Police shut down Girl Scout's cookie sale

Now, these bureaucrats and politicians know they have a PR nightmare on their hands to they try to act all nice by offering the Girl Scouts a pizza party and a tour of the police station. The police chief says he doesn't want the girls to be afraid of the police.

Why not? They terrify the hell out of me. I am fairly well informed and read dozens of news stories per day, multiple publications and watch numerous news reports. And the violent nature of American police scares the crap out of me. Girl Scouts should be terrified of the police. It's not like police violence and corruption rarely happens.

But, listen to the logic used to justify regulations to ban the sale of cookies and such without a permit. The police chief says there have been incidents of kids who ran into the street to get a dollar for something. To be quite honest, police always claims there are "incidents" even when there is no evidence of any. The chief was short on details, very short. He didn't say when it happened, to whom it happened, or what were the results. He gave nothing to indicate an actual incident took place. I'd bet a package doughnuts that he made that up to try to justify the regulation.

But, let us assume he is a truthful police officer—yes, I know it's a stretch, but work with me here. A child is alleged to have run into the street though, from what the chief said, there were no dire consequences as a result. I expect if a kid had actually been killed or crippled because of it, that fact would have been mentioned. It wasn't mentioned so I suspect nothing bad resulted from the alleged incident that justifies three pages of regulations to protect the kids.

Fine. But explain to me how does a permit in the kid's pocket protect the kid?

How does a bureaucratic piece of paper make the kid any safer? Do these people think their regulations are magic and change the reality of the situation?

If kids were really, really in enough danger to justify three extra pages of regulations, then how does a permit reduce the danger? It isn't like the permit is a seat belt, which could save a life. It offers no physical barrier to harm. It is a permission slip from Big Brother to engage in an activity, it is not a safety mechanism. Given that these are usually handed out for a fee, perhaps the real reason for the regulation is a money raiser for the police and politicians and "saving kids" is just the self-serving excuse being used here.

Should we assume the police and the politicians are lying? I do, I find it is safe to play the odds.

No one wants kids to be hurt. But, how does a peddling permit prevent that from happening? How does the permit offer more protection than what the parents, who were with the girls, could offer?

This is a microcosm of the entire problem with American politics. First, second-rate politicians pass regulations based on fear of what might happen? They propose solutions that don't actually address the problem they imagine. And they find ways to ring money out of people in order to "address" the problem. And, when questioned about their policies they piously claim they are merely protecting the children. In technical terms this is known as a load of bullshit.

Paranoid Priests Perjure Possible "Pervs"

This blog has reported on the various sex panics that pervade Christian, mainly Protestant, cultures such as the US and the UK. The result is a plethora of laws meant to "protect" the population from the ever expanding category of people deemed to be "sex offenders." Never mind that the laws are now so broadly defined as to be entirely worthless. Sorry, I misspeak, the laws are not worthless, which implies they have no net value at all. They are worse than worthless, they impede the ability of police to actually protect people by mandating that they waste mountains of time keeping track of the people on the list: which can include someone who pissed at the side of the road because they couldn't wait to get to a toilet, teens who have consensual sex with one another, or a high school boy who shows a Playboy magazine to another boy.

The UK may be near Europe but it is infected more with American-style paranoia than the more traditional European laissez faire attitude. That paranoia bubbled over at Gloucester Cathedral and the victims of this panic were a dangerous group of potential perverts—the Flower Guild, a group of mainly elderly ladies who arrange flowers in this monument to superstition. I guess if you can buy into virgin births and resurrections you can buy the claim that a group of old ladies are potential sex offenders out to molest little boys. Absurd? Of course, but absurdity and Anglicanism go hand in hand.

Yes, the Cathedral dreads that these dangerous old women might be out to molest boys—certainly that privilege is reserved to the priests. Or is that Catholicism? Sorry, I get them all confused. The Cathedral is demanding that all the old women have police checks run on them. Why? The London Telegraph gives the answer:

"At issue seems to have been a bizarre fear that because the women shared a toilet with choirboys, there was a risk that paedophiles could infiltrate the flower guild. A vetting system that was set up to protect children and vulnerable adults thus appears to have mow down a cohort of mostly retired women, average age 70, who represent the backbone of Britain's voluntary movement."

These loving Christians who run the Cathedral are a suspicious lot and demanded that all members of this criminal gang, known as the Flower Guild, be subjected to a police check. When several of them refused the Cathedral threw them out on their ears, a reward for loyal service to the Church. Five of the 60 volunteers have been dismissed to teach this dangerous gaggle of grannies not to mess with the Church.

The chairwoman of the Flower Guild, also know in police parlance as the "gang leader," is Mrs. Annabel Hayter. She adamantly refused to go through police checks and was fired. Five of the other "gang" members resigned in protest and the Telegraph reports others are sure to follow. Another possible sex fiend, Nancy Selwyn, 75, said: "I've had enough. I've told the canon to take me off the list. These checks are absolute rubbish." Potential criminal Marjorie Corley, worked as a flower arranger at the Cathedral for 7 years and 12 years leading tours. She points out: "What makes this all the more absurd is that the choirboys are at school when we are working at the cathedral so even if we did pose a threat we would never see them."

Even if one of the grannies wanted to play Humbert to a choirboy's Lolita it just isn't going to happen. They aren't in the Cathedral at the same time using the same toilet. Given that elderly woman, even when given the opportunity, are not likely to molest choirboys the whole panic is misplaced. But such is the nature of panics.

The local minister, with an extremely pretentious rank, the Very Reverend Nick Bury, told the women they needed to be vetted by the police lest they try to get into the pants of young boys. Hayter was fighting the absurd requirement quietly but when she finally went public the canon of the church said she could no longer be trusted. Apparently the church doesn't trust its own congregation even when they are obediently silent since it is requiring police checks.

The Very Moronic Nick Bury "retired" in September and the sect's bureaucracy is still working on his replacement, perhaps a trained baboon would do. But the Cathedral can be emailed here: fiona@gloucestercathedral.org.uk. Note this is the secretary of the Cathedral Dean and she is not responsibility for asinine church policies, so if you protest (as you should) remember she is not responsible and keep it polite.

Before my American readers get too uppity about the absurdity of British overreaction remember that millions of Americans are being sexually fondled by TSA thugs because of "terrorists." In politics "terrorists" and "pedophiles" serve similar roles: scare the ignorant and get them to obey authoritarian over-reaching bureaucrats in the name of "protecting" everyone and everything, except individual rights and liberty, of course.

And while the morons at the Cathedral were worried about flower ladies diddling choir boys the New York City police were arresting men for fondling their bishops. And, no, that isn't a euphemism. The NYPD sent in a team of cops in bulletproof vests to arrest a group of elderly men playing chess in a city park.

The park has "chess tables" set out for the public to use, but that was in the olden days before fear dominated American politics. Now the panic-mongers are worried that the chess tables are close to the playground and that means close to children and that means potential molesters could hang out, and that means, why, that means, well.... it's just too horrible to contemplate. Cue scary music!

It sure is a good thing the park doesn't have a Flower Guild, the chess-players are scary enough. The chess tables were built in an area that is now "reserved" for children and where all adults are banned unless accompanied by a child under the age of 12. (I am unsure of why they assume that kids are safer if the "molester" is accompanied by a child—I thought that was what they were trying to prevent.) But, according to the New York Post, "Police said the rule protects kids from pedophiles or others who might want to harm them."

Let's be clear about something, "stranger danger" is mainly a myth. The typical molester of a child is not some man in a raincoat with a pocket full of sweets but a male relative of the child, usually a father, step-father, or the mother's live-in boyfriend. They tend to act in isolation, not in gangs of men with chess boards. And they usually only molest children when there are actually children around—oh, I forgot to mention that the men were in the park during school hours and that NO children were present!

Not only do both these cases represent fear-driven overreaction to protect kids from mostly "imaginary monsters" but in both cases they are protecting imaginary kids. The choirboys were in school away from the Flower Guild and similarly the men playing chess were in an empty park!

The New York police responded with the typical lament of the fear-driven bureaucrat: "It's the broken windows theory... small things can turn into bigger things. Some citizens may see it as police harassment, but God forbid something happens to a child, people would be complaining., Why didn't the police enforce these rules? That's what they would be griping about." Truly this cop doesn't need a lobotomy—it would be redundant.

Remember there were NO kids present when the men were playing chess. Remember that "child predators" really don't travel in gangs. And none of the men have any criminal record for diddling with kids. One had a criminal record (which given the over-reaching nature of the law, doesn't mean much). He was previously charged with drug possession (which could be marijuana), reckless endangerment and larceny. But NONE of them pose a threat to children. And if he were accompanied by his own child he would be allowed in the park no questions asked.

These assaults on liberty are often overlooked because the imbeciles implementing them invoke "the children" as the excuse for the policy. But they all ignore the real threats to kids in order to concentrate on imaginary monsters that, while not protecting kids, do enhance the power of the idiocracy and the idiocrats that are now regulating every inch of America life.

Yes, there are real threats to kids. But the reality is that the threats are far more likely to be at home than on the playground. Yes, some people sexually fondle children. But the reality is that it is more likely to be done by the priests at the Cathedral than by the flower ladies. Yes, there are terrorists who will blow up planes, but fondling old ladies and children is not the way to stop them.

The political classes use fear to intimidate the voters in giving away freedom and rights. And as long as the Boobus Publicus respond in some Pavlovian fashion the politicians and bureaucrats will continue to exaggerate threats in order to enhance their own powers. And this is precisely why I don't laud the Tea Party Movement. The typical member of that group is fear-driven, not rights-driven. You can stampede the Tea Party types into the Big Government corral by waving the red flags of immigrants and gay marriage at them. If you do there will be the thudding sound of millions of metal walkers hitting the ground as the Tea Party types demand Big Brother to save them.

FDR was not my favorite president, though he looks better with each election. But he was right when he said the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. Fear-driven politics is used to stampede us toward the omnipotent State. Be if terrorists, pedophiles, or global warming, fear pushes us into making irrational decisions. We overreact, pass stupid and counterproductive laws, and regulate ourselves into oblivion, all in the name of seeking that illusionary goal of perfect safety.

State says sperm is hazardous material

Exactly how far into your personal business will the government go? We already have them rubbing peoples genitals and sliding fingers between their ass cheeks in order to "protect" us from terrorists. This is spite of the fact that the TSA terrorizes fliers by the millions on a daily basis. I remember one of these obese clowns screaming at dozens of people because they were not in a "straight" line. He literally yelled: "You will get in a straight line. You will stand up against the wall. If you do not do so no one will be flying today." That's just a power trip for the ignorant.

Now we have a government agency treating sperm like it is nuclear waste and defining is a hazardous material. More on that in a second.

There are two kinds of power trips. One for stupid people, one for relatively intelligent people. The TSA, like law enforcement, tends to attract the less intelligent. Their power trip is based on the thinking found in the lower echelons of moral development: obedience and punishment. They bark out orders and demands and believe that use of physical force is one of the first means to deal with those who don't snap to attention each time they vomit out orders.

But there is a also a power trip for the more intelligent. These are the classes of people who believe they are so smart that they are endowed with some superior right to control others. While they are often as self-serving as their less intelligent counterparts they justify their intrusions as "help," even when those being helped resent it very much.

The real difference between the upper echelon power trippers and those below them is in their justifications. Those attracted to the TSA and similar agencies (DEA, ICE, police, etc.) believe they are the right to coerce others because they have the power. These are the old schoolyard bullies of your childhood, the ones who believe that because they are ABLE to smash your face in, they have the right to do so. They immediately resort to physical force and authority because their ability to think at higher levels of moral development tend to be stunted, limited by their own lack of intelligence.

Their superiors, the ones who make the rules that the thugs physically enforce, tend to honestly believe that they are endowed with a superior intelligence which allows them to control others "for their own good."

And this brings us back to the issue of a newly discovered hazardous material as defined by the intellectuals at Cal/OSHA. Bizarrely they are the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health, but call themselves Cal/OSHA instead Cal/DOSH. Go figure.

These bureaucrats, let us call them the DOSHies, went after a gay porn studio called Treasure Island Media and fined them $21,470 for the violation of "workplace safety regulations" because individuals had sex without condoms. The state agency actually spent five months investigating these charges—and you wonder why California is bankrupt.

According to the DOSHies: "Employees were exposed to semen and other potentially infectious materials due to work activities during filming and set cleaning." Please be clear that semen is being defined as a "potentially infectious material" according to DOSH. Of course it is, just like someones saliva, and sneezes. But it is "hazardous" in an entirely different way from something like radium or acid.

These are materials produced by the human body in very natural ways. They are the natural byproduct of sexual activity.

If one government agency can define semen as a hazardous material exactly where does the slippery slope lead? Government loves slippery slopes. They love to over-react and go to bizarre extremes. One lunatic tries to smuggle explosives on a plane in his underwear and we have millions of people being fondled daily by government thugs as a result. Government exaggerates threats and then over-reacts to the exaggeration. The end result is always a more intrusive, violent, offensive government than before the alleged crisis.

When the bureaucrats get, however, is vastly better for them. First, they have large agencies with more powers. They have more "prestige" and often higher salaries justified by the fact that they now have to control more things. They get lovely retirement plans, often get exempted from the very regulations they have to control (top TSA officials don't have to get fondled for instance) and they get emotional satisfaction. The thugs at the bottom get the satisfaction from barking orders and threatening people, the satisfaction of the bully. The puppet-masters who pull the strings on these thugs get the satisfaction that they are "doing" something about the crisis they invented. It tells them that their "intelligently designed" social system is valuable. They go to sleep believing they are helping people by stripping them of their freedom and dignity.

One DOSHie, Deborah Gold, with the pretentious title of "senior safety engineer" said of the porn actors: "Anybody may be infected, therefore you have to treat everybody's blood and other potential infectious materials [such as semen] as thought it can be infectious."

Do we really want that view of sperm to dominate government thinking?

Let us be clear as to what was happening. Adults were choosing to engage in sexual activity on film. The government is defining sex as a hazard unless people have sex in a manner prescribed by faceless bureaucrats making up rules about how to have sex. In this case some actors who were HIV+ were having sex with one another. That is, all of them were HIV+ positive and thus could not infect one another. Other actors who are HIV- were having sex with other actors who were negative as well. Thus no infection could take place.

But still, this was sex. If voluntary sex can be controlled by the DOSHies, in the name of safety, what can be the result? Is this not just another form of Puritanism. Instead of protecting your moral health they justify it by claiming they are protecting your physical health. But in both cases they demand the right to use government coercion against individuals because of the sexual acts they choose.

Does the fact that a camera is running, while they having sex, really make this less intrusive? Does that camera give a state agency the right to control the sexual activities of consenting adults? If the answer is yes, then what about amateur porn?

Today a large percentage of pornography is being produced by amateurs who film themselves at home and then sell that material online, or often just give it away. A quick click of the mouse can open a website where there are 1253 cams operating with individuals having sex for anyone to watch. These include every possible sexual variation that adults can engage in. And these "performers" can be giving "tips" for their show by viewers.

You have sexual activity, being performed for public consumption, in exchange for financial gain. How does that differ from what was going on with the Treasure Island Media production? That is only one site which uses live performances. Another site like Xtube simply allows people to upload their home porn films. They can either release them for free consumption or viewers can be charged a small fee to watch the film, with the site keeping most the funds and the "performers" getting the rest. How precisely does that differ from what was happening in the studio?

Is porn produced for profit at home different from porn produced in a studio? Is sperm less "hazardous" at home? You might argue that at home they are having sex with their partner but that is not necessarily the case. In fact many of these home productions include numerous individuals who are not in relationships with one another. And guess what, a very high percentage of these performers don't use condoms.

Do the DOSHies assert a right to regulate home produced porn, if it is produced for profit? And what if the porn is produced in one year for no profit, and then a year later the "performers" decide to release it?

I can see one of these sperm cops easily arguing that they have to be able to protect porn actors even if they perform from home. After all, being self-employed doesn't exempt you from reams of "safety" regulations, and neither does working from home.

Consider also safety regulations on other "hazardous" materials. There are pesticides which the government bans because it deems it too dangerous to use. Whether you are using it commercially or privately is not their concern. That they say it is hazardous is all that matters and it is banned for use in both locations. Regulations regarding hazardous materials still exist when it the use is entirely private. They may have slightly different regulations and different agencies may be involved but if something is deemed hazardous they eventually get around to controlling private use as much as public use.

Do we really want to live in a world where sperm is deemed a hazard? It's mind-boggling. Do we want EPA teams having to come in just to change the sheets on the beds of teenage boys across the country? Should the back seats of cars parked on "lover's lane" be proclaimed hazardous waste sites?

As I see it, if consenting adults choose to have sex, whether on film or not, whether for pay or not, the state has no business in the matter. Many porn performers are not just there for the pay, which often is not that generous. I've known individuals, male and female, who worked in the adult film industry and they fairly universally said they did it because they enjoyed it, not because of the pay. Many of them had other jobs that paid their way, it wasn't the porn. One performer was rather wealthy on his own receiving money from his family. Yet he traveled the world making porn films because he liked it.

I'm old enough to have watched how politicians act. I've seen it over decades and seen it in multiple countries. And it is fair consistent.

First, they look for anything they can call a problem in order to "address" it. Then they exaggerate the problem in order to justify their solutions. They always pretend their solution will be far less intrusive than it will be, far less costly than it will be, and far more effective at solving the "problem" than it will be.

Once they are given the power to address the problem the problem will continually remain unsolved. If anything they will find more problems than they ever "anticipated" requiring more action on their part and more powers for themselves. The costs will expand until they are out of control.

They will offer assurances that they will NEVER go beyond a certain point. A small tax will NEVER become a big one. Searching everyone going onto to planes will NEVER lead to touching the genitals of passengers—or as they claim now—will never lead to strip searches. But the intrusive measures they take ALWAYS go much further. The will almost always exceed all the limitations that they voluntarily set for themselves. And, once they apply the principle in one place, they spend the rest of their working day trying to find other areas of life where they can get away with applying it as well.

Tough luck Chuck or why its hard to go into business

Our friends at the Institute for Justice put out this little video to illustrate the impediments that local governments put in the way of people wanting to go into business. It is worth a few minutes of your time.

The Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto investigated how government regulations in Peru kept people poor. He tracked the steps necessary to open a business and had teams of people going through the process. It literally took full time work, for over a year, to register just one business legally. The result was that most businesses operated illegally and were frozen out of capital markets as a result. This was true, not only of businesses, but of property rights as well.

One of the hallmarks of a third world country is how difficult these governments make it to open businesses legally. The regulatory maze is one geared to those who are well off and educated. It costs a lot of money to maneuver that labyrinth of regulations and it is not cheap. Regulations thus tend to weed out out the poor and least educated, who often make great entrepreneurs regardless of those factors.

The rise of the regulatory state has impacted the poorest, most vulnerable members of society the most. Any regulation can be handled if you are wealthy enough, which is one reason that Big Business has consistently promoted candidates that want to regulate markets. Regulations can be manipulated so that they are anti-competitive and transfer market share, and thus wealth, to the big players in the field.

When my grandmother was a girl anyone who wanted to start a business could build a handcart, buy some products and start hawking their goods. The big department stores, using their political clout, put a stop to that through regulations which the politicians claimed were necessary to protect the public.

Consider immigratin regulations: my great-great-grandfather Jules Pepin (1838-1898) migrated to Chicago with his brother-in-law Joseph Bernard. Uncle Joe was 16-years-old when he walked to the US to join the Union troops because of his desire to set the slaves free. He returned to Quebec and with Jules came back to the U.S. to settle permanently. My great-grandfather Axel Hansson (1865-1955)

Similarly when my great-great grandfather Jules Pepin (1838-1898) left Montreal to walk to the U.S. to join the cause of Abolitionism that was all he had to do: walk into the country. Another great-grandfather, Axel Hansson (1865-1955), simply boarded a ship in Sweden and came to America. The process was simple and many of the poorest people of the world, at least those with ambition, came to this country. Some like Jules and Joe just walked, others like Axel sailed. But they had no regulatory maze blocking their way. And these are the people who made America great.

Now such people are kept out. Sure there is a "legal" means of immigrating, provided you have lots of money and sufficient education to get through the process. The process prevents those who would most benefit from immigration from doing so. The fact is that when our ancestors "legally" immigrated they did so because there wasn't a regulatory wall preventing it. Now there is just such a wall and that is why those looking for work have to sneak in. The legal options were closed off to them. Regulations benefit the rich, the well-off and the educated.

This is one of the most important things I wish my friend on the Left would understand. The regulatory state is one that transfers rights and wealth from the poorest sectors of the economy to the wealthiest—not the other way around.

Can more regulations solve the problem of failed regulations?

I’ve been highly critical of Big Energy, which is the term I use to refer to what the Left calls Big Oil. But Big Oil stopped being Big Oil, the moment the Left started pushing subsidies for “alternative” energy. Profiting from subsidies is often more lucrative than profiting by actually doing something productive. And, as I have argued, they can use the regulator process to force competitors out of certain areas, and redistribute wealth to themselves. The big example of this was ethanol, which I have covered on this blog many times.

Big Oil, or Big Energy today, has always used its cozy relationship with Big Government to secure for it things it could not have in a depoliticized market. Historically one of the worst offenders has been British Petroleum. Their history of using state power is well known and shocking.

The oil rig blowout in the Gulf is not something easily blogged about, not if one really wants to offer something pertinent and useful. That doesn’t stop a lot of people, but it did stop me. The problem for me is that one has to do some reading of the technical, engineering problems associated with oil rigs. Any “simplistic” response I could give would be rather useless if I don’t know the facts. Of course, that didn’t stop others from giving simplistic advice. Either saying, “let the market take care of it” or saying “there ought to be a regulation” is a simplistic, unthinking response. Most comments I’ve read from the Left and Right suffer from such simplism.

I don’t have a lot I can say with assurance because of the technical issues. But I can make some broad comments that might be helpful. And they are open to adjustment as I broaden my knowledge.

The first thing I can say with some assurance is that the government has limited liabilities to oil companies for damage done by accidents like the one that is causing such devastation in the Gulf. In the quest for progress it is necessary to take risk, but the cost of the risks ought to be fully covered by the risk-taker. Anything else distorts incentives.

But somewhere along the line the politicians, in their infinite wisdom, decided it was a good thing to subsidize risk. Sometimes this is done directly, sometimes indirectly. In the case limiting liability it is an indirect subsidy. It tells risk-takers that they won’t have to cover all the costs of their risk taking, that they can pass it on to others. In this case the politicians decided the risk takers could pass on costs of a disaster to the victims of the disaster. However, the politicians have also decided that the profits from such ventures belong to the risk-takers. They have privatized profits but socialized risk. We see this same, flawed strategy used in field after field. If there are risky credit applicants who want to buy houses the government promises to cover the losses while the banks get the profits. Bad loans are bad by the boatload and when something goes wrong there is a huge wave of defaults creating a crisis that spreads from there. Take away the downside risk, but leave intact the upside profits and you are asking for disaster. I would actually argue that disaster, under those circumstances, is inevitable, it is merely a matter of time.

So off the bat, I knew that the limitation on liabilities that government handed over to Big Oil/Big Energy was a bad thing.

The second thing I realized, that was a problem, is that industries regulated by government tend to capture the regulatory agencies and have undo influence on them. This is, I think, inevitable. Obama actually criticized the cozy relationship between the oil companies and the regulators. The problem is that this can’t be solved by more regulations. At all times the regulators who deal with oil drilling in U.S. waters will be of more interest to oil companies than they will be to us. You aren’t going to lobby them for what you think ought to be done, but the oil companies will. The law of capture means that eventually the regulators will be useful idiots to the companies they regulate and that regulations will be more likely to limit competition, and raise profits, than to do anything useful for the average person. And the politicians won’t say much about it because the same companies donate more to their campaigns than does the average resident of the Gulf region.

At the same time BP very successfully influenced major environmental organizations. BP has been one of the biggest funders of the environmental lobby around. Certainly donations to groups pushing for subsidies for ethanol proved very lucrative to BP. They had environmental groups literally begging politicians to take money from taxpayers and give it to BP. BP didn’t mind that at all.

The third thing I had to wonder about was that oil rigs operate in U.S. waters, which are exclusively and totally under the control of the federal government. No oil drilling takes place without government permits and contracts with the oil companies. When a contract is involved they can pretty much ask for what they want as a condition for using “public” waters to drill for oil. That is, you don’t need to wait for regulations to be passed. Like any landlord you can put stipulations into your agreement as to what must be done, or can’t be done, with the property you control. So, what would legislation add to the process that can’t already be done in the contract stage? Perhaps someone can give me information I don’t have which will tell me why this is not possible. If so, I will have learned something. This part is more a question than a statement, but it is one worth exploring.

In reading some material in the Wall Street Journal it was quite clear to me that BP officials on site took short cuts. The Journal outlined several concerns people had along the way with how BP was acting. If a fraction of what the Journal exposed is true BP deserves to have the pants sued off of them. This is precisely why liabilities must not be limited for risk-taking. It encourages unwarranted risks.

Another point is that we have no evidence that another regulation would have solved the problem. To say that more regulation is the answer is a faith statement not a rational one. We don’t have evidence that is the case. In fact, the Journal article made it clear that regulators were lax about regulations that were already in place. So existing regulations were ignored. If the law of capture tends to mean regulators will become too cozy with the objects of their regulations then it means that they will themselves tend to ignore certain regulations. That seems to be the case here, at least in part.

Today’s New York Times discusses the failure of certain safety measures that are routinely put in place. One such measure is called the “blind shear ram” which cuts off the supply of oil in a disaster. The ram is supposed to cut off the supply but it repeatedly failed to do so in this case. At this time no one is sure why, and won’t know until they can look at it. But there was too much confidence put into this device and many companies have already taken additional precautions.

Because they assumed that a certain number of these shears fail, sometimes hitting in the wrong spot, for instance, they have gone to installing the device twice, in different locations so if one fails they have a backup. Experts have suggested two such devices are needed. So wouldn’t a regulation forcing it solve the problem? Perhaps, but why wasn’t it done? According to the Times,

The federal agency charged with regulating offshore drilling, the Minerals Management Service, repeatedly declined to act on advice from its own experts on how it could minimize the risk of a blind shear ram failure.

They also said their study showed: “ that the Obama administration failed to grapple with ... the well-known weaknesses of blowout preventers.” Reports were on file showing that there was a problem and the regulatory agencies and the politicians ignored them. Even the company involved here, has been equipping their rigs with double shears as a precaution. This, unfortunately, was not one of those rigs. The Times says that every other rig under lease to BP supposedly has the double shears.

So, it was widely known that double shears were a needed safety precaution, and most rigs already had them installed, the process was on-going to put them into all rigs, and this was one of the unfortunate exceptions. And all this was being done prior to the feds actually mandating it. I fully expect this mandate to be put into place, consistent with my theory that most reforms pushed by government are instituted ONLY after the private sector has already primarily implemented the reforms voluntarily. If the Times is correct, most rigs already have the double shears. And no doubt the politicians will take credit for what has already been done privately, for the most part. Those who cherish regulations for their own sake will no doubt give all the credit to the public sector and ignore the fact that the private sector has already implemented this reform on most new rigs, without a regulation requiring it.

Blowout preventions sometimes fail but government tests of blowout preventers almost always approve them. Out of 90,000 such tests conducted by the government they gave passes to all but 62, which the Times says “raised questions about the effectiveness of these test.” I’m not sure that the regulators would actually do a better job merely by being given more regulations to work with.

The Times notes that MMS did institute a new regulation which said that all companies had to provide test data showing the blind shear ram would work in each well. This was supposed to be a requirement for a drilling permit. Yet the regulator “approved BP’s permit without requiring proof that is blowout prevent could shear pipe and seal a well 5,000 feet down.” The regulator who authorized the permit, in violation of regulations that already existed, said: “When I was in training for this, I was never, as far as I can recall, even told to look for this statement.” So, not even a basic regulation that already existed was being enforced. Would another layer of regulations change that?

In confirmation of my theory that reforms by government take place after the reforms are no longer needed, the Times notes that the federal agency ignored a report about there being two blind shear rams in each rig. “The agency made no such requirement. Indeed, it waited until 2003 to require even one blind shear ram. By then, the industry had already started moving to two blind shear rams....“ By the time the government regulators required one blind shear ram virtually all rigs actually had one and one-third of the rigs had already moved to two. In other words the regulation had almost no impact.

As the Journal noted BP cut corners repeatedly. Rep. Henry Waxman pontificated on this in Congress. But the Times notes that, “Tony Hayward, BP’s chief executive repeatedly told Mr. Waxman’s committee last Thursday, many of these decisions were approved by the Minerals Management Service.” In other words, “federal regulators did not see any problems” with the corners that were being cut, even if employees on the rig did see problems and complained. With federal regulators giving BP the go-ahead guess what happened? So why exactly is this only blamed on a failure of private industry? Why isn’t the fact that regulators failed being talked about as much? Surely this is a case of regulatory failure in spades.

Even bad politics got in the way of the clean-up efforts. Wendy McElroy brought to my attention that Voice of America reported that US companies are now using “sweeping arms that attach to a boat and help gather large amounts of oil.” These devices, however were offered to the US by “a Dutch company with years of experiences in such operations, but instead of using the Dutch ships and crews immediately, when The Netherlands offered help in April, the operation was delayed until U.S. crews could be trained.”

The VOA says the Obama administration turned down the offer of help to clean up the mess “partly because of the Jones Act, which restricts foreign ships from certain activities in U.S. waters.” So federal regulations in one area prevented the clean-up of a mess caused when regulators ignored their own regulations in another area. However, when Katrina hit “the Bush administration waived the Jones Act in order to facilitate some foreign assistance, but such a waiver was not given in this case.”

So the Jones Act, which delayed clean-up measures in this disaster, was left in place even though the Obama administration could have waived the act during the emergency. In addition the Dutch “offered assistance with building sand berms (barriers) along the cost of Louisiana to protect sensitive marshlands, but that offer was also rejected, even though Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal had been requesting such protective barriers.” The Dutch embassy says their offer to help still stands. The White House says there are no delays in accepting such offers even though the White House rejected such offers. And the Dutch say that they can do the job at twice the speed of “as the local companies contracted for the work, if allowed to do so.”

Basically Obama is more worried about unions and “protecting” American jobs than preventing damage from the oil. VOA says: “U.S. policy has favored the use of American companies and employees in dealing with the oil spill, even though that may have caused delays in protecting sensitive shoreline.” But U.S. firms have little experience in these areas, so regulations meant to encourage jobs creation in the U.S. do so by preventing more efficient companies from doing the work. Of course, jobs creation measures often mandate inefficiency by requiring jobs be done by less efficient local employees than by more efficient foreign ones. The politicians, who only have to win local votes, often ignore that. But in this case, the tendency toward labor protectionism means great destruction to fragile Gulf shore areas.

Meanwhile, it appears that even local American workers were being prevented from doing cleanup work by another government agency—the Coast Guard. ABC News reports that barges that vacuum crude oil from water "were sitting idle" because the Coast Guard said they "needed to confirm that that there were fire extinguishers and life vests on board, and then it had trouble contacting the people who built the barges." Gov. Jindal has been trying to get the bureaucrats at the Coast Guard to move on the issues but complains: "Every time you talk to someone different at the Coast Guard, you get a different answer." Alabama's governor said there is no one who can give a "yes" or "no" answer. He also said each time the Governors from the area "develop plans with the Coast Guard's command center "things begin to shift when other agencies start weighing in, like the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service." He described it "like this huge committee down there, and every decision that we try to implement, any one person on that committee has absolute veto power." Welcome to reality of political regulation.

Again, I must wonder, if political control is literally endangering Gulf shore areas, by delaying clean up in order to give U.S. companies a preference, why precisely does anyone think more political control is the solution here?

A private company, used to its cozy relationship with Big Government failed. Laws that limit liability subsidized its failure. It failed because it took short cuts that were approved by regulators. Regulations that were put in place, in order to prevent such problems, were not enforced by the regulators. And the regulations that are in place were only put in place after the safety mechanism had become the typical standard in oil rigs and after many rigs had already imposed a secondary safety mechanism. So regulations followed private safety measures, they didn’t create them. Even now the double mechanisms are becoming common prior to any regulation requiring them. The regulatory system, which is in place already, failed. And no one is explaining why more such regulations will make a difference when the enforcers ignored current regulations. On top of that, cleanup measures have been slowed down significantly because politicians interfered by passing laws meant to protect less-efficient local jobs. Those jobs are being protected,If but the expense of massive damage to the Gulf.

I don’t want to pretend this is be-all and end-all on this matter. It isn’t. It is my thinking out loud on a topic about which I am only now familiarizing myself. And it isn’t meant to be anything more than that. One purpose of this blog is to “think out loud” and this is one example of that.

Snippets from the news.

The New York Times reports on a controversy that is brewing in some areas. Some people wish to hang their laundry up to dry, instead of using a dryer. Often they do this because they are convinced it will "help save the planet." No matter. As I see it, it's their laundry and their house, so it's their business.

Some of the states are passing legislation that says people may hang laundry outside, regardless of what local regulations say. The Times reports: "Opponents say the laws lifting bans erode local property rights and undermine the autonomy of private communities." So, if people are allowed to control what other people do on their own property that is supporting property rights while not being allowed to control what other people do with their property is erodes property rights? And the New York Times reported that as if it made sense.

Most of the time when I lived outside the U.S. I didn't have a dryer. I really don't see clothesline as a threat to anyone.

You have blood on your hands.

Hundreds of family members showed up at St. Paul's Cathedral, in London, to attend a memorial service for British soldiers who died in Iraq. The none-too-popular Tony Blair, who sent these young men off to war, had the audacity to show up. Mr. Blair has said that he went to war because he felt God wanted him to do it. Shortly after leaving office Blair converted to Catholicism, apparently it was the Catholic deity that wanted young men killed.

At a reception after the service Blair was running around glad-handing those in attendance. He attempted to shake hands with Peter Brierley, who was there to mourn his son. Brierley was shocked to be approached by Blair with his outstretched hand. He told the former politician: "I'm not shaking your hand, you've got blood on it."

Blair looked surprised and his security detail quickly shunted him out of the area. Good for Brierley, I'm not sure I would have been that restrained.

Uninformed remark of the day.

Matt Yglesias wrote:

Atlas Shrugged is a stupid book, Ayn Rand is a stupid woman, and John Galt’s ideas are stupid. That said, none of them are nearly this stupid. Rand’s novel isn’t about a world in which executives who build companies based on a lot of incorrect decisions, then pay themselves millions of dollars while bankrupting their firms, then come to the government hat-in-hand asking for bailouts, then find that the bailers-out want to attach some strings to their hundreds of billions of dollars in public funds and then go to hide out in Galt’s Gulch. That doesn’t make any sense at all.

Has Yglesias actually read Atlas Shrugged? One of the lead villians is James Taggart, an incompetent businessman who wants to use political influence, not talent, as his source of income. Rand wrote of "Mr. Mowen," the president of Amalgamated Switch and Signal Company, who can't complete jobs and argues that business must be run for the good of everyone. There is Orren Boyle, the head of Associated Steel, who is a prime example of the corportists who use state power for their own benefit. Paul Larkin is another businessman who is unsuccessful and part of the looters. The board of directors of Taggart Transcontinental are all the worst sort of businessmen.

I do fear that Rand overestimated the number of decent businessmen at the corporate level. Corporate America is happily and inseparably intertwined with the political elite. And a huge amount of legislation acts to redistribute wealth in their direction. The media, however, keeps up the charade that government and Big Business are in opposition to one another. Uninformed leftists then push for regulations, to rein in Big Busines, but which Big Business then uses to their benefit since these regulations usually restrict competition and drive up costs. Meanwhile Big Business is lined up to get "bailed out" at the expense of the true entrepreneurs and businessmen, the small business owner.

Big Business is not, as Rand thought, "America's persecuted minority." Big Business, working with the political elite, is using state power to plunder the productive segments of the economy. This is not to say that some large corporations, probably most of them, don't also produce things of value. But production of value, and using state power to one's benefit, are not mutually exclusive. Most corporations managed to do both. But Big Business is not the champion of free, depoliticized markets by any means.

The unstated racism of French students

French students continue to act like spoiled brats over labour legislation which is unlikely to impact them in any way. The students at the Sorbonne continue to whine. But what does the law do?

It basically makes it easier to fire young workers, something now very difficult to do in France. Laws that make it hard to fire make it risky to hire. So when it is risky to hire who gets shunned? Not graduates from the Sorbonne. When you raise the cost of hiring then employers are less likely to hire workers that deem as riskier. What makes someone a riskier employee?

It could be things like work history. It could be education. It could simply be basic prejudices, founded or unfounded.

The most desired young workers have nothing to fear. Only the least desired young workers get shafted. An employer faces a "risky" employee but knows he can fire them if they don't work out. If that is is the case he is more likely to hire him.

Imagine a law that made it illegal to sell a car within two years of purchasing it. What would happen? Car prices would go up. More people would buy new cars and lots of people would avoid used cars as much as possible. The same with employees. So the young unemployed child of immigrants with bad French will get turned down over and over. Not the Sorbonne elite.

These left-wing whiners are pushing for laws that harm racial minorities, immigrants and the less educated most of alll. The law has huge negative impaact on the young from these groups and no impact on the social elite at the Sorbonnes. Shame on the students. If the French people had any sense they would kick these whiners butts and send them to bed without their supper.