Posted on May 18, 2013 by John Hinderaker

North America’s Strangest Mayor

Rob Ford, the Mayor of Toronto, has been in the news lately because someone allegedly has a video of him smoking crack. I have no idea whether the video is genuine or not, but Ford is a distinctly odd character. He makes Rahm Emanuel look like a normal human being; in some respects, anyway. New York Magazine compiled a list of 20 things you should know about Rob Ford. Not all are suitable for a family web site.

This sort of thing is typical:

On St. Patrick’s Day, Ford was escorted out of the bar Bier Markt after “storming the dance floor” and exhibiting generally drunken and “incoherent” behavior.

On the other hand, some of the items listed by NY Magazine sound like bad raps, perhaps motivated by the fact that Ford is a member of Canada’s Conservative Party. Some are merely outbursts of political incorrectness. Politics aside, though, some of Ford’s misadventures are pretty funny. Like this collision with a television camera, which prompted a loud and profane exclamation:

Then there was Mayor Ford’s brief stint as a quarterback. If you think he doesn’t look like an athlete, you are correct. This is reminiscent of the famous butt-fumble. Only, to his credit, Ford hung on to the ball:

The question I can’t answer is, how does a guy like that get elected to public office? Is it some kind of a joke, like when we Minnesotans elected Jesse Ventura governor? Does he have some other virtues that we aren’t hearing about? I really don’t get it. On the other hand, there are a lot of political careers that I don’t understand. Harry Reid? Maxine Waters? Joe Biden? The list goes on and on; but, whatever your political persuasion, Rob Ford belongs on it.

Posted on by Paul Mirengoff in gun control

Five dollars worth of “adorable”

Organizing for America, the Democratic Party’s successor organization to Barack Obama’s 2012 presidential campaign, is asking folks to “forward” Joe Biden’s response to a letter from a seven year-old boy on the theory that it is “adorable,” and to “chip in” a $5 dollar contribution, as well. I’m not sure whom Organizing for America finds adorable — Biden or the boy. Both, I guess, since it says the exchange is “adorable in every way.”

Anyway, consider the following forwarded:

[Name] –

This is just adorable in every way.

Myles, a 7-year-old from Milwaukee, wrote Vice President Biden a letter to suggest that if guns shot chocolate bullets, no one would get hurt.

The Vice President wrote back. Take a look at his response, then share it with your friends:

Dear Myles –

I am sorry it took me so very long to respond to your letter.

I really like your idea. If we had guns that shot chocolate, not only would our country be safer, it would be happier. People love chocolate.

You are a good boy.

– Joe Biden

Thanks,

Organizing for Action

—————-
A movement of millions elected President Obama. Let’s keep fighting for change. Chip in $5 or more to support Organizing for Action today.

Posted on by John Hinderaker in Energy Policy

Three Cheers for Tesla [Updated]

I have always been skeptical of electric vehicles, mostly because of my perception that electric car makers are more interested in subsisting on government subsidies than in competing on a level playing field for my business. So I was intrigued when I got an email this morning from Jeff Evanson, Tesla Motors’ Vice-President of investor relations. Evanson, a long-time Power Line reader, pointed out that the company raised over $1 billion last week, and will use a portion of those proceeds to pay off its loan with the Department of Energy ahead of schedule. This will make Tesla the only US-based auto maker with no government debt.

How about Ford, I asked? I thought they skipped the government bailout a few years ago. True enough, but Ford owes DOE under the Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturer (“ATVM”) Incentive Program, the same program that gave rise to the debt Tesla is about to pay off. So Tesla will be unique in not owing anything to the taxpayers.

I had heard of Tesla, but frankly knew little about it apart from the fact that it is considered a hot, trendy company. The company’s web site turns out to be impressive. This is Tesla’s Model S:

The company calculates the cost of ownership, in view of the fact that electrical charges are significantly cheaper than gasoline, here. They do take into account the availability of federal and state subsidies, which I would like to see repealed, but you can’t blame them for that. The company’s goal is to compete for business straight up, on a level playing field. Its vehicles should make that possible. Motor Trend named the Model S Car of the Year for 2013, and gushed over its performance and value:

The 2013 Motor Trend Car of the Year is one of the quickest American four-doors ever built. It drives like a sports car, eager and agile and instantly responsive. But it’s also as smoothly effortless as a Rolls-Royce, can carry almost as much stuff as a Chevy Equinox, and is more efficient than a Toyota Prius. … By any measure, the Tesla Model S is a truly remarkable automobile, perhaps the most accomplished all-new luxury car since the original Lexus LS 400.

The Model S starts at $58,570 and costs a mere 6 cents per mile to run–and that’s at California electricity prices.

All of this may be old hat to you, but it was news to me. Tesla’s success, financial as well as technical, suggests that the long-awaited era of electric vehicles may be closer at hand than we thought.

UPDATE: The New York Times apparently couldn’t fathom the possibility that an automobile company–an electric car company, at that–could induce people to invest in it voluntarily. What a foreign concept! From today’s NYT Corrections section:

An article on Thursday about Tesla Motors’ plans to tap the markets for more cash misstated, at one point, the way in which the company plans to raise the money. As the article correctly noted elsewhere, the company will sell new shares and debtlike securities; it will not raise new money from another Energy Department loan.

Posted on by Steven Hayward

The Week in Pictures, Umbrellagate Update

If the old weekly Life magazine had managed to hang on until the Internet arrived, it might have survived as an online summary, but fortunately they left the space open to Power Line.  And things are happening so fast we almost need to go daily with this feature.

I’m guessing that the fury of Marines on seeing Obama’s appalling breach of Marine protocol will be lost on the media, but I suspect Obama is on a lot of dartboards at Marine base watering holes right now.

So what’s it all mean?  Maybe this:

 

Posted on by Paul Mirengoff in Benghazigate, Obama Administration Scandals

Obama adminstration talking points scrubbed jihadists from Cairo as well as Benghazi

In the days after the Benhazi attack, the State Department scurried to cover up its failure to heed warnings of such attacks while the White House scurried to cover up the fact that that attacks were the work of al Qaeda-linked terrorists of the sort President Obama supposedly had largely vanquished. The final Benghazi “talking points” and Susan Rice’s talk show appearances represent the product of this scurrying.

To help advance the narrative that the Benghazi attacks were spontaneous, and thus (a) not to have been anticipated and (b) not linked to al Qaeda, the talking points tied Benghazi to the events of the same day in Cairo. There, unlike in Benghazi, a protest had occurred.

Here is what the final version of the talking points said on this subject:

The currently available information suggests that the demonstrations in Benghazi were spontaneously inspired by the protests at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and evolved into a direct assault against the U.S. diplomatic post and subsequently its annex. There are indications that extremists participated in the violent demonstrations.

Through these two sentences, the administration succeeded in misleading Congress about events in both Benghazi and Cairo. The statement about Benghazi is simply false. There was no spontaneously inspired protest; rather, there was a pre-planned attack.

In Cairo, as noted, there were protests. But, as Tom Joscelyn argues, the protests were pre-planned, with jihadists playing a prominent role.

Multiple early versions of the CIA-drafted talking points make this clear. For example, the CIA stated:

On 10 September, the Agency notified Embassy Cairo of social media reports calling for a demonstration and encouraging jihadists to break into the Embassy.

The “social media reports” in question included a September 10 tweet from Mohammed al Zawahiri, the younger brother of al Qaeda emir Ayman al Zawahiri. He called on “the sons of the Jihadi Movement to participate tomorrow in the demonstration in front of the American Embassy.” And he included a banner displaying an al Qaeda-style black flag in his tweet.

That banner featured prominently during the 9/11 demonstration in Cairo. Says Joscelyn, protesters waved dozens of them as they chanted “Obama, Obama, we are all Osama.” The message was clear: jihad in general, and al Qaeda in particular, live on without Osama bin Laden.

This was precisely the message the Obama administration wished to suppress. And, for its part, the State Department wanted to suppress the fact that, not only were there warnings about danger to facilities in Libya, but also warnings about planned jihadist activity at the embassy in Cairo on 9/11/12.

Accordingly, the talking points were edited to remove any reference to “jihadists” threatening the U.S. Embassy in Cairo.

As Joscelyn concludes:

The early versions of the Benghazi talking points were right to highlight the threat posed by “jihadists” in Cairo. The thread connecting Cairo to Benghazi is plain to see: Al Qaeda-linked jihadists helped orchestrate both.

The Obama administration’s edits removed them from the story.

Posted on by Paul Mirengoff in Barack Obama, IRS, Turkey

As IRS scandal deepens, Obama fetes anti-democracy pal

I don’t contend that President Obama was involved in the decision to target conservative groups for harassment by the IRS. So far, there is no evidence that would support that contention.

I do contend, however, that Obama has little appreciation for the democratic process, including the right to dissent from his agenda without suffering for it. In my view, he regards democracy and dissent as hindrances to the march of history he fancies himself leading. And I suspect that his assertion of outrage over the IRS scandal is feigned.

Am I being too cynical? Perhaps. But there is a certain irony in the fact that, as the IRS scandal gained momentum yesterday, Obama feted Turkey’s anti-democratic President Erdoğan. And, as Michael Rubin points out, Obama chose to write a glowing op-ed about Erdoğan for the Turkish newspaper Sabah — a state dominated organ that Erdoğan confiscated due to its opposition views and gave to his son-in-law.

Erdoğan’s treatment of Sabah is emblematic of his treatment of the Turkish press generally. According to Rubin:

[In] Turkey. . .most journalists assume they are being tapped. It is near impossible to talk politics with Turkish journalists before everyone at the table first takes batteries out of their cell phones. The judiciary has been tapped, as have newspapers.

Erdoğan has stacked previously apolitical bodies with his own party hacks, and transformed technocratic institutions to wield against the press. He has had them, for example, levy fines of billions of dollars to silence some outfits, and seized and sold at auction another

Now, against the backdrop of Obama’s glowing endorsement comes word that a financial body solely consisting of Erdoğan’s appointees has seized one of the last conglomerates which owns independent newspapers and television. . . .

Erdoğan cares little about democracy; he wishes domination, personal enrichment, and a complete transformation of Turkish society that is impossible to achieve if anyone can ask questions or expose his actions. That he uses a state visit to the United States as cover for his actions is truly shameful.

That Obama plays along is shameful, as well.

It has widely been reported that Erdoğan is one of the very few world leaders with whom Obama has bonded. What is the source of Obama’s admiration? I suspect it is the Turkish president’s relentless desire to transform society and the anti-democratic ruthlessness with which he is prepared to proceed.

Posted on by Steven Hayward in Environment, Power Line 100

The Power Line 100: Jonathan Adler

It’s about time we start turning our attention to law professors who belong on the Power Line 100 list, and we’ve got a long list of them.  As with the rest of the field of finalists, there is no particular order, so we’ll start with Jonathan Adler, the well-known interior designer whose baubles you can find at Bed, Bath & Beyond—no, wait, not that Jonathan Adler!  We mean the Jonathan H. Adler, who is the Johan Verheij Memorial Professor of Law at Case Western Reserve University School of Law in Cleveland.  (You can check out his personal website here.)

I once had an environmental reporter from the New York Times tell me that he thought Jon was “scary smart,” and I understand why.  He is one of the most cited legal scholars in environmental law, but with a decided unconventional (that is, non-liberal or non-statist) point of view that emphasizes decentralization, local knowledge, and property rights in preference to bureaucratic control of resources.  A 2007 study identified Adler as the most cited legal academic in environmental law under age 40, and his recent article “Money or Nothing: The Adverse Environmental Consequences of Uncompensated Land Use Controls,” published in the Boston College Law Review, was selected as one of the ten best articles in land use and environmental law in 2008.

To my mind his most notable original contribution to a revisionist understanding of the environment is his article “Fables of the Cuyahoga: Reconstructing a History of Environmental Protection,” which offers a iconoclastic history and analysis of the famous Cuyahoga River fire of 1969.  I quote the abstract in full:

On June 22, 1969, just before noon, an oil slick and assorted debris under a railroad trestle on the Cuyahoga River caught fire. The fire attracted national media attention, and helped prompt the passage of federal environmental laws. A river on fire was a symbol of earth in need of repair, and federal regulation was the reparative tool of choice. Much of the Cuyahoga story is mythology, however, a fable with powerful symbolic force. The river did burn in 1969 – as it and other rivers had burned many times before – and today the Cuyahoga and many U.S. rivers are far less polluted. But so much else of what we “know” about the 1969 fire is simply not so. The conventional narratives, of a river abandoned by its local community, of water pollution at its zenith, of conventional legal doctrines impotent in the face of environmental harms, and of a beneficent federal government rushing in to save the day, is misleading in many respects. This paper revisits the context and history of the legendary Cuyahoga River fire to reveal a more complex story about the causes and consequences of various institutional choices in environmental law. The aim is to provide additional perspective to the questions of institutional choice which underlie environmental policy, and to suggest that the decision to reallocate primary authority over water quality to the federal government was neither inevitable nor an unmitigated blessing.

You can read Jon regularly at the Volokh Conspiracy (maybe the best law blog in the country, whose entire roster of contributors may require a group listing on the Power Line 100).  For some reason he doesn’t get a “hotness” rating at RateMyProfessors.com, which seems clearly an oversight.  What’s the matter with students these days anyway?  Are they intimidated by “lookism” or something?

If you have the time, you can take in Jon in this hour-long talk explaining his environmental viewpoint with his typical cogency: