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Well. There it is.

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Arnold Kling attempts to scare our socks off.

I am not upset with political trends because I want Republicans to win. I am upset because I foresee a one-party state. Even if neither party is particularly libertarian, gridlock and competitive checks and balances are better for libertarians. Moreover, a one-party state is corrupt and backward relative to what we are used to. Again, I just come from reading North, Wallis, and Weingast, and a major characteristic of a “natural” state is that every economic organization must necessarily be a political organization. What we are seeing now, with government threatening private business executives while rewarding lobbyists with “stimulus” (see Russ Roberts, for example), is “natural state” behavior.

As for various commenters who assure me that there is some natural tendency for a second party to be competitive, allow me introduce to you to Montgomery County, Maryland, as well as to many large American cities. In fact, it is quite easy for a one-party government to emerge when there are ethnic blocs and a large public sector relative to the private sector.

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For sufficiently small values of “geek”.

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I am not making this up.

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I am not making this up.

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Jeremy Clarkson is not impressed with the new Honda “Prius-killer”.

And the sound is worse. The Honda’s petrol engine is a much-shaved, built-for-economy, low-friction 1.3 that, at full chat, makes a noise worse than someone else’s crying baby on an airliner. It’s worse than the sound of your parachute failing to open. Really, to get an idea of how awful it is, you’d have to sit a dog on a ham slicer.

The nickel for the battery has to come from somewhere. Canada, usually. It has to be shipped to Japan, not on a sailing boat, I presume. And then it must be converted, not in a tree house, into a battery, and then that battery must be transported, not on an ox cart, to the Insight production plant in Suzuka. And then the finished car has to be shipped, not by Thor Heyerdahl, to Britain, where it can be transported, not by wind, to the home of a man with a beard who thinks he’s doing the world a favour.

Why doesn’t he just buy a Range Rover, which is made from local components, just down the road? No, really — weird-beards buy locally produced meat and vegetables for eco-reasons. So why not apply the same logic to cars?

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Here’s the problem for states that want to pry more money out of the wallets of rich people. It never works because people, investment capital and businesses are mobile: They can leave tax-unfriendly states and move to tax-friendly states.

The tax differential between low-tax and high-tax states is widening, meaning that a relocation from high-tax California or Ohio, to no-income tax Texas or Tennessee, is all the more financially profitable both in terms of lower tax bills and more job opportunities.

Is it coincidence that the two highest tax-rate states in the nation, California and New York, have the biggest fiscal holes to repair? No. Dozens of academic studies — old and new — have found clear and irrefutable statistical evidence that high state and local taxes repel jobs and businesses.

New York and California are nice places to visit but you wouldn’t want to live there.

Charles Stross, British science fiction writer (and one of my Recommended Writers; see right), finds out that travel in the U.S. is about as much fun as you would expect a government-controlled activity to be.

I caught an Amtrak train — the #513 from Seattle to Portland, business class. It was that, or fly (I don’t drive in the US), and I’m fed up with security theatre.

“Security theatre”, of course, being Bruce Schneier’s term for what goes on at airports — making it look like we have security without actually doing much.

I was gobsmacked by how slow and inefficient the process of catching the train in America feels, compared to even the ghastly suboptimization of Virgin or National Express in the UK, never mind Japan Rail. First you book the ticket and a seat. You have to present photo ID to claim a boarding card —like airline travel in the 1950s — an intrusive and annoying but not actually effective security measure. Then you check your bags — all but the two carry-ons you’re allowed— not less than an hour before departure. For boarding, there’s a long queue while all those folks who didn’t think to book a seat present their tickets at the gate and are issued with seat allocations. Only then do folks get to go on board the train — which makes boarding it a half-hour torment rather than a rapid, relatively painless rush.

Our tax dollars at work.

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That’s a rather expansive definition of “we”, of course.

Joel Kotkin limns how the interests of the current ruling class are not identical with the interests of the common weal.

A yuppie stimulus differs from the more traditional approach, which aims to get the front-line, blue-collar types back to work. Instead, it would channel public funds away from those grouchy construction workers – some 30% of whom may soon be out of work – to better heeled, and, in their minds, more deserving “creative” professionals. After all, what stake do the netroots have in making things better for Joe the Plumber?

In contrast, the yuppie bailout focuses on a sure-fire Democratic constituency, the well-educated urban professional. One advocate of such an approach, pundit Richard Florida, has urged President-elect Barack Obama to eschew crude investments in traditional production and a renewed housing market in favor of goodies directed to what he calls “the creative industry.”

Florida sees any focus on restoring manufacturing and housing as a misguided rescue of the “old industrial economy,” in which Americans actually made things and other Americans consumed them. Instead, he suggests, “the first step must be to reduce demand for the core products and lifestyle of the old order.”

So let’s stop worrying about what happens to Detroit, or the crisis in the housing market. In Florida’s view, cars, of course, are demonized as woefully bad for environmental reasons and not particularly friendly to the preferred dense urbanity so attractive to advocates of “hip cool” cities.

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All of your Star Wars illusions destroyed.

The core point is that the Jedi are not to be trusted:

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And, consequently, they are raising a generation of victims.

Which is okay — when the bad times come again, as they always do, it’s the children of the rednecks who will survive, and the children of the ruling class that will fertilize their soil.

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I am not making this up.

Steve Sailer discusses how regressives are going back to the 19th century.

What’s particularly striking is that this legal privilege is more or less hereditary, being passed down to the child from grandparents who currently live in Beverly Hills and from parents who used to live there.

It is, of course, all about money.

I wonder what Thomas Jefferson would have thought.

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Much has been written about how suburbs have taken people away from the city and that now suburbanites need to return back to where they came. But in reality most suburbs of large cities have grown not from the migration of local city-dwellers but from migration from small towns and the countryside.

Most suburban growth is not the result of declining core city populations, but is rather a consequence of people moving from rural areas and small towns to the major metropolitan areas. It is the appeal of large metropolitan places that drives suburban growth.

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So when somebody calls you “fathead” it’s really a compliment.

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But the storm has fallen with a special ferocity on black and Latino homeowners, the analysis shows. Defaults occur three times as often in mostly minority census tracts as in mostly white ones. Eighty-five percent of the worst-hit neighborhoods — where the default rate is at least double the regional average — have a majority of black and Latino homeowners.

Perhaps that’s because they listened to the government and bought houses that they, you know, couldn’t afford. Always a bad idea, taking the government’s advice.

“My district feels like ground zero,” said City Councilman James Sanders Jr., an African-American who represents hundreds of blocks in Queens like this one. “In military terms, we are being pillaged.”

Novel concept: an area that pillages itself.

Years ago many banks drew red lines on maps around black neighborhoods and refused to lend; more recently, some banks began taking aim at those neighborhoods for the marketing of subprime loans, say consumer advocates.

How dare those racists target minority neighborhoods for loans! The swine! Not like the good old days where we could bitch at them for not lending in minority neighborhoods.

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Pretty soon they’ll all be going to school in pajamas.

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Just don’t have an argument with a large dog.

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An excellent replacement for the quasi-communist metropolitan newspapers.

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Somalia has a government? Who knew?

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Sounds like the 1930s all over again. And this time they won’t have a King to pull the plug when it all goes south.

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Well, after all, they are lawyers….

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The driver lost the money to the wind when an envelope he had stuck in the passenger seat pocket of his vehicle came loose during a test drive.

The cash – in 500, 200, and 100 euro notes – fluttered across the motorway in the midst of speeding traffic near the city of Hanover.

Here’s your sign….

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This is not your father’s trade war, a tit-for-tat over champagne or cheese. With countries worldwide desperately trying to keep and create jobs in the midst of a global recession, the spat between the United States and its normally friendly northern neighbor underscores what is emerging as the biggest threat to open commerce during the economic crisis.

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You mean the global warming alarmist are lying to us? I’m shocked, I tell you, shocked.

Peggy Noonan:

The indecipherable language of government has actually become dangerous to the well-being of the nation. As the federal government claims ever greater powers, its language has become vague to the point of meaningless and meaningless to the point of menacing.

Ever notice how policemen and lawyers can’t say “car” or “truck”?

I think I heard “accessing affordable quality health care,” “single payer plan vis-à-vis private multiparty insurers” and “key component of quality improvement.” In any case, she didn’t answer the question, which was a disappointment but not a surprise. No one answers the question anymore.

A New York Times profile recently had her recalling with self-deprecating charm the time her child ran a high fever and she caused a bit of confusion by forgetting to say, “We have to go to the hospital!” and announcing instead, “This unsustainable increase in body temperature requires immediate access to a local quality health-care facility!” I made that up, but it was believable, wasn’t it?

Bryan Caplan has the answer.

A old saying tells us, “Thank goodness we don’t get as much government as we pay for.”  I’m tempted to add, “Yes, and thank goodness politicians don’t actually do exactly what they promised.”  Dishonest politics is sordid, but honest politics is absolutely scary.

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The Republican who challenged Rep. John Murtha in 2008 says a top aide to the embattled Pennsylvania Democrat threatened to have him recalled to active duty in the U.S. Army so he could be court-martialed for engaging in politics while serving in the armed forces.

Bill Russell — who challenged Murtha in 2008 and intends to do so again in 2010 — said Murtha chief of staff John Hugya made the threat during a National Rifle Association event in mid-March.

Ret. Col. Gregory Ritch, a former Army Reserve officer who served as Russell’s commanding officer, said he heard Hugya make a similar threat in January.

John Murtha (D., Pork) is just the gift that keeps on giving … or is that “keeps on taking”?

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Real food triumphs over SWPL fetishes.

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Taxes weren’t the only consideration, although they clearly were important. The index factors in 11 criteria to determine where to live large, including “economic and legal stability,” “legal considerations,” “education for children,” “proximity,” “culture/infrastructure,” “depth of financial services” and “employment and business opportunities.”

Not surprising. If I were rich, that’s where I’d live.

Arnold Kling uncovers shocking news.

Since we know that the Obama Administration is centrist and pragmatic, the only inference to draw is that the Post has become a mouthpiece for the far right wing.

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Imagine that.

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“In spring 2006 the French government arranged for three bears from Slovenia to be released into the forests near Arbas,” Arcangeli tells me. “Two others were released near other villages. Gendarmerie intelligence warned us that there might be a few protesters, mostly farmers worried about their sheep being attacked. But 250 turned up, smashing anything they could find outside the town hall, trying to break in, spraying paint and throwing bottles of blood. Eighty gendarmes tried to keep order.”

The plan, agreed between Spain, France and Andorra, had been to introduce 15 bears over three years but since the Arbas riots no more have been released.

I guess the protests worked.

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When earlier this week President Obama signed a $410 billion spending bill to keep the government running through the fall, every account of the event noted the 800-pound contradiction in the room. Mr. Obama had campaigned against earmarks, even saying he would cut them back to levels before 1994, the start of the Gingrich-GOP interregnum. Now here was Obama as president signing a bill soaked in earmarks.

Here’s another way of putting it: The U.S. budget is now history’s biggest mountain of swag; it is uncountable goodie bags filled with tax revenue. Mr. Obama’s swag mountain, the fiscal year 2010 “budget,” is $3.59 trillion high (25% of total GDP of about $14 trillion). His $800 billion stimulus bill was another pile of public cash. We the people have concluded that if we don’t use the Honorable John or Nancy or Ted in Congress to get our piece of it, someone else will get it.

Barack Obama isn’t a reformer. He’s the president of Earmark Nation. We are about to enact the Obama federal health-insurance entitlement, which on top of all the other entitlements and their limitless liabilities will require pulling trillions of dollars more into the federal budget. Whatever nominal public good this is supposed to achieve, it means that they, these 535 pols, most of them gerrymandered for life, will decide in perpetuity the details of how to dole it out.

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The ancient city of Canterbury has found itself the subject of a complaint from homosexual rights activists for not having a gay bar.

Well, if gay is the new black, then they need quotas, right?

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When SteamPunk is just to johnny-come-lately.

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I wouldn’t be surprised.

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Just in case you were wondering. I know I was.

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That’s great, but it still creeps me out.

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Hence the name, I suppose.

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Truth is stranger than fiction, because fiction has to make sense.