Nov
22
2019

URLs du Jour

2019-11-22

  • I am not usually a fan of worker-vs-CEO rhetoric, but Eric Boehm at Reason cites a plausible new study: Trump and Warren Love Protectionism, But It Hurts Workers While Boosting CEO Pay.

    President Donald Trump and leading Democratic presidential candidates like Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) tend to agree that protectionism is in the best interest of American workers—but a new study suggests that it's actually business executives who pocket most of the benefits.

    Brian Blank, an economist at Mississippi State University, studied the performance of more than 1,000 businesses that were beneficiaries of trade restrictions—including both tariffs and so-called "anti-dumping" laws—over the past 25 years. His research shows that the CEOs and other top executives are among the biggest winners of trade protectionism—when there are any winners at all.

    Of course, Senator Liz would have a plan for that: get the government to take some of that CEO money, futz around with it a bit, and then give the "workers" some free stuff.

    It would not occur to her, or many of her voters, that government should just back off and let free, competitive markets work. Not everyone will be happy with that, but that's OK.

  • Nobody's been paying me to watch the impeachment hearings, so I haven't been. So I welcome David Harsanyi, writing at National Review, bringing me the good news that I would have been wasting my time. President Trump Impeachment Hearings Have Been Useless.

    To me, there’s little question such a call from the president [to Volodymyr Zelensky] — whether he was explicitly favor trading or not — is at the very least unethical and at most an abuse of power. Is it impeachable? That’s a political decision. Because, no matter how hard liberals try and convince you otherwise, the Trump presidency doesn’t operate in a vacuum. Republicans believe they’ve been living life under two sets of rules. Considering what previous administrations have gotten away with — and what many of the people now clamoring for impeachment helped them get away with — it’s difficult to blame them. Perhaps if Democrats and operatives within government hadn’t spent three years cooking up a fantastical Manchurian Candidate conspiracy to delegitimize Trump this impeachment inquiry might be playing out differently. As it stands now, the entire effort is drenched in partisanship. Which makes it extremely unlikely that many voters will be pried from their previously held positions. Nothing that’s been said during these hearings changes that fact.

    That bit about people not being "pried from their previously held positions" seems to be the big difference between the Nixon thing, the Clinton thing, and this thing.

  • Some genius has way too much time on his hands, but the result is pretty amusing. Or disgusting. Your call. The Walls Are Closing In, A Tipping Point Bombshell, The Beginning Of The End.

    Some people get heavily invested in a narrative.

  • Returning to Senator Liz for a bit, it seems she's decided that best option is to shout "corruption" a lot. For example, as Collin Anderson of the Free Beacon describes: Warren Calls Donor Ambassadors 'Corruption At Its Worst,' Voted for Obama Donor Ambassadors.

    Democratic presidential hopeful Elizabeth Warren on Thursday released a campaign ad calling the appointment of campaign donors as ambassadors "corruption at its worst," but the Massachusetts senator previously voted to confirm ambassadors with no diplomatic experience who raised millions for Barack Obama.

    Liz a hypocrite? Say it ain't so!

    Or, alternatively, say it is so, after you've read this Jonathan Chait article from earlier this year, What Happens When Elizabeth Warren Sells Out to Powerful Interests? (Specifically, Massachusetts' medical device industry and the teacher unions.)

  • But she sees "corruption, plain and simple" even in…

    Apparently, just talking to Zuck is corruption. But on the other hand…

  • Elizabeth Warren says she'd 'love to explain' her wealth tax to Bill Gates.

    Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren says she would "love to explain" her wealth tax to Bill Gates after the Microsoft co-founder expressed doubt that she would sit down and talk with him.

    "I'm always happy to meet with people, even if we have different views," Warren tweeted on Wednesday. "@BillGates, if we get the chance, I'd love to explain exactly how much you'd pay under my wealth tax. (I promise it's not $100 billion.)"

    I would guess that Liz wouldn't see such a meeting as "corruption plain and simple". Because she envisions it would just be Bill sitting quietly listening to her "explain".

A Slight Trick of the Mind

[Amazon Link]
(paid link)

A few years back I watched the movie Mr. Holmes with Ian McKellen as the detective. The movie was good enough to put the novel on which it was based into the read-someday list, and … here 'tis. It turns out the movie was a reasonably faithful adaptation.

Caveat Lector: the author, Mitch Cullin, writes literary fiction, and he's completely unconcerned with the standard conventions of genre. The mysteries here are pretty minor, don't involve actual crimes, and they are overwhelmed by issues of character. Things are pretty dark, and occasionally tragic. Three plot threads are intertwined:

  1. An aged Holmes in post-WW2 Sussex, tending his bees, with a developing relationship with Roger, the young son of his housekeeper. The relationship is as affectionate as possible, given Holmes' standoffish personality. But Sherlock is plagued with fading memory and increasing physical infirmities.
  2. That's set just after Holmes' return from postwar Japan, where he's gone to research the "prickly ash", a plant said to have benefits for said fading memory. His tour includes Hiroshima, on the mend from its recent encounter with nuclear fission. And he's accompanied by a gay Japanese host who's looking to discover what happened to his long-lost father.
  3. And there are flashbacks to a decades-old case of Sherlock's, where a suspicious husband wants to know what's going on with his increasingly estranged missus, and whether it has anything to do with the music lessons she's been taking from the mysterious Madame Schirmer on the haunting armonica.

A decent read, outside my usual fictional orbits.


Last Modified 2024-02-15 8:06 PM EDT