and since I parted ways with The Daily Dish, he and the Dish team have continued to air critiques of Obama on these questions.”

“But his Newsweek essay fits the pattern I’ve lamented of Obama apologists who tell a narrative of his administration that ignores some of these issues and minimizes the importance of others, as if they’re a relatively unimportant matter to be set aside in a sentence or three before proceeding to the more important business of whether the president is being critiqued fairly by obtuse partisans.”

And this:

“Beyond strenuously objecting to the focus of his piece and what it doesn’t mention, and agreeing with some of Sullivan’s points, I have important disagreements with others. “Where Bush talked tough and acted counter-productively, Obama has simply, quietly, relentlessly decimated our real enemies, while winning the broader propaganda war,” Sullivan writes. “Since he took office, al Qaeda’s popularity in the Muslim world has plummeted.” But it’s surely relevant that, according to surveys like this one from James Zogby in 2011, “After improving with the election of Barack Obama in 2008, U.S. favorable ratings across the Arab world have plummeted. In most countries they are lower than at the end of the Bush Administration, and lower than Iran’s favorable ratings (except in Saudi Arabia).” And in the areas where Obama’s drone strikes are killing innocent civilians, he is trading short-term terrorist deaths for the possibility that our policies will create more terrorists in the long run. It’s a tradeoff some people consider prudent; but that’s different from saying he is “winning the propaganda war.” In fact, the predictable effect of some of his policies is to increase hatred of the U.S.”

Meanwhile, foreign policy specialist – and Salma Hayek fan – Daniel Drezner is unimpressed.

January 18th, 2012 | 28 comments - (Comments are closed)

Anti-SOPA blackout

· North American affairs

Wikipedia will be going offline tomorrow to protest against the Stop Online Piracy Act. So will Reddit. This kind of protest could have some effect because ordinary Wikipedia users from all points in the political hyperspace will be told just what a terrible idea SOPA is, and a lot of them will get it.

CNET has a useful FAQ about SOPA.

January 17th, 2012 | 21 comments - (Comments are closed)

The Fox News – Wall Street Journal debate

· North American affairs

The best debater was, without doubt, Newt Gingrich. He would tear Barack Obama apart in a debate.

A good way of understanding just how good a debater Gingrich is may be to compare him to Ron Paul – someone whose opinions I often agree with more than I do with the opinions of Newt Gingrich.

Ron Paul was asked about a radio interview where he appeared to say that Bin Laden should not have been killed by the Navy Seals (I, and a lot of other people, predicted that he would be asked such questions by Obama if Ron Paul was the nominee).

The only way out of such a position is to apologize for one’s confused speech and say “OF COURSE BIN LADEN SHOULD HAVE BEEN SHOT”.

Instead we got a long complicated reply, comparing (at one point) Islamist terrorists in Pakistan to Chinese dissenters in the United States, and saying that the reason that people attack the United States is “because we bomb their countries all the time”.

And on and on (Taliban allies against the Soviets – the Taliban hardly existed at the time, Taliban totally different from Bin Laden’s supporters NOT TRUE THEY HAVE THE SAME THEOLOGY, and…).

Ron I agree with you that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have proved to be a mistake – and I was still almost booing at the television screen as you spoke (a lot of people actually present at the debate could not stop themselves booing you – how you spoke was just so offensive). I agree with your policies (on just about everything), but they way you express yourself…….. You do not just sound silly (and make errors of fact) you actually sound hostile to the United States and the West in general. As if you were an enemy of the West – you are not, but you sound as if you were.

And Newt Gingrich – he told a brief story about Andrew Jackson and “killing the enemies of America” and had everyone cheering him. As he did on virtually everything else…

“But he is still wrong about the issues” – no more wrong than Mitt Romney, Rick Perry (less than one percent of the vote in New Hampshire) and Rick Santorum. And he can debate vastly better than they can.

Still it is all pointless now.

Neither Rick Santorum or (even) Rick Perry will get out of the race and endorse Gingrich – which means that Mitt Romney will win on Saturday.

And that means it is over.

The candidate with the least good economic plan (although light years better than Obama) and the person who, when asked if he would support the new Obama law that allows imprisonment (without time limit) of citizens suspected of supporting enemies of the United States – said “yes” (and meant it).

People are to “trust in the good character” of the President not to “abuse this power” – well that is fine, let us see the end of what is left of the rule of law at once. As long as the President is of “good character”.

Oh well at least Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan Chase will be pleased.

I hear they have switched some of their support from Barack to Mitt – what a good sign of high moral character. Almost as good as being against abortion (as the most senior Elder of the Morman Church in Massachusetts), then being “pro choice” when in politics in Massachusetts, then being against abortion again (when running for the Republican nomination for President). Oh well my “do not say nasty things about Mitt” New Year’s Resolution did not last long – but he is going to be nominee after Saturday, so it is a last negative statement before I (and everyone else interested in defending the West) have to rally behind this man’s banner.

One must draw a sharp distinction between the person of the King (as a human being) and “the Crown”. In the clash against the Marxists, Mitt Romney will be “King” after Saturday (the Coronation is not till the Convention, but a King is King before his coronation) – so his personal imperfections will have to be overlooked, the oaths that I (and so many others) have taken to defend the West against the totalitarians, will bind us to him in the contest (regardless of what terrible end this riding leads to). The choice of not following the banner will still exist – but not as an honourable choice. The statement “the King will lead us to our deaths” may be true – but it is also irrelevant. After all the enemy will still be in the field, seeking to flee (on the grounds that the commander of our own army is useless) is just a “cop out”. When the banner is formally raised one follows the banner – even if it leads into a narrow valley, with the enemy in front and on both flanks. One can advice against it – one can even call the King an idiot to his face. But fleeing is not really an option – neither in honour (leaving everyone else to die), or in practicality (for the enemy will follow after they have done their business – in reality there is no real place to hide). And defeat is not predetermined – if one attacks fast enough (and fortune turns in one’s favour), one may be able to cut one’s way through, before the enemy has time to react.

To turn to lighter matters…. or, at least, the same matters expressed in a lighter tone.

Max Keiser (and the rest of the dodgy people) will be overjoyed – they are already using their “two Dollar whore” lines (and so on) against Romney. The attacks on Bain Capital may be unfair – but “loading companies with debt so that they fail after you walk away with millions” was a line used against Romney by the Wall Street Journal questioner, the left will use it also (and much more). They will love it when he is the nominee.

Which he will be.

January 17th, 2012 | 16 comments - (Comments are closed)
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