Jay Reding.com

There’s nothing quite like seeing the Kossacks in a frothing rage (which granted, often seems to be their natural state). After all this time working to achieve victory for al-Qaeda “end the war,” the Kossacks didn’t get their way. Poor children.

Unless you care more about George W.’s ego than the safety and welfare of our troops, you are pissed right now.

This is classic projection. The opposition to the war is the side that constantly drags the President into this. To be clear, I don’t care about George W. Bush at this point. Politically, he’s the lamest of lame ducks. At this point, he’s let himself become a liability to the war rather than an effective advocate of it.

I support this war because we are in Iraq fighting al-Qaeda, the same group that started this war in the first place. More that that, we’re making an effort to fix the problems that created al-Qaeda in the first place, and that means that we have to ensure that the state of Iraq is able to defend its nascent democratic values. For that matter, why we’re doing the same for our allies in Lebanon.

It’s the left who has made this personal, and that’s why they’ve effectively become advocates for the enemy. Al-Qaeda wants us to withdraw. Iran wants us to withdraw. The Democrats want us to withdraw. All of them have different reasons for doing so, but they all want to achieve the very same ends.

But there is productive pissed, and destructive pissed.

I’m guessing they’re going for the latter…

he productive stuff has us redoubling our efforts to clean house in Congress, clearing out the dead weight, the corporatists, and the Republicans. There’s the taking over our local parties, bringing new blood and a cohesive sense of purpose to often moribund organizations.

And then we’ll purge the Party of the kulaks and the counterrevolutionists too! Welcome to the face of the Democratic Party circa 2007 — now that the Kos Kids think they’re entitled, they’re going to turn the Democratic Party into their party, and they won’t take no for an answer.

There’s an Orwellian irony that they’re calling this bill, which gives our troops the funds they need to hunt down al-Qaeda in Iraq, “the Capitulation Bill” — because it’s the opposite of that. It’s the left that wants us to surrender in Iraq, to hand over that country to al-Qaeda, to erase the progress that has been made. To “end the war” is to give the advantage to Iran, to al-Qaeda, and against the democratic peoples of the Middle East who are hoping for something better.

I’m glad that the left didn’t get the capitulation they wanted — not because it helps George W. Bush (which it won’t), but because it ensures that there’s still a chance for something better in Iraq. To the Kossacks, the enemy isn’t al-Qaeda, Iran, or the murderous barbarians who behead hostages and blow up children, it’s the other side of the domestic political aisle. That kind of myopia is not only sad, it’s dangerous. Seeing that side lose out and the people of Iraq win is a victory, if only a small one.

BusinessWeek reports on the recently-passed House bill which bans so-called “price gouging” by oil companies:

The legislation would penalize individuals or companies for taking “unfair advantage” or charging “unconscionably excessive” prices for gasoline and other fuels.

Opponents said the language was too vague and that the Federal Trade Commission, which would enforce the law, has not clearly defined price gouging.

“I don’t know what `unconscionably excessive’ means,” said Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas.

The bill’s chief sponsor, Democratic Rep. Bart Stupak of Michigan, said he had no doubt the FTC would be able to determine price gouging once the agency had a law to uphold.

The measure would establish the first federal law against energy price gouging. The FTC now can investigate price manipulation under antitrust laws. Currently, 29 states have price gouging statutes; enforcement varies widely.

A Congress which has been passing budget-busting spending bills and stuffing every piece of legislation with more pork than a Carolina barbecue is the last arbiter of what defines “unconscionably excessive” pricing for anything.

The New York Times has an excellent piece on why such “price gouging” is less about greedy oil companies and more about years of bad policy:

The Federal Trade Commission has been skeptical about accusations of price-gouging on gasoline prices. In 2004, the agency studied price changes in gasoline from 1991 through late 2003. It concluded that about 85 percent of the price variability — both up and down — reflected changes in crude oil prices.

To be sure, this year is different. Crude oil prices are actually a bit lower right now, at the onset of the summer driving season, than they were at this time last year. But gasoline prices are slightly higher than they were a year ago.

The Energy Information Administration is predicting that crude oil prices will average about $66 a barrel this summer, versus $70 last summer. But it predicts that gasoline will average about $2.95 a gallon this summer, up from an average of $2.84 last summer.

INDUSTRY executives say the anomaly reflects a temporary drop-off in refinery activity, partly because of scheduled maintenance and partly because of unscheduled interruptions. On top of that come ethanol prices, which have soared, because refiners now blend a small percentage of ethanol into standard gasoline.

The broader issue is that refinery capacity has not kept up with American demand for gasoline. Oil companies, caught with vast amounts of excess refining capacity in the early 1980s, systematically reduced capacity during the long lean years when energy prices and profit margins were the pity of Wall Street.

There are three main reasons why gas prices are so high right now, none of them having anything to do with oil company greed. The first is that there are so many regional gasoline blends required by state laws that supply issues are complicated. The GAO found:

The increasing numbers of special gasoline blends have made it more complicated and costly to supply gasoline, elevating the risk of localized supply disruptions. Producing special gasoline blends can require changes at refineries, making it more complicated and costly to produce gasoline. Special blends also add to the number of fuels shipped through pipelines, reducing the efficiency of the pipelines and raising costs. In addition,
because the tanks at the fuel terminals were often built before the proliferation of blends, they are often too large and too few to efficiently handle the increased number and smaller size batches of special gasoline blends and, as a result, total storage capacity has fallen. Further, in some cases, the proliferation of blends has reduced the supply options available to some retailers, making them more susceptible to supply disruptions.

These special requirements cause major problems with inefficiencies which raise the cost of gasoline for everyone — including states which don’t mandate their own special gasoline blends.

Secondly, there is the high cost of ethanol which is frequently added to even normal gasoline. This is causing major disruptions in the price of corn, which increases not only the costs of corn-based ethanol, but also meat, dairy, and other products which rely on corn-based animal feeds. Using corn for fuel is a horrendously bad idea — unless you’re a corn farmer who can make a windfall on the increased price of corn. For the rest of us, it increases the cost of both our food and our fuel as the cost of corn-based ethanol continues to rise.

Finally, there’s the big issue: this nation simply doesn’t have enough refining capacity. Building a new refinery is an expensive proposition, and if biofuels really are the wave of the future, it makes little sense to make the decades-long investment of a new conventional refinery when the industry has shifted towards alternative energy production. For an oil company to build a new refinery, they have to navigate a sea of bureaucratic red tape, find a location that won’t attract protesters, and then actually be able to recoup their investment. That simply isn’t a viable strategy these days — nobody wants an oil refinery next door, and oil companies can’t pour billions into a new refinery that produces a blend of gasoline that may not be legal in 10 years.

These problems aren’t going to go away. We need more refining capacity, we need fewer fuel requirements, and we need a more realistic policy towards the usage of biofuels. However, Congress seems more interested in grandstanding over “price gouging” than in actually fixing the problems that plague our nation’s oil supplies. As long as Congress has their priorities dangerously out of whack, it’s likely that gas prices will continue to rise, and the only ones doing the gouging will be Congress and the special interests that control them.

The Washington Post notes that US carbon emissions dropped 1.3% last year as the economy grew by 3.3%.

European carbon emissions continued to rise, despite Europe embracing the Kyoto Protocols.

This is an example of why efforts like Kyoto are ultimately counter-productive. The problem isn’t in the developed world, where technological advances allow for greater efficiency over time, but in the developing world where the voracious appetite for electricity and fuel is causing rapid expansion of inefficient power plants and millions of new vehicles to be put on the roads. The Kyoto Protocol does nothing to stop that, but penalizes the growth of the developing world, which in turn reduces the capital available for developing more efficient technologies.

The US is in fact a leader in environmental technologies — but we need to do more. That means seriously developing a 21st Century power grid featuring clean nuclear technologies, cleaner coal, and less dependence on Middle Eastern oil. All of that requires doing things that environmentalist groups hate — developing nuclear plants, engaging in more domestic oil drilling, and increasing our coal production. We have viable and rational options for more energy independence, but if the goal is to rely on wind, solar, or other unreliable technologies, we won’t be able to pull it off. Wind and solar are excellent ways of supplementing our power grid, but they’re not (yet) viable over large scales.

Michael Chrichton had it right — the environmentalist movement operates from religious rather than scientific principles — which is why it’s important that policymakers stop encouraging the indulgences of carbon credits and the ritual shunning of nuclear power and concentrate on what works. That may not be what the environmentalist movement wants, but we all need a cleaner environment and a more efficient economy, and to get there we need to balance the needs of both.

The Boston Globe has a piece on how the Palestinian civil war is playing in the Middle East:

Palestinians killing Palestinians was a nightmare come true, not just for the Middle East, but for the greater Muslim community as well. Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz of Pakistan said that the Palestinian problem was at ” the core of stability” for the world, and that the lack of rights for Palestinians fostered terrorism.

Crocodile tears.

The reality is that the Palestinians have been used as pawns in the pan-Arab game of fighting Israel since 1948. If the Arabs really cared about the Palestinians they wouldn’t be enabling their campaign of terrorism to such a degree. Instead, the terrible situation in Palestine is the result of years of breeding a death cult that has no turned on itself since it can no longer strike at Israel. What is happening now is the result of years of Arab nations pushing the Palestinians towards the nihilistic world of jihad — proxy warriors for a battle that could not be won by conventional means.

The problem of Palestine is hardly at the “core of stability” for the world — it’s an excuse for Muslim nations to stall reform and covertly embrace terrorism. Solving the Israel-Palestine crisis wouldn’t effect the situation in Iraq, it wouldn’t make Syria more democratic, and it wouldn’t end the Islamist campaign of terrorism. It’s nothing more than a convenient way of shifting the blame for decades of failure, hatred, and terrorism which has become the bloody status quo in the Middle East.

Ralph Peters makes a strong argument for why the Palestinians are merely pawns:

The truth is that other Arabs want the Palestinians to continue to suffer. It’s useful as an excuse for all their failings. They have about as much sympathy for the refugees as all those good Germans had for the Jews whose real estate was suddenly available.

But the ultimate victims of this round of Palestinian violence are the Palestinians themselves.

After passing up so many chances for peace and statehood, they can no longer be classed as victims of Zionism. Yet the Palestinians are victims - of the other Arabs who exploit them and neglect them. And of the madmen spawned from their own kind.

If you need someone to blame for the current carnage, blame the Palestinian terrorists for whom violence has become a way of life (and death). Forget the rage of the dispossessed and all that sanctimonious claptrap. For the Palestinians preying upon their brethren, terror’s a business.

And business is good.

He’s sadly right. The true victims of this are the decent members of Palestinian society — the ones who have watched their people become human munitions in a pointless proxy war. The ones who watch money be sent to the families of duped suicide bombers rather than to schools or hospitals. The ones who have watched their society be degenerated into a death cult, making civil society virtually impossible. Those who know what’s happening, but can do little to prevent it.

The Arabs have spend 50 years sowing the wind, and now they’re shocked that it has resulted in a state that is tearing itself apart? What could they expect from a society that they’ve deliberately steeped in violence for generations.

This is what happens when civil society is replaced with jihad, and the governments of the Middle East may see this malignant ideology spread beyond Gaza and Baghdad — they’ve been hoping that paying it off would make it leave their borders, but the combination of religious fundamentalism and indoctrinated violence is a beast that may yet turn on its masters within our lifetimes.

Al Gore is at it again, writing a 308-page work stuffed with liberal red meat with the hubris-packed title The Assault on Reason. They say one shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but when Al Gore claims ownership of reason itself, that’s all one needs to know.

Mark Helprin has a provocative article in The New York Times on extending copyright protections to works indefinitely. As a practical matter, this has already been done in the wake of the Eldred decision. Eldred v. Ashcroft, 537 U.S. 186 (2003). Helprin argues:

Absent the government’s decree, copyright holders would have no exclusivity of right at all. Does not then the government’s giveth support its taketh? By that logic, should other classes of property not subject to total confiscation therefore be denied the protection of regulatory agencies, courts, police and the law itself lest they be subject to expropriation as payment for the considerable and necessary protections they too enjoy? Should automobile manufacturers be nationalized after 70 years because they depend on publicly financed roads? Should Goldman Sachs be impounded because of the existence of the Securities and Exchange Commission?

The problem with Helprin’s argument is that property rights and intellectual property rights aren’t the same thing. The Constitution’s allowance for limited copyrights is to preserve a strong and vital public sphere. Information is different from personal or real property in that the public intellectual commons is more in the public interest than the physical public commons. Eternal copyrights are invitations to rent-seeking behavior — authors and publishers would have more incentives to sit on an unprofitable work rather than release it into the public domain. Alternately, popular works could become cash cows that require no further work on the part of the author, creating a disincentive for the creation of new works. The language of the Copyright and Patent Clause makes the Founders’ intentions quite clear: it is a utilitarian Clause that seeks to “promote the progress of science and the useful arts” — not to provide a set of sweeping IP rights as the current system does.

Certainly authors and publishers deserve to have some protections of their work — the idea that information “wants to be free” ignores the reality that information isn’t free. It takes time and effort to develop and market a book, software program, song, or other work. That time and effort should be rewarded. However, the principle is stretched too far to make that argument that copyrights and patents should be extended without end.

Even in the context of real property, courts don’t give absolute and eternal protection. The Rule Against Perpetuities (the bane of every first-year property student’s existence) prevents property owners from passing on their estates to very distant beneficiaries. Courts are highly reticent to uphold deeds with unreasonably restrict the alienation of property — which means that a court won’t let you restrict the ability of a future beneficiary to sell your property unless the limitations are reasonable. All these restrictions are designed to prevent “dead hand” control and ensure that property is put to the best and highest use.

The same principle applies with intellectual property, which is why eternal copyrights are such a bad idea. They would foster a climate in which dead hand control would rule — while no doubt the Walt Disney Corporation would love to own Mickey Mouse in perpetuity, is it really good for the rest of society? The Founders’ wisdom when it comes to copyrights is no less relevant today than it was then — and the explosion of wasteful and ridiculous IP litigation is an example of what happens when the Courts ignore that wisdom in favor of catering to moneyed special interests. The Courts need to start taking the Copyright and Patent Clause seriously, or the problem of rent-seeking is only going to get worse.

UPDATE: Ilya Somin of The Volokh Conspiracy also has a detailed and cogent argument about why Helprin’s ideas don’t work, practically or constitutionally.

The site might be a bit shaky yet today — this weekend I did some substantial rearranging of the site’s DNS entries which may cause some ISPs to be unable to connect. My email has been rendered worthless due to spam, and my client-side filters just haven’t been able to keep up with the deluge. So, I decided to use GMail for Domains instead. I miss having IMAP access to email, but at least GMail is far better at filtering spam than Thunderbird was — and I don’t need to worry about configuring an email client on each machine I use. Web-based email seems to make a lot more sense these days, especially when it can do a better job of detecting and deleting spam than even a Baysian filter can.

Email is proving to be a perfect example of the tragedy of the commons — there’s virtually no cost to use it, which means that it’s become a perfect medium for spammers. Given that there’s no real technical or legal solution to spam, and not for a lack of trying, it appears that the Cold War between spammers and email providers will have no end in sight…