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In Illinois, there is no danger that extra cash will be squandered, because there is no extra cash. But state legislators know you can’t be too careful. So they are considering approving $100 million for the Barack Obama Presidential Library. Without that promise, Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan fears, the president might put his monument somewhere else—Hawaii or New York or maybe Nairobi.

Without that promise, of course, Illinois would also save $100 million. A government that already spends and promises well beyond its means has no business taking on any new obligation it can possibly avoid. But if Illinois lawmakers were susceptible to logic or arithmetic, the state would not be insolvent to begin with.

Well, considering that for the next couple hundred years many people will be wanting to know What the fuck was he thinking?, it doesn’t seem excessive.

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Andreessen Horowitz-backed AgLocal, which began as a marketplace for meat, connecting animal farmers to buyers including top-rated chefs, has now pivoted to become a consumer-facing service. On the new e-commerce site, online shoppers can browse through the meat products offered by family-operated farms, which are paid for on a subscription basis.

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This sort of thing is why tReason magazine has to be treated with heaping doses of skepticism.

“Over the last 32 years its cost California tax payers about 4 billion dollars to have the death penalty, and over that period only 13 executions have been carried out,” says LMU Law Professor Paula Mitchell.

So the basic argument is that maintaining an apparatus for executing prisoners isn’t c0st effective because (and I am not making this up) not enough prisoners are being executed to justify the money spent.

Mitchell’s study, “Rethinking the Death Penalty in California,” shows that once the death penalty comes into play for a case, the legal costs skyrocket to an extra $134 million dollars per year, well above the cost to implement life without possibility of parole. Death penalty cases require more attorneys, more experts, and an automatic review by the California Supreme Court, making it a seemingly endless process.

And the obvious reason for this is that bleeding-hearts in the legislature and the courts (not to mention the mob) have placed so many fetters on the justice system when it comes to executions that it’s not surprising that the costs have skyrockets. Get rid of the administrative and technical bottlenecks, and even these tender souls would be surprised at how cheap the death penalty becomes. But, of course, that’s not what they’re after; they’re after a political objective that can’t be obtained through legitimate democratic political activity and has to be effected by such intellectual sleight-of-hand as this.

This is exactly on a par with the guy who murdered his parents and then pled for clemency on the basis of being an orphan, and not too far removed from the statists (and there are more of them writing for tReason magazine than you might think) who put in place programs to pay for people’s medical procedures and then claim the power to regulate behavior based on the fact that certain things are costing the taxpayer more money than is proper.

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It is one of the most charming characteristics of this great country of ours that people bother with this sort of things.

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It’s easy to mock VOX DOT COM. (Trust me, I know.) But, for some strange reason, they’ve decided to make it even easier. To wit: Matthew Yglesias recently discussed the evils of the accumulation of wealth with anti-income-inequality auteur Thomas Piketty … at the bar of the St. Regis Hotel in Washington, D.C.

…

Personally, I think the $200 two-ounce pour of Pappy Van Winkle is the perfect bourbon to sip on whilst discussing the evils of inequality.

Freeberg makes up a useful new word.

1. Humankind’s very first liberals, the cavemen who never bothered to learn to hunt or to brew ale; when the cave-conservatives dragged a big carcass back to the fire to carve up and feed everybody, the cave-pussies felt the need to justify their share of the meat, and so contributed some rules about how to divide it all up. Later on, they invented claiming credit for the meat, blaming the conservatives for whatever food poisoning might have happened, and vegetarianism.

2. Any modern day successor of the original cave pussies. Any liberal who implies, directly or indirectly, successfully or otherwise, that he and his friends are the ones who acquired this meat, just because he and his friends are the ones who are making rules about how it’s to be divided.

3. More broadly, anyone who confuses the provisioning of a valued commodity, with its regulation, and erroneously credits the rule-makers with the actual production of the assets.

Read it.

I’d be tempted to take Mr Glock with me.

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No doubt Jay Carney has an appropriate lie ready.

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Assuming, of course, that that’s what you want to do.

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As if.

What happens to an economy when you do just about everything wrong? Say you spend $830 billion on a stimulus stuffed with make-work government-jobs programs and programs to pay people to buy new cars, you borrow $6 trillion, you launch a government-run health-care system that incentivizes businesses not to hire more workers, you raise tax rates on the businesses that hire workers and on the investors that invest in the businesses that hire workers, you print $3 trillion of paper money, you shut down an entire industry (coal), and try to regulate and restrain the one industry that actually is booming (oil and gas).

We made all of these imbecilic moves, and the wonder of it all is that the U.S. economy is growing at all. It’s a tribute to the indestructible Energizer Bunny that is the entrepreneurial U.S. economy that it keeps going and going even with all the obstacles. The problem is it isn’t going very fast. That’s what the Bureau of Economic Analysis told us this week when it reported that the GDP for the first quarter of the year grew an anemic 0.1 percent on an annual basis from January to March. The more meaningful measure of growth, private-sector GDP, rose by a still-meager 0.2 percent.

‘Put not your faith in princes, nor the sons of men, in whom there is no salvation.’ — Psalm 146.

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Human muscle can repair itself on its own, so long as it doesn’t suffer severe damage. But researchers now say that a new surgical technique can enable the regeneration of some muscle after large amounts are lost in accidents or war injuries, offering a much improved path to recovery. The technique involves implanting a small biological scaffolding at the injury site and then entering patients into an aggressive physical therapy regimen, and researchers say that the initial results have led to quality of life improvements for all patients of the procedure.

Bryan Caplan, a Real Economist, explains it all to you.

In practice, isn’t a “demagogue” just a political opponent with a silver tongue? Isn’t “demagoguery” simply rhetoric that hits political nerves you wish would stay eternally numb?

But before you ditch the whole concept, let me propose the following refinement: Demagoguery is the politics of Social Desirability Bias.

The heart of Social Desirability Bias: Some types of claims sound good or bad regardless of the facts. “Helping people” sounds good. “Acquiring luxuries” sounds bad. “Saving American jobs” sounds good. “Cheap nannies for upper-middle class families” sound bad. “Supporting our troops” sounds good. “Sympathizing with the enemy” sounds bad. “Raising the minimum wage” sounds good. “Measuring disemployment effects” sounds bad.

Any competent philosopher can construct cases where what sounds good is bad and what sounds bad is good. For instance: The minimum wage, good as it sounds, would be bad if it sharply increased unemployment of low-skilled workers. But when our competent philosopher runs for office, he has a clear incentive to keep his doubts to himself. If X sounds good, saying “Hooray for X” is a much easier way to win over an audience than “Sure X sounds good, but let’s calm down and consider the possibility that X is in fact bad.”

Read it.

If you want to understand why ‘climate change deniers’ refuse to bow to ‘the scientific consensus’, the history of what science ‘knows’ about nutrition is a good place to start.

For decades, Americans have organized their diet in a way to minimize their intake of saturated fats like butter and red meat. Vegetable oils and carbohydrates became a bigger part of our diet, because, we were repeatedly told, animal fats led to heart disease.

Today, however, we are learning that this advice was bogus. A recent landmark health study has concluded that there has never been a link between saturated fats and heart disease. The “settled science” on nutrition wasn’t quite so settled.

Steve Sailer deals with some inconvenient truth.

The brighter folks within the Obama Administration are starting to figure out what I’ve been saying for some time: that a lot of the hype over Big Data and apps and the like are businesses trying to get around traditional regulations, including regulations against discrimination. For example, one of the costs that government imposes on licensed taxi drivers is that they are supposed to drive customers wherever they want. But with the new ride sharing apps, drivers can just look up possible gigs offered on their smartphones and say, “Florence and Normandie? Let me Google that … uh-oh. Re-ject-ed! Ventura and Laurel Canyon? Accepted!”

Back in 1982, my Advanced Marketing Models professor in B-School got to talking about predictive systems used by lenders, insurance companies, and the like. Somebody asked if they really work to identify bad risks. Oh, sure, they really worked, he replied. The problem is that the use of truly powerful predictive factors, like race, have been outlawed and the government is leery of the use of approximate factors like zip code. So they don’t work as well as they did a few years ago. This is a quiet way for the white majority to subsidize the black and brown minority in terms of mortgage defaults, insurance rates, etc.

Read it.

Even Voices of the Crust are waking up to the reality.

No matter what the exact number is, there’s no doubt the percentage of non-paying Obamacare enrollees will be much, much higher than anything private insurers have dealt with in the past. Default rates in that business usually run in the very low single digits. The kind of responsible and engaged people who got their own health insurance in the past tended to also be responsible enough to pay their bills on time. That’s one of the things that made the health insurance self-coverage business so good for so long.

But no one should be surprised by what looks like a serious problem with payments under the ACA. Because the same force that stopped tens of millions of Americans from getting health-care coverage of any kind even before the ACA is still at work now … and you still can’t fix stupid.

Read it.

I think they actually mean ‘more than it already is’.

The Affordable Care Act’s risk corridor program has drawn plenty of criticism from Republicans who have dubbed it a “bailout for insurance companies.” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) even introduced a bill to entirely scrap the program, which is intended to offset insurance company losses for selling policies on new exchanges. Now, it turns out, a little-known technical flaw in the law’s language might do that for him.

Unfortunately, the entire program is a ‘technical flaw’.

Guitdoorbell. I am not making this up.

Melon Tent.

Bibliochaise.

Aerogel.

Smartphone spectrometer.

Neurobridge electronic spine replacement.

Of course.

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My, what a surprise! Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

We’re from the government, and we’re here to help … ourselves to your stuff.

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My, what a surprise! Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

Young people, thrown into close proximity without proper adult supervision, will revert to a more primitive polity, as also happens in prisons.

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When we women were younger, we could convince ourselves that we could possibly fight our way out of trouble. We were undoubtedly grievously mistaken. Testosterone is just a terribly unfair advantage! But, once we hit 60, say, no matter how many Zumba classes we have attended, it becomes crystal clear that we are sitting ducks. And, make no mistake, thugs go for the easiest targets. Counting on a thug to say, “Oh, Jeez, I didn’t see your wheelchair, there, never mind,” is a pipe-dream. Ladies, forget your traditional friends, Ben and Jerry. Count on Mr. Smith, Mr. Wesson or their Austrian cousin, the super-reliable Mr. Glock.

Read it.

Count Sir Bela of Eastmarch shows us how it’s done.

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The FDA last week approved a DNA-based HPV test manufactured by Roche Molecular Systems as a primary screening option for cervical cancer. Called the “cobas HPV test,” the method detects DNA from high-risk HPV subtypes, and is already recommended for use alongside the traditional Pap smear.

Butthe FDA’s new approval changes two distinct features of how the test is used and promoted: it permits the use of an algorithm that enables the HPV test to be used on its own, and allows Roche to market its HPV test directly to consumers. Combined, those factors could spell the end of the Pap smear as we know it — a move that opponents say adds unnecessary confusion to an already complicated screening process, and jeopardizes women’s health.

Read it.

Perhaps the most distinguishing feature of Spider-Man is his ability to shoot webs. Now, let’s be clear. Spider-Man’s webs are a technology-based superpower. Forget what you saw in previous Spider-Man movies. His webs don’t just come out of special holes in his wrists. Those movies were wrong. No, Peter Parker developed these devices using his brain (or maybe he stole them).

The Other McCain sometimes points and laughs.

You may not remember “Hard Times for Gender Studies Major,” a post last August featuring the lament of @Andria_XX, who had an “Honors BA in Social Justice and Peace Studies” and was pursuing a Master’s degree in Gender Studies:

“I have a honors BA and I’m defending my MA thesis in two weeks. I am also apply[ing] for jobs and I can only find stuff in the service industry. I applied for a Hotel Front Desk Clerk job today. My degrees mean NOTHING. I am at the end of my rope.”

That was absolutely one of the most popular posts in the six-year history of the blog. Her advanced degrees in trendy “studies” are worthless? Gosh, maybe she should have asked somebody.

Read it.

The paint, developed by engineers at the Nissan Technical Centre in the UK, is hydrophobic and oleophobic. That means it repels water and oil. That means the gunk and goo that normally sticks to your ride slides right off. It’s like wax, but better. Nissan’s engineers have applied the finish, called Ultra-Ever Dry, to a Nissan Note and say it does a remarkable job repelling rain, spray, frost, sleet and standing water. If the video is to be believed, mud literally slides right off.

There’s nothing new about hydrophobic or oleophobic coatings–Rust-Oleum offers a hydrophobic spray that works (mostly) as advertised, and the iPhone features an oleophobic coating to reduce fingerprints on its precious screen. Still, it’s new to cars, and Nissan will continue testing it. Nissan says it has no plans to offer the paint as standard equipment, but will consider making it an option.

Read it.

There are times when the phrase ‘fucking stupid’ is just inadequate.

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My, what a surprise! Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

More here.

The Other McCain is on the case.

To anyone who had been paying attention to cultural trends during the 1970s, the landslide election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 was not really surprising. The average American who pulled the lever for Reagan might have had difficulty articulating what it was they were voting for, by they damned sure knew what they were voting against. It wasn’t just the manifest incompetence of Jimmy Carter’s administration and the political/economic “malaise” that they opposed. From the mid-1960s onward, Americans had felt a growing sense of helpless anger toward the youth counterculture that manifested itself in rock music, drug use, radical protests, and orgiastic sexuality. That counterculture had never really represented the mainstream majority of American youth, but by 1980, young people themselves were as fed up with the counterculture as their parents had been for the past 15 years.

It is too early to say we are witnessing a new youth backlash against the dominant progressivism of the Obama years, but why else would Princeton University freshman Tal Fortgang unload a powerful denunciation of the regnant left-wing campus orthodoxy?

Read it.

If you’ve ever met a Texan, you know that Texans love bragging about their state. You’ve probably heard the endless list—the bigness, the freedom, the trucks, the barbeque, the pride, the football—and, like many others, you’ve probably rolled your eyes. So please forgive me, for as a new-ish resident of the Lone Star State, I’d like to add one more item to that long, rambling list: No one in Texas seems to be talking all that much about Thomas Piketty.

If that name rings a bell, it’s because you’ve been reading the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, or basically anything on the Internet for the past few weeks. Piketty, described by the Times as “the latest overnight intellectual sensation,” is a French economist whose new book, “Capital in the Twenty-First Century”—you know, as opposed to the Kapital that Marx wrote about—bemoans income inequality, exposes various flaws in our global economy, and calls for confiscatory global wealth taxes in order to stop Richard Branson from having all that fun.

I hate him already. ‘Well, damn the French!’ — John Cleese

Once you look past the patent silliness and First World problems of the almost-rich mentally scapegoating the already-rich, it becomes increasingly clear why income inequality has become the anxiety of choice for the upper-middle-class left. If you’re mad about your neighbor’s private jet, after all, it makes it a heck of a lot easier to ignore the poor kid from the wrong side of the tracks who was just denied access to a quality charter school—thanks, of course, to the charter-blocking policies of the politicians you voted (and perhaps raised funds) for.

Got it in one.

It’s quite timely—and telling—that Donald Sterling, the inarguably horrible man at the helm of the L.A. Clippers, was scheduled to receive a lifetime achievement award from the Los Angeles NAACP this month. Despite being outed as one of the most over-the-top racists in recent American memory, Sterling had donated sizable amounts to the civil rights group. It probably made him feel good.

It certainly made the NAACP feel good — race hustlers don’t come cheap; the problem is that they don’t stay bought.

Somewhere, you see, there might be a rich man kiteboarding right now off the coast of his private island. It is not confirmed, but he may have a supermodel riding on his back. One thing is sure: He does not have to go to the post office. We must stop him. Things like embarrassingly horrible government schools, and the kids trapped in them, can wait.

Freeberg has an opinion.

I hate the metric system.

Not that it doesn’t have its uses. If I’m calculating the accumulation of kinetic energy in an accelerating mass, and the capacity of that kinetic energy when it’s converted into something else, the metric system would be my first choice.

It is the advocacy for the metric system that cheeses me off. The idiotic arguments. “Ten is sensible”; that right there, that’s it. No, ding-dong, ten is not sensible. What is two-thirds of ten? You want to build a house that way?

See, for guys who have hammer-loops in their jeans that they use to actually hold hammers, and carry a tape measure clipped to their belts, twelve is better. It’s better for actually building things. Twelve is a composite that is the product of a low prime times the square of an even lower prime. Ten is just two primes, great for multiplying but lousy for dividing.

I remember the day I realized that ‘progressives’ were really reactionaries with long hair — it was the day I read a diatribe against the metric system by some hippie in the Whole Earth Catalog, reciting all of the arguments that the Duke of Wellington would have used against it (except, perhaps, the expression of contempt for the Lower Classes).

Read it.

This one’s for Roy.

Steve Sailer likes to push on ropes.

As the topic of race continues to pop up in the news now and then, what with the Los Angeles Clippers imbroglio and whatnot, it’s worth reconsidering the conventional wisdom on the subject, which has congealed into: “Race does not biologically exist because, uh … Science!”

Nicholas Wade, the New York Times’ chief genetics reporter, has published 1,052 articles in the newspaper of record since 1983. For most of this century, Wade has been methodically waging war in the Science section of the NYT against the liberal creationist myth that race isn’t real. He has now written a definitive book on the existence of biological differences among races, A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History, which will be published on May 6.

Read it.

Let’s start with the fine and life suspension. Lawyers and legal experts generally seem to think that on these two moves, Mr. Silver was on sound legal footing.

…

Mr. Silver on Tuesday indicated he was moving forward with plans to force Mr. Sterling to sell the Clippers.

Under the NBA constitution, such a move would require the support of at least three-quarters of the league’s owners. But whether the owners would have grounds to oust Mr. Sterling from the league under the NBA constitution is a more difficult question, said Howard Wasserman, a sports-law expert at Florida International University.

The Antiplanner points out some inconvenient truth.

It’s been more than three years since much of Christchurch, New Zealand, was devastated by an earthquake, and recovery is far from complete. Now, a new report from the New Zealand Council for Infrastructure Development blames the government for hampering the recovery.

…

This is a familiar tale: after a natural disaster, instead of letting people rebuild, government planners attempt to impose their ideals of what the city should look like on the supposedly blank landscape. The same thing happened in New Orleans: people from New Urban architect Andrés Duany to the free-market Mercatus Center agree that government planners have impeded recovery of that city after Hurricane Katrina.

Steve Sailer turns over a rock to show us what crawls underneath.

A rare social policy success over the last generation was the 1998 rollback of “bilingual” education in California when Proposition 227 passed with 59% of the vote. The problem with “bilingual” education was that it worked to keep the children of immigrants monolingual in the language of their homes until after they’d passed the time period when they can most easily learn a new language. Ron Unz’s initiative has made English dominant in the schools, and the kids like it. English is cool.

Therefore, the Democrats in Sacramento want to repeal it.

Read it.

Like fellow movements around the world, the US Communist Party suffered a crippling blow with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. But a small group of die-hard members persevered.

Curious indeed — after all, they’ve got the Democrats; why have a separate party?