Reason Magazine - Staff > Jesse Walker > Hit & Run Posts

"We have a simple thesis. There is going to be a calamity, and whenever there is a calamity, Merrill is there."

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 09:30:00 EST

Been meaning to link to this one for a while: Michael Lewis, author of the entertaining Wall Street memoir Liar's Poker, finds a good vantage point from which to view the crash -- through the eyes of the investors who were smart enough to short virtually everything.

A Thanksgiving Prayer

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 09:00:00 EST

Holiday greetings from William S. Burroughs:

Also, They'd Like to See His Birth Certificate

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 21:33:00 EST

Al Qaeda supporters accuse the media of an "unfair" pro-Obama bias.

Spanish Devolution

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 15:10:00 EST

The Economist describes the decentralization of Spain:

The hardest problem for the authors of Spain's democratic constitution was to strike a balance between the central government and the claims of Catalonia, the Basque country and Galicia for home rule. The formula they came up with was known as café para todos, or coffee for all: Spain was divided into 17 "autonomous communities" (plus the enclave cities of Ceuta and Melilla on the Moroccan coast), each with its own elected parliament and government. This estado de las autonomías seemed a neat solution. Over the past 30 years more and more powers and money have been devolved. The regional governments are now responsible for schools, universities, health, social services, culture, urban and rural development and, in some places, policing....

The estado de las autonomías has several clear benefits. First, as Mr Zapatero says, "it spreads power and impedes its concentration," and in that way reflects "the best liberal thinking". Second, by bringing decisions about services closer to the people it has improved them. Third, it encourages competition between regions. The rivalry between Barcelona and Madrid may have acquired an edge of mistrust, but it is in essence a creative tension. And fourth, the system has reduced regional inequalities, or at least stopped them widening.

The same article says that "even as it has solved some problems, decentralisation has created others." I can't say those new problems strike me as terrible obstacles. Here's a sample:

Now that the government employment service has been decentralised, José María Fidalgo, the general secretary of the Workers' Commissions, the largest trade-union federation, worries that jobseekers have to look at 17 different websites.

[Hat tip: Paul Rako]

All My Rowdy Friends Are Filibustering Tonight

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 11:07:00 EST

Hank Williams Jr. says he plans to run for the Senate in 2010. I'm picturing a pro-pot, pro-vigilante, pro-pro football platform -- and maybe, down the road, a Brooks/Sumner-style showdown with Al Franken on the Senate floor.

Bonus links: Hank, meet Millie Jackson.

HavenCo, RIP

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 12:27:00 EST

A tip for anyone eager to set up a Cryptonomicon-style data haven: If you want to attract actual customers, you should base yourself in a country whose sovereignty is respected by other countries. And which doesn't rely on one of those other countries for its Internet connection.

[Via Julian Sanchez.]

Bush Pardons Leonard Peltier

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 21:38:00 EST

Sorry, just yanking your chain: Peltier is still behind bars. The president did just issue 14 pardons and two commutations. It doesn't look like a bad list -- it's mostly victimless crimes, such as "unlawful use of a telephone in a narcotics felony," which I assume did not involve using the phone to bean an old lady in the back of the head.

Muppet turned Cheney henchman Lewis "Scooter" Libby didn't make the cut this time, but Plamegate obsessives needn't fret; Bush still has another two months to clear his crony's record.

[Via Anthony Gregory.]

Be a Little Evil

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 15:06:00 EST

I should have quoted James Gibson's take on Google's settlement with the publishing industry when his article came out three weeks ago. But better late than never:

Google settled a controversial copyright case by agreeing to pay tens of millions in licensing fees to authors and publishers, with more to come....

[T]he settlement looks like a setback for Google. In the game of brinksmanship, Google blinked -- losing its nerve like so many copyright defendants do. In reality, however, settling probably puts Google in a better position than it would have been if it had won its case in court.

Here's why: Google's concession has made it more difficult for anyone to invoke fair use for book searches. The settlement itself is proof that a company can pay licensing fees and still turn a profit. So now no one can convincingly argue that scanning a book requires no license. If Microsoft starts its own book search service and claims fair use, the courts will say, "Hey, Google manages to pay for this sort of thing. What makes you so special?"

By settling the case, Google has made it much more difficult for others to compete with its Book Search service. Of course, Google was already in a dominant position because few companies have the resources to scan all those millions of books. But even fewer have the additional funds needed to pay fees to all those copyright owners. The licenses are essentially a barrier to entry, and it's possible that only Google will be able to surmount that barrier.

Whether or not that's how the Google barons have been thinking about the subject, it's a fair description of the settlement's likely consequences. Once again, economic regulation -- in this case copyright law -- is serving as a barrier to entry, helping established companies at the expense of upstarts.

[Hat tip: Martin Morse Wooster.]

Home Folks Think I'm Big in Detroit City

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 08:00:00 EST

Peter Klein praises America's robust auto industry:

The proposed bailout of GM, Ford, and Chrysler overlooks an important fact. The US has one of the most vibrant, dynamic, and efficient automobile industries in the world. It produces several million cars, trucks, and SUVs per year, employing (in 2006) 402,800 Americans at an average salary of $63,358. That's vehicle assembly alone; the rest of the supply chain employs even more people and generates more income. It's an industry to be proud of. Its products are among the best in the world. Their names are Toyota, Honda, Nissan, BMW, Mercedes, Hyundai, Mazda, Mitsubishi, and Subaru.

Frankbusters

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 14:23:00 EST

When I wrote my review of Tom Frank's The Wrecking Crew, there was a passage in the text that I didn't have space to address. It demonstrates the ways even the one genuinely worthwhile section of the book -- Frank's history of '80s conservatism -- can go awry:

When Conservative Digest asked Abramoff whom he supported in the 1984 presidential contest, the young roughneck exploded: "Are you kidding? Wally Mondale is a boring wimp." Others on the right taunted "Fritz" Mondale as a "quiche eater," after the squishy food for which "real men" were said to have no appetite, and a squad of CRs [College Republicans] mocked the "wimp" to the catchy theme from Ghostbusters, dancing and singing "It's Ronnie's time; Fritz is a slime." The group reportedly sold almost fifty thousand T-shirts emblazoned with their "Fritzbusters" logo and along the way gave me my first taste of the tradition of gleeful malice that is observed so carefully in conservative circles.

A footnote points out that "'Fritzbusters' images can be found wherever one digs in the right-wing student literature of those days, and the shirts and stickers can still be found in thrift stores and on eBay."

I don't have any interest in sticking up for the mid-'80s College Republicans, but as evidence of a particularly conservative form of "gleeful malice" this is pretty thin gruel. Not just because it wasn't especially malicious by campaign standards, but because it wasn't limited to the Republicans. As a teenager in North Carolina at the same time, I owned a "Helmsbusters" button with essentially the same design. And there was plenty of "Ronbusters" and "Reaganbusters" merchandise out there as well.

The striking thing here isn't that Frank is apparently unaware of the equivalent material on the left. At the time he was a conservative teenager in a conservative state, and I'm not surprised if he didn't see the buttons, posters, and T-shirts available on the other side of the spectrum -- especially in a year when liberals weren't exactly omnipresent. What's striking is that he would use that CR kitsch as evidence of something peculiar to the right without checking whether Democrats also adopted what was, after all, a pretty obvious pop culture reference. If Frank was already running "Fritzbusters" searches on eBay, how much work would it have been to type in "Reaganbusters" as well and see what comes up?

Thomas Szasz To Run Department of Health and Human Services

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 16:10:00 EST

Ha! No, it's gonna be Tom Daschle. Or so say "two Democratic sources close to Daschle and with intimate knowledge of the decision." So you see, Obama isn't just drawing on Clinton retreads; he's reaching out to retreads from the legislative branch, too.

Obama FCC Watch

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 17:23:00 EST

If you're interested in what policies to expect from Barack Obama's Federal Communications Commission, you've got more to go on than, say, unsourced reports that Hillary Clinton will take over the agency. The president-elect has named an FCC transition team to be led by the legal scholars Kevin Werbach of the Wharton School and Susan Crawford of the University of Michigan.

Both Werbach and Crawford are vocal advocates of the idea that network neutrality should be enforced by law, and Crawford has said she regards Net access as a "utility," always a disturbing choice of words when regulations are at stake. But they're interesting picks for other reasons as well. Crawford is a strong supporter of opening up the "white spaces" between TV signals for unlicensed broadband access, while Werbach has gone even further, advocating some radical ideas for spectrum reform (representing the open-commons wing of the reform community, not the spectrum-as-property wing). I haven't read a lot of Crawford's work, but I know Werbach is a sharp thinker with an appreciation for markets; I have my disagreements with him, but I'd much rather have the next FCC shaped by someone like Werbach than someone like, say, Democratic commissioner Michael Copps, the agency's strongest supporter of censorship and heavy-handed regulation. (Lest we get too sanguine, Obama's agency review team also includes former FCC chief Reed Hundt, who isn't exactly a First Amendment absolutist.)

Speaking of net neutrality: The always-interesting Tim Lee has written a smart paper for the Cato Institute on the subject. Breaking with both traditional camps in the debate, he offers an essentially Hayekian defense of the end-to-end principle as an architectural doctrine and a critique of the idea that the principle should be mandated by statute.

Play it Again, Chico

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 10:10:00 EST

While preparing their 1946 film A Night in Casablanca, the Marx Brothers received a legalgram from Warner Bros. noting that the forthcoming picture's title resembled Casablanca, which had been released approximately four years before. The lawyers demanded that the name be changed. Groucho Marx replied with a letter of his own:

Apparently there is more than one way of conquering a city and holding it as your own. For example, up to the time that we contemplated making this picture, I had no idea that the city of Casablanca belonged exclusively to Warner Brothers. However, it was only a few days after our announcement appeared that we received your long, ominous legal document warning us not to use the name Casablanca.

It seems that in 1471, Ferdinand Balboa Warner, your great-great-grandfather, while looking for a shortcut to the city of Burbank, had stumbled on the shores of Africa and, raising his alpenstock (which he later turned in for a hundred shares of common), named it Casablanca.

I just don't understand your attitude. Even if you plan on releasing your picture, I am sure that the average movie fan could learn in time to distinguish between Ingrid Bergman and Harpo. I don't know whether I could, but I certainly would like to try.

The entire letter is here, along with a description of the followup correspondence, in which Warner Bros. requested an outline of the film's story and Groucho replied that he would be playing "Bordello, the sweetheart of Humphrey Bogart."

[Hat tip: Bryan Alexander.]

Update: Snopes says that while Warners did contact the comedians with concerns about the movie, it didn't actually threaten to sue them, and that the Marxes spread the story as a publicity stunt. Meanwhile, Wes Ghering's The Marx Brothers: A Bio-Bibliography claims that Warners eventually did file a complaint, though "it was ironed out quickly in arbitration."

Like a Doctorow/MacLeod Mashup

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 10:23:00 EST

An abandoned Soviet bunker in the Lithuanian countryside becomes a theme park:

Išgyvenimo drama opened in early 2008 to some controversy. Tourists pay 120 LTL ($US 220) each to step back into 1984 as a temporary USSR citizen for 2.5 hours. On entry, all belongings, including money, cameras and phones, are handed over and under the watchful eye of guards and alsatians, tourists change into threadbare Soviet coats and are herded through the bunker.

Experiences include watching TV programs from 1984, wearing gas masks, learning the Soviet anthem under duress, eating typical Soviet food (with genuine Soviet tableware) and even undergoing a concentration-camp-style interrogation and medical check.

The Soviet Bunker is not a theme park for the faint-hearted; all of the actors involved in the project were originally in the Soviet army and some were authentic interrogators...

Someone should write a travel book covering all these communist-themed tourist attractions in the former Soviet bloc, with ratings measuring each venue's levels of irony, horror, nostalgia, and educational value. Plus an appendix on visiting North Korea.

Tips for Republicans

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 09:46:00 EST

For those who came in late, the sole reason for the disarray of the GOP is apparently either

(a) that damn Palin woman and her barefoot fans, or

(b) those latte-sipping moderates who keep criticizing the People's Tribune.

Expel your base or retreat into an echo chamber: If those choices seem dispiriting, Republicans can take heart. They're the same false alternatives that the Democrats allegedly faced four years ago. Then a politician who hadn't fallen behind the bipartisan Iraq war -- but, unlike Howard Dean, actually wanted to be president -- came out of nowhere to beat his party's establishment and take the White House.

There's a lesson there. If I were a Republican, I'd ignore the inane Palin debate and start looking around for a politician who had the good sense to break with the bipartisan consensus and oppose the bailout bill before it passed. Then I'd start planning an insurgency.

Fezzes and Leather

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 08:15:00 EST

Middle Eastern metal has received a sudden wave of Western coverage this year. The latest example is an article in Coilhouse that covers the music itself, the subcultures surrounding it, and the crackdowns -- some successful, some not -- from above:

Iran's regime is among the most repressive, forcibly cutting metal fan's hair and crushing concerts outright....

It's easy to see what they're afraid of. If Egyptian metal musicians rave about Israeli band Orphaned Land, and Israelis about Lebanese metal, then the terminal dividing lines that benefit generals and dictators begin to blur. The fates of Eastern Europe's tyrants are not that far away in history: often change is only an anthem away.

The dividing lines between styles have also blurred. Middle eastern metal overlaps considerably with the hip-hop and punk scenes, especially in Palestine and Israel, encompassing everything from Massive Scar Era's symphonic rallying cries to Arthimoth's primal growls. It was, after all, late Afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti who coined the "music is the weapon of the future" slogan that's become popular among [Lebanese musician Moe] Hamzeh and his friends.

The essay includes several samples of the metal itself, which among other things will be useful for anyone who has wondered what Cookie Monster vocals sound like in Arabic.

Elsewhere in Reason: Charles Paul Freund on Arab music videos and the liberating effects of vulgarity.

Could We Use a Man Like Herbert Hoover Again?

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 12:05:00 EST

Over at EconLog, Bryan Caplan gives one of Herbert Hoover's final campaign speeches a close reading. In a November 1932 address to about 15,000 people in St. Paul, the president declared that he had enacted 21 "long-view policies to cement [the economic] recovery and to stimulate progress in our country for the future." If anyone still believes the stereotype of Hoover as an apostle of laissez faire, Caplan will disabuse you of the idea: "out of 21 measures," he writes, "we have two matches with Hoover's stereotype, plus two partial matches. The remaining 17 measures directly contradict the stereotype. If liberal historians focused on policy instead of party, they would cast Hoover as John the Baptist to FDR's Jesus -- not Satan."

Elsewhere in Reason: In April I recalled the real story of the 1932 election. And in our January issue, Nick Gillespie interviewed Amity Shlaes about Hoover, Roosevelt, and the Depression.

Convergence in Action

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 22:46:00 EST

A socialist columnist writes a libertarian article for a conservative magazine.

The Corporation and the State

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 14:00:00 EST

The latest debate at Cato Unbound is devoted to the topic "When Corporations Hate Markets." The lead essay, by the libertarian philosopher Roderick Long, argues that

Corporate power depends crucially on government intervention in the marketplace. This is obvious enough in the case of the more overt forms of government favoritism such as subsidies, bailouts, and other forms of corporate welfare; protectionist tariffs; explicit grants of monopoly privilege; and the seizing of private property for corporate use via eminent domain (as in Kelo v. New London). But these direct forms of pro-business intervention are supplemented by a swarm of indirect forms whose impact is arguably greater still....

In a free market, firms would be smaller and less hierarchical, more local and more numerous (and many would probably be employee-owned); prices would be lower and wages higher; and corporate power would be in shambles. Small wonder that big business, despite often paying lip service to free market ideals, tends to systematically oppose them in practice.

Not content to criticize lefties and conservatives who conflate the corporate state with laissez faire, Long argues that many libertarians have only added to the confusion:

If libertarians are accused of carrying water for corporate interests, that may be at least in part because, well, they so often sound like that's just what they're doing (though here, as above, there are plenty of honorable exceptions to this tendency). Consider libertarian icon Ayn Rand's description of big business as a "persecuted minority," or the way libertarians defend "our free-market health-care system" against the alternative of socialized medicine, as though the health care system that prevails in the United States were the product of free competition rather than of systematic government intervention on behalf of insurance companies and the medical establishment at the expense of ordinary people.

The whole article is here. Watch the Cato Unbound site for response essays by the liberal writer Matthew Yglesias, the leftist writer Dean Baker, and the libertarian writer Steven Horwitz.

Creeping Socialism in Communist China

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 13:26:00 EST

Time reports:

China announced a huge economic stimulus package on Sunday, pledging to spend some 4 trillion renminbi — or around $586 billion — on a wide range of moves designed to boost an economy starting to feel the effects of the world financial crisis....

Xinhua, China's official news agency, reported that the package's spending over the next two years would be aimed at ten major areas, including "low-income housing, rural infrastructure, water, electricity, transportation, the environment, technological innovation and rebuilding from several disasters, most notably the May 12 earthquake."

Miriam Makeba, RIP

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 12:03:00 EST

The South African musician Miriam Makeba, who just died at age 76, was an anti-apartheid activist, Guinea's delegate to the United Nations, and Stokely Carmichael's first wife. She was also a hell of a good singer, one of the first figures to bring African pop to an American audience:

From The New York Times's obit:

Widely known as "Mama Africa," she had been a prominent exiled opponent of apartheid since the South African authorities revoked her passport in 1960 and refused to allow her to return after she traveled abroad. She was prevented from attending her mother's funeral after touring in the United States....

For 31 years, Ms. Makeba lived in exile, variously in the United States, France, Guinea and Belgium. South Africa's state broadcasters banned her music after she spoke out against apartheid at the United Nations. "I never understood why I couldn't come home," Ms. Makeba said upon her return at an emotional homecoming in Johannesburg in 1990 as the apartheid system began to crumble, according to The Associated Press. "I never committed any crime."

She finally returned to South Africa in 1990, as apartheid was overthrown. A wide selection of her music has been posted on YouTube; start here, here, or with the song posted above, then keep clicking.

[Hat tip: Saramin.]

Gaming for Columbine

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 10:35:00 EST

reason contributor Henry Jenkins has posted a three-part interview [1, 2, 3] with Danny Ledonne, the creator of the controversial Columbine video game Super Columbine Massacre RPG! The whole thing is worth reading; I'll quote just one of Ledonne's comments:

The controversy around SCMRPG is largely one of the subject matter and not its execution. Only when I give talks at game design schools am I taken to task for my design choices. For example, the Associated Press, Christian Science Monitor, or Parents Television Council were not complaining with:

"Why did you hide a book in the upstairs classroom that you need to complete the last part of the game? I had to start over!"

"The hallway is really hard to sneak through. I couldn't even tell those were security cameras until my friend showed me!"

"The graphics suck, noob."

Instead, the mainstream press attacked the very notion that a game like SCMRPG could exist! Heavens, we can have a film or book or magazine article about Columbine but a VIDEO GAME? This was the tone of much of the initial reporting.

The newshook for the interview is Ledonne's film Playing Columbine, a documentary about the controversy. I haven't seen the movie. Nor, for that matter, have I played the game: It's only available for Windows and I use a Mac. But those of you with the appropriate OS can download the game for free and decide for yourself whether it's exploitative trash, a compelling work of art, or an ambitious artistic failure.

More from Reason: Nick Gillespie reacted to the Columbine shootings here, and I reacted to the media reaction here. Brian Doherty reviewed Bowling for Columbine here, and I reviewed it here.

Kiwi Conservatism

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 14:39:00 EST

At least one country is responding to the financial crisis by moving to the right, not the left. New Zealand voters have just ousted the longstanding Labor regime and elected a government led by the conservative National Party; the free-market ACT party will be part of the governing coalition. Which is not to say the new administration will always pursue pro-market policies. The London Times reports that Prime Minister-elect John Key, a wealthy former currency trader, is "expected to implement tax cuts and extra spending." A Bushian/Keynesian combination.

I was tickled at how the Times explained the concept of "New Zealand" to its readers:

John Key’s conservative National Party easily won power in New Zelaland, known internationally for its pristine environment and as the backdrop to the “Lord of the Rings" movies.

The Cocaine Standard

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 09:37:00 EST

The Telegraph reports from Guerima, Colombia, where government troops recently drove out FARC guerillas:

Countless ordinary people depend on the coca trade. "We are sitting on a mountain of coca and a series of Farc 'IOUs' ", said one local. "We need the rebels back to pay the debts and buy the coca, otherwise the town will die."

No money has reached Guerima for months and transactions are conducted in coca, with one gram enough to buy a soft drink.

Add that to your list of commodity moneys. I found the story via Wired for Strange, which also notes that bottle caps are being used as a currency in Cameroon and claims that drug-free urine is being used as a currency behind bars:

This strange alternative to money is used in the prison system; they have been known to use cigarettes, sardine cans and now urine. This has become a precious commodity because drug screening has become much more prominent in penitentiaries. Clean samples are traded and they are usually kept in a condom and warmed to body temperature by rectal insertion.

A commodity, yes -- but a currency? Seems to me that the Piss Standard would be especially susceptible to inflation.

We Did Get You, CC

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 10:58:00 EST

The Onion reports:

WASHINGTON--African-American man Barack Obama, 47, was given the least-desirable job in the entire country Tuesday when he was elected president of the United States of America. In his new high-stress, low-reward position, Obama will be charged with such tasks as completely overhauling the nation's broken-down economy, repairing the crumbling infrastructure, and generally having to please more than 300 million Americans and cater to their every whim on a daily basis. As part of his duties, the black man will have to spend four to eight years cleaning up the messes other people left behind. The job comes with such intense scrutiny and so certain a guarantee of failure that only one other person even bothered applying for it. Said scholar and activist Mark L. Denton, "It just goes to show you that, in this country, a black man still can't catch a break."