July 2008 Archives

The Homeland Security Dilemma, dissected:

John Mueller Department of Political Science Ohio State University [...]

There seem to be at least five premises which must be taken into consideration when formulating policy for protecting the homeland, for seeking to make it "invulnerable."

1. The number of potential terrorist targets is essentially infinite

2. The probability that any individual target will be attacked is essentially zero

3. If one potential target happens to enjoy a degree of protection, the agile terrorist usually can readily move on to another one

4. Most targets are "vulnerable" in that it is not very difficult to damage them, but invulnerable in that they can be rebuilt in fairly short order and at tolerable expense

5. It is essentially impossible to make a very wide variety of potential terrorist targets invulnerable except by completely closing them down

That's what I've been thinking. But the TSA and related programs provide thousands of new government jobs, so...

Found here. Via Hit and Run.

This week the Denver Water board made the bizarre decision to close the Dillon Dam road, an important route in Summit county which runs atop the dam at Lake Dillon. This was done in response to security analyses showing the dam to be vulnerable to terrorist attack.

Locals are understandably upset. I agree with the Summit Daily when they call it 'creative paranoia.' I'm sure there's some risk, but I doubt the dam is any more of a target than any of hundreds of water storage facilities around the country. I'd much rather see the country shrug off these vague threats and carry on as before. So much for a stiff upper lip.

One downside of the closure is a very real emergency response problem. The county is suing to re-open the road.

Johan Norberg reviews Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine, and finds it, shall we say, lacking. Here's the summary:

Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine purports to be an exposé of the ruthless nature of free-market capitalism and its chief recent exponent, Milton Friedman. Klein argues that capitalism goes hand in hand with dictatorship and brutality and that dictators and other unscrupulous political figures take advantage of “shocks”—catastrophes real or manufactured—to consolidate their power and implement unpopular market reforms. Klein cites Chile under General Augusto Pinochet, Britain under Margaret Thatcher, China during the Tiananmen Square crisis, and the ongoing war in Iraq as examples of this process.
Klein’s analysis is hopelessly flawed at virtually every level. Friedman’s own words reveal him to be an advocate of peace, democracy, and individual rights. He argued that gradual economic reforms were often preferable to swift ones and that the public should be fully informed about them, the better to prepare themselves in advance. Further, Friedman condemned the Pinochet regime and opposed the war in Iraq.
Klein’s historical examples also fall apart under scrutiny. For example, Klein alleges that the Tiananmen Square crackdown was intended to crush opposition to pro-market reforms, when in fact it caused liberalization to stall for years. She also argues that Thatcher used the Falklands War as cover for her unpopular economic policies, when actually those economic policies and their results enjoyed strong public support.
Klein’s broader empirical claims fare no better. Surveys of political and economic freedom reveal that the less politically free regimes tend to resist market liberalization, while those states with greater political freedom tend to pursue economic freedom as well.

I knew she was wrong-headed, but I didn't realize she was quite so out of touch with the real world. Rest the of the review here.

Gov. Ritter and others are supporting a ballot initiative to raise severance taxes on oil and gas extracted from Colorado. It's a $321 million tax hike, with most of the money going to higher education.

It's a clever move to go after oil companies, which aren't the most popular businesses these days. The idea appeals to the basest populism - 'Oil companies suck, and look! They have money! Let's take some!' That seems to be about the depth of reasoning behind the measure. That, and 'oh how we need the money.'

The measure enjoys some popularity among the diarists at Colorado Pols, and when I made some attempt to swim against the tide there I got this response-

Ignore Walter
He will be on this site (and all the others) until exactly Election Day and then will disappear. He is a paid flack for the anti campaign

That's daft enough to put on permanent display here.

The CDC is now looking at jalapeños as the source of recent salmonella cases.

Cilantro and serrano peppers are also under suspicion. Bad news for me.

Most of the planet is rejoicing over the dramatic rescue of Ingrid Betancourt and other hostages held by the FARC. Not to be left out of the celebration, Fidel Castro has weighed in (whoops, left out the link, found here. Thanks Richard!):

...by a basic sentiment of humanity, we were gladdened by the news that Ingrid Betancourt, three American citizens and other captives had been liberated."
The Colombian guerrillas "never should have kidnapped the civilians or held the military men prisoner under the conditions existing in the jungle," Castro wrote. "Those were objectively cruel actions. No revolutionary purpose could justify them. In due course, it will be necessary to analyze the subjective factors in depth. In Cuba, we won our revolutionary war by granting immediate and unconditional freedom to our prisoners. We turned over to the International Red Cross all soldiers and officers captured in each battle, keeping only their weapons.

Shameless. I suppose it's possible that he is getting senile, and forgotten the hundreds he executed before firing squads. He may have also lost his memory of the political prisoners kept for so long they are called los olvidados, the forgotten. Perhaps literally forgotten by Castro, now?

Sadly, it appears Fidel will die of old age and avoid the firing squad himself. In the meantime he's still trying to fool people, to hide the fact that the brutal FARC is his direct ideological and moral heir.