...consider the following headline from the Scotsman the other week: "Teaching jobs in doubt as pensioners set to outnumber pupils by 2009."

This was a story by Peter MacMahon, the paper's "Scottish Government Editor", and it begins thus: "Scotland's demographic time bomb will explode in three years, when the number of pensioners north of the Border overtakes the number of children in school, the Executive has been warned."

Seems straightforward enough: the country's demographic death spiral is accelerating faster than expected. And, as far as the Scotsman is concerned, the alarming thing about this development is that it could put cushy state teaching jobs "in doubt".

For crying out loud, man, get a grip. It puts every job "in doubt". It puts the continued existence of your country "in doubt".

In November the New York Times announced that it had attracted approximately 135,000 subscribers to its TimesSelect service. Now, two months later it is proud to announce that it has a total of 156,000 subscribers:

Times spokeswoman Diane McNulty called the latest data a positive sign. "It is a little bit ahead of what we thought [would happen by now]."

So TimesSeleect has gained 10,000 subscribers per month after attracting over 100,000 in the first two? What is there to be proud of? We economists call these results "diminishing returns."

Ah, wait, she continues:

"People who try it seem to like it."

Obviously liberals are the only people trying it.

You may want clear opinions from The New Republic or from any magazine of political commentary. But you certainly don't want predictable opinions or simple opinions, which, alas, is what you get from The Nation and the National Review, The Weekly Standard or The American Prospect. Why, I bet that you could write their articles in advance. No challenge, no mystery, no surprise, no puzzling through of argument. Not like The New Republic. Subscribe today for as little as $9.97 to read all of our unconventional wisdom.

In this week's issue, we say "NO" to Samuel Alito--in two articles actually.

Canada's election featured one big surprise in Quebec. In a move akin to a U.S. Congressional district electing Rush Limbaugh or even a toned-down version of Howard Stern, voters in the Quebec City area elected shock-talk radio host Andre Arthur to parliament yesterday as an independent.

Mr. Arthur, 62, is despised by Quebec politicians for the coarse language and insults he directs towards them. But his huge ratings over the years demonstrate that he strikes a chord with many an average Jacques in the province. His campaign for parliament continued his tradition of blunt talk. "The voters of this country know they are run by crooks in both parties," he would say. He called members of the separatist Bloc Quebecois "dynamiters" for trying to blow up the country.

Mr. Arthur believes he will have a strong voice in parliament as the lone independent because reporters will know he is speaking his mind rather than from talking points put out by a party leadership. One of his crusades is likely to be Canada's broadcasting laws, which are far more restrictive than in the U.S. A few years ago, Mr. Arthur was working at Quebec City's CHOI-FM when the national government actually yanked the station's license because of the blistering way he and other hosts criticized politicians and Canada's diversity policies. At least whatever Mr. Arthur chooses to say now in parliament will be protected speech.

They've tried everything else, why not this one?:

Concerns also have been raised about noise and light pollution [from a proposed and challenged new Wal-Mart Super Store], including a much-discussed claim by Washington State University Professor James Krueger on Jan. 13 that light pollution could cause Pullman men to become impotent. He based the claim on research involving deer.

Well, there's your problem with this study right there. The research involved deer. Of course this research showed male impotency. Who the hell wants to [****] a deer? I mean, yeah, okay, I'll admit it, I had a crush on Bambi's girlfriend Felina as a kid (almost as big as a crush as I had on the Zsa Zsa Gabor mouse from The Rescuers), but I'm older now, and I just don't find animals arousing anymore.

As international oil prices flirted with the $70 mark, one Maryland delegate said he has a temporary fix to relieve motorists throughout the state: Allow gas stations to compete.

Del. Warren Miller, R-Howard County, is promoting a measure that would repeal a 2001 laws that ban gasoline price wars in the state.

The law was enacted when gas cost $1.15 a gallon and meant to prevent relative newcomers like Costco Wholesale, Wawa and Safeway from selling gas below cost, undercutting franchise gas stations.

An analysis by David Boaz of the Cato Institute found that major newspapers used the phrase "shift the court" 36 times in covering the Alito nomination. They referred to changes in the "balance" of the court another 31 times and used the phrase "shift to the right" 18 times.

By way of contrast, not a single major newspaper used any of those phrases when the Senate considered the Ginsburg nomination, though her appointment would clearly change the ideological makeup of the Court. Ms. Ginsburg was a noted liberal, while Justice White had voted in the minority in such key liberal decisions as Roe v. Wade and the Miranda ruling. He also wrote the majority opinion in Bowers v. Hardwick, the 1986 case that upheld the constitutionality of laws against homosexuality in some states. That decision was later overturned in the Lawrence case by a Supreme Court that included Justice Ginsburg. Indeed, the libertarian Institute for Justice has concluded that Justice Ginsburg is the most consistently liberal justice sitting on the Supreme Court today.

And even Mrs. Clinton's "offense" would have amounted to very little had it come from nothing more than an awkward metaphor. But, in fact, it came from a corruption in post-'60s liberalism and Democratic politics that profoundly insults blacks. Mrs. Clinton came to Al Sharpton's MLK celebration looking for an easy harvest of black votes. And she knew the drill -- white liberals and Dems whistle for the black vote by pandering to the black sense of grievance. Once positioned as the white champions of this grievance, they actually turn black resentment into white liberal power. Today, Democrats cannot be competitive without this alchemy. So Mrs. Clinton's real insult to blacks -- one far uglier than her plantation metaphor -- is to value them only for their sense of grievance... here, now, is Mrs. Clinton sidling up to the trough of black grievance, eyes wide in expectation, but also a tad contemptuous. It is hard to fully respect one's suckers...

because Republicans cannot easily pander to black grievance, they have no need to value blacks only for their sense of grievance. Unlike Democrats, they can celebrate what is positive and constructive in minority life without losing power. The dilemma for Democrats, liberals and the civil rights establishment is that they become redundant and lose power the instant blacks move beyond grievance and begin to succeed by dint of their own hard work. So they persecute such blacks, attack their credibility as blacks, just as they pander to blacks who define their political relationship to America through grievance. Republicans are generally freer of the political bigotry by which the left either panders to or persecutes black Americans. No one on the current political scene better embodies this Republican advantage than the current secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice.

As for the power of the press to shape and even change my mind, I am in the condition of George Santayana, who wrote to his sister in 1915 that he was too old to “be influenced by newspaper argument. When I read them I form perhaps a new opinion of the newspaper but seldom a new opinion on the subject discussed.”

I do subscribe to the New York Times, which I read without a scintilla of glee. I feel I need it, chiefly to discover who in my cultural world has died, or been honored (probably unjustly), or has turned out some new piece of work that I ought to be aware of. I rarely give the daily Times more than a half-hour, if that. I begin with the obituaries. Next, I check the op-ed page, mostly to see if anyone has hit upon a novel way of denigrating President Bush; the answer is invariably no, though they seem never to tire of trying. I glimpse the letters to the editor in hopes of finding someone after my own heart. I almost never read the editorials, following the advice of the journalist Jack Germond who once compared the writing of a newspaper editorial to wetting oneself in a dark-blue serge suit: “It gives you a nice warm feeling, but nobody notices.”

Today in the Washington Post we have former SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt writing a new revisionist chapter is his book (he should call it: “I am So Pious, You are a Bastard”) holding up Sarbanes-Oxley as a model for reform of how government interacts with business, i.e., lobbying.

Just peachy, except that Sarbanes-Oxley began as an effort to correct certain abuses by a limited number of accountants, but ended up criminalizing internal corporate financial reports to the exclusive benefit of….the accountants (plus, of course, the regulators, the trial lawyers and the anti-capitalist crowd.)

Most of the congressional mail Levitt received was -- as he says -- generated by some special interest. Duh. Those worried about imperial regulators go to petition their grievances before their legislators. The SEC Chairman could, and often did, ignore most of the in-coming mail.

The letters are made public. The Congressman sending it knows that (or should) and factors the sunshine of disclosure into the decision to send it, or not. The underlying problem exposed by Levitt is that “independent” regulatory agencies lust to become independent of the only branch of government, Congress, which was established to represent the people and which created each and every such agency. What if the SEC or the FCC or the FTC could ignore Congress? Think that’s a good idea, then go to Europe where nearly everything is decided by bureaucrats.

Which brings us to the New York Times’s Anne Kornblut’s campaign against golf, and the Post's Jeff Birnbaum’s campaign against fundraising: OK, no more fun for white people in silly pants. And all funds for political offices must come from either George Soros or the public treasury.

This is getting weirder and weirder. All these “reforms” will only enhance my business -- lobbying -- by walling off competitors and raising prices. But such hyper-regulatory rules may make our federal government less knowledgeable and less responsive, as if Members of Congress or regulators left on their own, would be superior. Yes, but only at the cost of making all of us inferior.

Remember, all this is happening because one criminal, Jack Abramoff, got caught and his cronies are next. So…why arrest the innocent?

In other news, the Tradesports contract on Republican control of the House in the 2006 elections fell into the 60's on Friday, having been in the 70's for many weeks. Hmmm... wonder if that had anything to do with the stock market's big drop?

Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 9:56 AM | link    

Sunday, January 22, 2006