Government – Page 52 – artdiamondblog.com

Today Is 13th Anniversary of Democrats’ Infamous Betrayal of Elián González

“In this April 22, 2000 file photo, Elian Gonzalez is held in a closet by Donato Dalrymple, one of the two men who rescued the boy from the ocean, right, as government officials search the home of Lazaro Gonzalez, early Saturday morning, April 22, 2000, in Miami. Armed federal agents seized Elian Gonzalez from the home of his Miami relatives before dawn Saturday, firing tear gas into an angry crowd as they left the scene with the weeping 6-year-old boy.” Source of caption and photo: online version of JENNIFER KAY and MATT SEDENSKY. “10 years later, few stirred by Elian Gonzalez saga.” Omaha World-Herald (Thurs., April 22, 2010): 7A. (Note: the online version of the article is dated April 21, 2010 and has the title “10 years after Elian, US players mum or moving on.”)

Today (April 22, 2013) is the 13th anniversary of one of the darkest days in American history—when the Democratic Clinton Administration seized a six year old child in order to force him back into the slavery that his mother had died trying to escape.

Tax Rates Have Big Effect on Labor Supply and Rate of Entrepreneurial Start-Ups

(p. A23) Higher taxes will produce long-term changes in social norms, behavior and growth. Edward Prescott, a winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in economics, found that, in the 1950s when their taxes were low, Europeans worked more hours per capita than Americans. Then their taxes went up, reducing the incentives to work and increasing the incentives to relax. Over the next decades, Europe saw a nearly 30 percent decline in work hours.
The rich tend to be more sensitive to tax-rate changes because they’ve got advisers who are paid to be. Martin Feldstein, an economics professor at Harvard, looked into tax changes in the 1980s and concluded that raising rates causes people to shift compensations to untaxed fringe benefits and otherwise suppresses their economic activity. A study last year by the economists Michael Keane and Richard Rogerson found that tax rates can have a surprisingly large influence on how much people invest in education, how likely they are to create businesses and which professions they go into.

For the full commentary, see:
DAVID BROOKS. “The Progressive Shift.” The New York Times (Tues., March 19, 2013): A23.
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date March 18, 2013.)

The Keane and Rogerson paper summarized by Brooks is:
Keane, Michael, and Richard Rogerson. “Micro and Macro Labor Supply Elasticities: A Reassessment of Conventional Wisdom.” Journal of Economic Literature 50, no. 2 (June 2012): 464-76.

Non-Paying Nations Send Heavy-Drinking Delegates to United Nations

(p. A20) UNITED NATIONS — When the United Nations began renovating its Manhattan headquarters in 2009, one of the first casualties of the construction was the storied Delegate’s Lounge, where for decades the delicate work of diplomacy was aided by a good stiff drink.
The loss of the bar led to protest from diplomats and their staffs, and a temporary outpost was soon established.
That bar is also now gone, but the thirst for liquor at the United Nations is apparently still strong.
This week, an American diplomat offered what he called a “modest proposal” that he hoped would speed along the United Nations’ notoriously protracted budgetary proceedings. He asked delegates to put a cork in it.
“The negotiation rooms should in future be an inebriation-free zone,” the diplomat, Joseph M. Torsella, said.
. . .
The United States’ plea for sobriety was reported on the Web site of Foreign Policy magazine. The article cited anonymous diplomats saying that the most recent budget negotiations, which concluded in December, featured at least one delegate who became sick from too much alcohol.
. . .
The United States, Japan and western European countries provide the majority of the United Nations’ budget. And many of the dozens of countries that make up the committee that sets the budget have little financial stake in the negotiations, so partaking of alcohol may seem a good way to endure marathon sessions that can last well into the night.

For the full story, see:
MARC SANTORA. “Diplomat Calls for End to Drunkenness During Negotiations at United Nations.” The New York Times (Fri., March 8, 2013): A20.
(Note: the online version of the review has the date March 7, 2013 and has the title “Diplomat Calls for End to Drunkenness During U.N. Negotiations.”)
(Note: ellipses added.)

New York Resisted Roosevelt’s Enforcing “Stupid” Vice Laws

Source of book image: http://media.npr.org/assets/bakertaylor/covers/i/island-of-vice/9780385519724_custom-e38a25fc66f104a049d4d24aa39dbe92d42fbd57-s6-c10.jpg

(p. C9) . . . as Richard Zacks’s excellent “Island of Vice: Theodore Roosevelt’s Doomed Quest to Clean Up Sin-Loving New York” ably shows, while we might like to believe that the stretch from 1970 to 1995 represents the city’s nadir, it was just about business as usual in New York over the centuries.

From its time as a Dutch colonial outpost, the city has always been pretty bad. You’d almost think New Yorkers prefer it that way. Of course, we don’t like fraud, robbery, assault, arson, rape or murder any more than anyone else does. But the deliberate injury of one’s fellow citizen isn’t the only way to break the law. There are also those crimes that fall under the broad category of “vice”: things such as gambling, prostitution, indecent exposure and selling alcohol at a convenient time. Historically, the average New Yorker has not greeted these acts with the same immediate urge to suppress that many of his or her fellow Americans have had. You don’t get a nickname like “The City That Never Sleeps” without having a certain amount of things worth staying up for.
. . .
In the end, Mr. Zacks’s exhaustively researched yet lively story is a classic battle between an irresistible force, Roosevelt’s ego, and an immovable object, the people of New York’s unwillingness to follow laws they thought were stupid. In this case, the object won, and handily. Mr. Zacks’s account of the way the city’s saloonkeepers instantly turned their establishments into hotels to take advantage of a loophole in the law is particularly amusing. Eventually, the police department, not unsympathetic to the Sunday tippler, began finding ways to wriggle out from under the commissioner’s thumb, and beer-friendly Tammany Hall, with the people solidly behind it, began peeling away his allies.

For the full review, see:
DAVID WONDRICH. “BOOKSHELF; Teddy’s Rough Ride.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., March 17, 2012): C9.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date November 30, 2012.)

Book under review:
Zacks, Richard. Island of Vice: Theodore Roosevelt’s Doomed Quest to Clean up Sin-Loving New York. New York: Doubleday, 2012.

Chicago Gun Ban Laws Do Not Stop Chicago Gun Deaths

(p. A1) CHICAGO — Not a single gun shop can be found in this city because they are outlawed. Handguns were banned in Chicago for decades, too, until 2010, when the United States Supreme Court ruled that was going too far, leading city leaders to settle for restrictions some describe as the closest they could get legally to a ban without a ban. Despite a continuing legal fight, Illinois remains the only state in the nation with no provision to let private citizens carry guns in public.
And yet Chicago, a city with no civilian gun ranges and bans on both assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, finds itself laboring to stem a flood of gun violence that contributed to more than 500 homicides last year and at least 40 killings already in 2013, including a fatal shooting of a 15-year-old girl on Tuesday.
To gun rights advocates, the city provides stark evidence that even some of the toughest restrictions fail to make places safer. “The gun laws in Chicago only restrict the law-abiding citizens and they’ve essentially made the citizens prey,” said Richard A. Pearson, executive director of the Illinois State Rifle Association.

For the full story, see:
MONICA DAVEY. “Strict Gun Laws in Chicago Can’t Stem Fatal Shots.” The New York Times (Weds., January 30, 2013): A1 & A18.
(Note: the online version of the story has the date January 29, 2013, and has the slightly different title “Strict Gun Laws in Chicago Can’t Stem Fatal Shots.”)

Most in NYC Oppose Bloomberg’s Nanny State Soda Ban

“Theodore Ogunbiyi-Roche, 10, who is visiting from London, drank a large soda in Times Square . . . ” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. A18) . . . , New Yorkers are cool to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s plan to prohibit sales of large sugary drinks in city restaurants, stadiums and movie theaters, according to a . . . poll by The New York Times.

Six in 10 residents said the mayor’s soda plan was a bad idea, compared with 36 percent who called it a good idea. A majority in every borough was opposed; Bronx and Queens residents were more likely than Manhattanites to say the plan was a bad idea.
. . .
. . . those opposed overwhelmingly cited a sense that Mr. Bloomberg was overreaching with the plan and that consumers should have the freedom to make a personal choice . . .
“The ban is at the point where it is an infringement of civil liberties,” Liz Hare, 43, a scientific researcher in Queens, said in a follow-up interview. “There are many other things that people do that aren’t healthy, so I think it’s a big overreach.”
Bob Barocas, 64, of Queens, put it more bluntly: “This is like the nanny state going off the wall.”

For the full story, see:
MICHAEL M. GRYNBAUM and MARJORIE CONNELLY. “60% in City Oppose Soda Ban, Calling It an Overreach by Bloomberg, Poll Finds.” The New York Times (Thurs., August 23, 2012): A18.
(Note: ellipses in caption and article added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date August 22, 2012, and the title “60% in City Oppose Bloomberg’s Soda Ban, Poll Finds.”)

Google’s Eric Schmidt Saw that “Regulation Prohibits Real Innovation”

(p. A13) Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google, gave a remarkable interview this month to The Washington Post. So remarkable that Post editors preceded the transcript with this disclosure: “He had just come from the dentist. And he had a toothache.”
Perhaps it was the Novocain talking, but Mr. Schmidt has done us a service. He said in public what most technologists will say only in private. Whatever caused him to speak forthrightly about the disconnects between Silicon Valley and Washington, his comments deserve wider attention.
Mr. Schmidt had just given his first congressional testimony. He was called before the Senate Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee to answer allegations that Google is a monopolist, a charge the Federal Trade Commission is also investigating.
“So we get hauled in front of the Congress for developing a product that’s free, that serves a billion people. OK? I mean, I don’t know how to say it any clearer,” Mr. Schmidt told the Post. “It’s not like we raised prices. We could lower prices from free to . . . lower than free? You see what I’m saying?”
. . .
“Regulation prohibits real innovation, because the regulation essentially defines a path to follow,” Mr. Schmidt said. This “by definition has a bias to the current outcome, because it’s a path for the current outcome.”
. . .
Washington is always slow to recognize technological change, which is why in their time IBM and Microsoft were also investigated after competing technologies had emerged.
Mr. Schmidt recounted a dinner in 1995 featuring a talk by Andy Grove, a founder of Intel: “He says, ‘This is easy to understand. High tech runs three times faster than normal businesses. And the government runs three times slower than normal businesses. So we have a nine-times gap.’ All of my experiences are consistent with Andy Grove’s observation.”
Mr. Schmidt explained there was only one way to deal with this nine-times gap, which this column hereby christens “Grove’s Law of Government.” That is “to make sure that the government does not get in the way and slow things down.”
Mr. Schmidt recounted that when Silicon Valley first started playing a large role in the economy in the 1990s, “all of a sudden the politicians showed up. We thought the politicians showed up because they loved us. It’s fair to say they loved us for our money.”
He contrasted innovation in Silicon Valley with innovation in Washington. “Now there are startups in Washington,” he said, “founded by people who were policy makers. . . . They’re very clever people, and they’ve figured out a way in regulation to discriminate, to find a new satellite spectrum or a new frequency or whatever. They immediately hired a whole bunch of lobbyists. They raised some money to do that. And they’re trying to innovate through regulation. So that’s what passes for innovation in Washington.”

For the full commentary, see:
L. GORDON CROVITZ. “INFORMATION AGE; Google Speaks Truth to Power; About the growing regulatory state, even Google’s Eric Schmidt–a big supporter of the Obama administration–now feels the need to tell it like it is.” The Wall Street Journal (Mon., October 24, 2011): A13.
(Note: ellipses between paragraphs added; ellipsis internal to Schmidt quote, in original WSJ commentary.)

The original Eric Schmidt interview with the Washington Post, can be read at:
http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2011-10-01/national/35278181_1_google-chairman-eric-schmidt-regulation-disconnects

Greek Government Buries Olive Oil Entrepreneur in Red Tape

“Fotis Antonopoulos’s struggles to start OliveShop.com have made him a reluctant emblem of thwarted Greek entrepreneurship.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

Vassilis Korkidis, who is quoted below, is (p. A3) “the president of the National Confederation of Hellenic Commerce, a trade association in Athens.”

(p. A1) ATHENS — It was about a year ago that Fotis I. Antonopoulos, a successful Web program designer here, decided he wanted to open an e-business selling olive products.

Luckily, he already had a day job.
It took him 10 months — crisscrossing the city to collect dozens of forms and stamps of approval, including proof that he was up to date on his pension contributions — before he could get started. But even that was not enough. In perhaps the strangest twist of all, his board members were required by the Health Department to submit lung X-rays — and stool samples — since this was a food company.
. . .
With Greece’s economy entering its fourth year of recession, its entrepreneurs are eager to reverse a frightening tide. Last year, at least 68,000 small and medium-size businesses closed in Greece; nearly 135,000 jobs associated with them vanished. Predictions for 2012 are also bleak.
But despite the government’s repeated promises to improve things, the climate for doing business here remains abysmal. In a recent report titled “Greece 10 Years Ahead,” McKinsey & Company described Greece’s economy as “chronically suffering from unfavorable conditions for business.” Start-ups faced immense amounts of red tape, complex administrative and tax systems and procedural disincentives, it said.
. . .
(p. A3) Part of Mr. Antonopoulos’s problem, Mr. Korkidis ventured, was his unwillingness to pay what is routinely referred to here as the “speed tax” — bribes to move things along.
Nor is Mr. Korkidis much of a fan of recent government efforts to improve things. He pointed to a pamphlet produced by the Ministry of Development, which explained a new “one-stop shop” program for new businesses.
“This doesn’t work,” he said. “You have to collect 10 papers first — and then it is one-stop shopping. Ridiculous.”
At 36, Mr. Antonopoulos is an aging computer whiz kid with long hair and an easy smile.
. . .
The worst moment, he said, was when representatives from two agencies came to inspect the shop and disagreed about the legality of a circular staircase. They walked out telling him that he “would have to figure it out.”
“At that point, we actually thought about just going to the U.K. with this,” he said. “One of the inspectors knew about new legislation. The other didn’t. And they just refused to come up with a solution.”
At one point, the company got a huge order from Denmark, he said. But the paperwork for what amounted to a wholesale transaction was so onerous that they decided not to even try to fill the order.

For the full story, see:
SUZANNE DALEY. “A Tale of Greek Enterprise and Olive Oil, Smothered in Red Tape.” The New York Times (Mon., March 19, 2012): A1 & A3.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date March 18, 2012.)

Entrepreneur Mackey Says Whole Foods Drops Prices as Larger Size Creates Economies of Scale

“John Mackey.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. 16) In your new book, “Conscious Capitalism,” you write that Whole Foods sees its customers as its “most important stakeholders” and that the company is obsessed with their happiness. The biggest complaint I hear about Whole Foods is how expensive it is. Why not drop prices to make your customers happier?
People always complain about prices being too high. Whole Foods prices have dropped every year as we get to be larger and we have economies of scale. Also, people are not historically well informed about food prices. We’re only spending about 7 percent of our disposable personal income on food. Fifty years ago, it was nearly 16 percent.
. . .
In 2009, some Whole Foods customers organized boycotts after you wrote an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal expressing opposition to Obama’s health care proposals. Do you wish you hadn’t written it?
No, I don’t. I regret that a lot of people didn’t actually read it and it got taken out of context. President Obama asked for ideas about health care reform, and I put my ideas out there. Whole Foods has a good health care plan. It’s not a solution to America’s health care problems, but it’s part of the solution.
So did you vote for Romney?
I did.
I imagine a certain percentage of Whole Foods customers will also boycott because of this.
I don’t know what to say except that I’m a capitalist, first. There are many things I don’t like about Romney, but more things I don’t like about Obama. This is America, and people disagree on things.

For the full interview, see:
Andrew Goldman, Interviewer. “TALK; The Kale King.” The New York Times Magazine (Sun., January 20, 2013): 16.
(Note: ellipsis added; bold in original, indicating interviewer questions.)
(Note: the online version of the interview has the date January 18, 2013, and has the title “TALK; John Mackey, the Kale King.”)

Mackey’s book is:
Mackey, John, and Rajendra Sisodia. Conscious Capitalism: Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Business. Boston, MA: Harvard Business Review Press, 2013.

Steve Jobs Advised Obama to Reduce Regulations of Business and Union Power in Education

(p. 544) The meeting . . . lasted forty-five minutes, and Jobs did not hold back. “You’re headed for a one-term presidency,” Jobs told Obama at the outset. To prevent that, he said, the administration needed to be a lot more business-friendly. He described how easy it was to build a factory in China, and said that it was almost impossible to do so these days in America, largely because of regulations and unnecessary costs.
Jobs also attacked America’s education system, saying that it was hopelessly antiquated and crippled by union work rules. Until the teachers’ unions were broken, there was almost no hope for education reform. Teachers should be treated as professionals, he said, not as industrial assembly-line workers. Principals should be able to hire and fire them based on how good they were. Schools should be staying open until at least 6 p.m. and be in session eleven months of the year. It was absurd, he added, that American classrooms were still based on teachers standing at a board and using textbooks. All books, learning materials, and assessments should be digital and interactive, tailored to each student and providing feedback in real time.

Source:
Isaacson, Walter. Steve Jobs. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011.
(Note: ellipsis added.)