Current Events

Celebrating Chevron’s Profits

Warren Gibson Current Events, Economics, Liberty , , , , ,

Recently there was a bad fire at the Chevron refinery in Richmond, CA, as you probably know.  The refinery will be offline for an unknown period, probably months.  Upon reading this, and knowing that the CA government prohibits “imports” of gasoline from other states, I knew the retail price would jump.  I made a mental note to fill up my Thunderbird next morning.  Too late – regular had jumped from $3.85 to $4.01.  This morning it was $4.06, and $4.13 by afternoon.

My reaction?  I’m delighted that the market is doing its job of balancing supply, which has suddenly dropped, with demand.  But predictably, ignorant fools have jumped on this situation, as in this letter in this morning’s San Francisco Chronicle:

Please ask Chevron to explain why the cost of gasoline will go up because of an accident at their plant.

Don’t they have insurance to cover the loss of their equipment? Is Chevron going to recoup the lost income (deducted from the billions of dollars in profit that they make every year) from us?

If the accident was determined to be due to Chevron’s negligence, are they going to compensate all of their neighbors “inconvenienced” by this?

But most of all, please ask all the other oil companies why their costs are going up because of a fire at a Chevron refinery.

If the other companies are not suffering a financial loss from this devastating environmental disaster in the Bay Area, why are prices expected to rise at Exxon-Mobil, Royal Shell Dutch, BP (Arco, lest anyone forget) and any other company I might be too angry to remember at this moment?

I might have to hold my breath until you find out the answers to these questions or until the air clears, whichever comes first. I’ll let you guess which one that will be.

Chevron probably doesn’t carry insurance because they are big enough to be self-insured, and the risks may be too large and uncertain for an insurance company to estimate.  But insurance is irrelevant to retail pricing.  The basic problem is the all too common myth on which this letter is based: that cost determines price.  The myth is that suppliers add up their costs and then tack on as much profit as they think they can get away with.  As anyone who has studied economics should know, supply and demand jointly determine price in a competitive market such as gasoline.  Set your price too high and you lose customers and your profit declines.  Set it too low and your margin declines, and you may sell out your supplies.  The sweet spot varies constantly with shifting supply and, to a lesser extent, shifting demand.

Of course, profits benefit Chevron’s shareholders.  But they are vastly more valuable to Chevron’s customers because they are the driving force (putting aside government interference) that tells Chevron what kind of products we want, where they are offered, how they are delivered, etc.

Of course, government interference is substantial and shouldn’t be set aside.  Politicians worried about rising gas prices could help out by lifting the prohibition on imports.

Hurray for profits!

Aging Hippies Aren’t So Hip

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Links , , , ,

This is not new to anyone under the age of 40, but this New York Times article is a nice nail in the coffin of the pernicious myth that hippies are somehow radical Leftists. It talks about how young people are becoming more fiscally conservative and socially liberal. That is to say, that most people are becoming more libertarian. The NYT doesn’t mention the “l” word, of course, but the libertarian streak is easy to see nonetheless.

Economist Steve Horwitz has a great take on this on his Facebook page. He wrote:

This is good thing. A more socially progressive GOP is a better GOP. Of course these kids are really libertarians and don’t know it. But if you really want some laughs, read the comments. See how old-fart, un-hip leftists are mystified that young people might think leftist ideas have failed and genuinely believe that there are better ways to improve the world. See the hate, see the befuddlement, see the frustration. Try some new ideas folks, maybe the young’uns will then think you’re hip again.

‘Nuff said.

The Champions of Los Angeles.

Socialism and Empire, Not Immigration, Are Destroying America.

Status Quo Biasing and Conformity Signaling.

From the Comments: Islamism versus Islam

Brandon Christensen Comments, Current Events, History , ,

I am continuing a post I wrote earlier in the day on the difference between Islam and Islamism that was spurred by this thoughtful post from a blogger in India by the name of Geekay. You can find his awesome blog here.

Very often these dissident clergymen in the Muslim world have a good point. States in the Muslim world are notoriously brutal (and they get lots of funding from Washington to be so), which is at odds with the general interpretation by Muslims that Islam is a religion of peace and generosity.

I do not think it is pertinent or even useful to get into a debate about whether Islam is a religion of peace and generosity or not, largely because I believe it is and because of the ambiguity I wrote about in Part 1 that is associated with religion in general.

Today’s religious dissenters in the Muslim world, as well as today’s elite in the Muslim world, all wield the religion of Islam to further their agendas. Again, the Jesuits were some of the worst perpetrators of religion-inspired murders in Europe at about the same time that they were responsible for fighting for the rights of Native Americans to live and practice what they wanted freely in the Americas. This is just how religion works. Pretty cool, huh?

The reason why Islam is often blamed for murderous acts is because the murderers often use Islam’s name to justify their actions. Thus in Saudi Arabia the monarchy executes women publicly in the name of Islam to placate their enemies at home. Meanwhile Osama bin Laden, a rival of the Saudis, used Islam to argue that the Saudi monarchy was insufficiently Islamic. Continue reading →

From the Comments: Islam versus Islamism

Brandon Christensen Comments, Current Events, History , ,

I thought I’d pull out the following comment from Geekay, an affable blogger in India, because it gives a good representation of the world’s ignorance about Islam. I use the term ‘ignorance’ in its literal sense, as in not much is known about the subject, rather than as a pejorative jab (I usually save those for the ‘comments’ section!). Geekay’s comment is reproduced unedited and unabridged below:

Should west remain liberal towards Muslims . I think west should use this liberty and equality toward them to seek the same for all in the land controlled by them. After all the minorities whether Islamic or non-islamic are suffering in the land controlled by them. Islam needs reforms like Christianity and it does not seem on the horizon with the kind of violence and intolerance exhibited by the clergy. While most of the Christian world is growing less religious, Muslims are becoming more religious which only means they are falling under the uneducated, non-liberal Ulemas and Maulvis. Can the west induce the Muslim clergy towards education and reform. After all, there has to be a set of human values approved even by Muslim world. The ‘Organization of the Islamic Conference’ (OIC) should be made to declare those values. If the membership of this club does not come directly to US then proxy like Bahrain, Saudi etc could be used. The US has been slippery with condoning the Saudi actions. How long should this behaviour continue from west because Muslims are not forcing their values on them yet.

The first thing that needs to be done when thinking clearly about the Muslim world is to immediately separate religion from state. I know this move seems counter-intuitive because most states in the Muslim world have declared Islam to be the official religion, but stay with me here.

Islam as a religion has nothing to do with today’s violence and upheavals in the Middle East. Continue reading →

The Dutch on Exhibit

Brandon Christensen Culture, Current Events, History, Links , , , , ,

UCLA’s library has an online exhibit (i.e. nothing too fancy) up on some of their archive material from the Dutch Golden Age. I thought I’d pass it along.

Again, there is nothing too fancy or long-winded here, but I do recommend checking them out. I would also highly recommend picking up a good book on Dutch history sometime before the summer ends. Simon Schama’s The Embarrassment of Riches… or Johnathan Israel’s The Dutch Republic… Both are magnificent and far-sighted.

The Dutch republic also plays an important role in American history, as it is the political structure of this small republic that really influenced Madison and other federal framers. Its rebellion from the Spanish monarchy and its rule over Britain cannot be discounted in the historical legacy of the United States either.

The Minimum Wage and Stupid National Public Radio

Jacques Delacroix Current Events, Politics , , , ,

Two things on my mind this Bastille Day 2012. The first is who is more stupid, French leftists or American liberals? I have life-long knowledge of both tribes. At this point, I think French leftists are smarter but more dishonest that their American cousins. In general, there is a certain artlessness about deception in ordinary Americans. The French are often artful; can’t take that away from them.

The second matter on my mind is that constant struggle to avoid using nasty epithets in connection with liberals’ statements. One that keeps coming up is the simple “stupid.” I scrupulously avoid the word on this blog and in my other writings. Yet, there are informational events that sort of self-label with no escape possible. Here is one, below.

It’s shortly after 5 pm on Sunday July 10th 2012. I am in my pick-up truck listening to National Public Radio. (I know the combination is jarring.) There an in-depth discussion of the minimum wage. That’s always interesting. Conservatives make an apparently impeccable theoretical argument against: Minimum wage laws create unemployment among the most vulnerable categories of the work force. Liberals sometimes make sophisticated arguments for the minimum wage. Behind those, however, I always find the usual combination of mindless jeremiads of “sad” and “unfair.” But, it seems to me that the empirical evidence supporting the conservative position against minimum wages is on the thin side. Listening to a relaxed radio show from the Left could be a good way to find out more. Continue reading →

Liberal Authoritarianism: Independence Day, the Sequel

Jacques Delacroix Current Events, Politics , , , ,

This is Part Two of a report on my American Independence Day (Part one is “An Eventful American Independence Night.” It was posted on July 5th 2012.)

The best beach in Santa Cruz was cordoned off for the evening with plastic netting, and illuminated by powerful projectors. There were only a small number of narrow entry points where beach-goers were inspected individually for contraband. I don’t know if anyone was frisked but younger people were intimidated into answering questions they should not have to answer routinely according to my understanding of the Constitution. (I think law enforcement officers may not stop you at all without cause or probable cause.)

There were two kinds of contraband, possibly three. The first was obviously alcohol. Alcohol is outlawed on that beach at all times. I regret to admit that I think it’s a good policy. In the days before the prohibition, I had the feeling that the same beach was more dangerous to children. The “maybe” contraband would be weapons although I don’t understand by what authority a quasi-municipality, the harbor, and a county could jointly or separately restrict the citizens’ right to bear arms. Incredibly, it being the Fourth of July, Independence Day, the second kind of contraband was… fireworks.

Local government entities routinely ban fireworks for the Fourth of July. They ban fireworks in the towns were many houses are made of wood. They ban fireworks in brush and forest areas, reasonably enough. They also ban fireworks in the sand and on the water. Public safety specialists in the Santa Cruz area apparently believe that sand can burn and that the sea can go up in flames. Note that even the most fanatical local greenie will no affirm that the local seawater is so polluted that it will catch fire. (In fact, it ‘s not polluted at all, except very segmentally and only by concentrations of seabird shit. Bird dropping being natural, greenies should love them and not fear breathing them while swimming or swallowing them accidentally. But I digress in the most disgustingly self-indulgent manner!)

The local prohibition of fireworks makes me wonder how thousands of French villages, many quite a bit smaller than Santa Cruz, manage to offer a beautiful, complex fireworks to their citizens on Bastille Day, year after year. It makes me wonder why France has not yet been burned down to the tree roots and French beaches sand melted into glass. Of course, the French often have their fire department take charge of fireworks, even volunteer fire department. The system seems to work for everyone.

Someone will object that involving fire departments would cost money and that this is not a good time given that so many local entities are in dire financial straights. I don’t know about that. They did not rely on that obvious situation when they thought, and we thought, they were rich. And I don’t believe paying locally employed law enforcement officers time and half or more is economical. That’s not counting the private security employees hired for the occasion of this every labor-intensive endeavor. Why does the uncharitable thought cross my mind that providing overtime for public employees is one of the motivation behind the fireworks ban, possibly not a conscious one?

Later in the evening, leaving the scene in my truck was like moving across a city under martial law. There were law enforcement officers in the fog under the street lights at every crossroad directing traffic into unnatural patterns. One sent me into an eternal loop I could only escape by cheating. The police occupation continued much after the crowds had left the area.

A harbor guy I won’t name because it would be bad for this career confided to me that the real issue occasioning this vast deployment of armed force was concerns with possible mass rioting. I know a little the guy who said this. He strikes me as a reasonable person. He was not putting me on. This raises the question: Who would riot?

Santa Cruz is Silicon Valley’s beach town. Directly as my informer stopped talking I conceive visions of hordes of rowdy India-born hoodlums descending on my city, their pocket protectors bristling with non-pens pens of unknown usage. I could just see them in my mind’s eye sowing wi-fi havoc on our rudimentary 2010 !phones.

Or, maybe, just maybe, political correctness being what it is in this left-liberal region, this bastion of 1970s political culture, another fear underlaid the ban and the security measures. I don’t know that what came to my mind is true. It may just be speculation. Is it possible that the local authorities are afraid that the gangs from nearby towns such as Watsonville and Salinas would seize the opportunity of lose revelry to transform the beaches into battlefield where to continue their deadly wars ? Is it possible the same local authorities don’t have the internal fortitude to name the object of their fears? The problem is that upward of 99% of violent gang members seem to have Spanish surnames. Could it be that stating that they, the authorities close the beaches to contain gangs would be considered the sin of sins, racial profiling?

PS I like Santa Cruz Harbor a great deal. It’s this extreme rarity: a public entity with quasi-municipal powers that does not rely on taxes. It’s long overdue for my complimentary essay.

An Eventful American Independence Night

Jacques Delacroix Current Events , , , , ,

Yesterday night, July fourth, American Independence Day, around 8:30 pm, I was out of the Santa Cruz harbor in my humble and felicitously stable 26-foot boat. With me, an immigrant, were three immigrants and one of their offspring plus one college-educated Oakie. (Oakies who can’t find a job raising beagles and who are too lazy to trim trees will go to college, contrary to widespread opinion.) The immigrant offspring is only three and we were offshore trying to catch as many outlawed fireworks as we could for her. All the immigrants were legal but, for two of them, it had not always been so. I don’t know the third immigrant well enough to ask him.

We were meandering slowly when one of us spotted an overturned kayak in the distance. There were two people in the water trying in vain to get back on. I hurried there slowly, as in the books. My mostly inexperienced crew did a great, calm job of retrieving the kayakers and even their kayak. The Oakie did a stellar job although his proximate ancestors got no closer to the water than when noodling catfish. All the retrieved kayak gear seemed to me fairly new and expensive. One of the kayakers, a woman, obstinately tried to recover all her equipment from the cold water. To my experienced free diver’s eyes and ears, she was showing the first signs of delirious disorientation from cold exposure. Nevertheless, we got both of them aboard as well as most of their stuff. Continue reading →

Chicken Fascism

Warren Gibson Culture, Current Events, Law, Liberty, Politics , , , , ,

If anyone hadn’t yet gotten the message, the flap over Chick-fil-A ought to make it crystal clear that contemporary “progressives” are fascists, plain and simple.

The issue, of course, is the CEO’s statement in opposition to gay marriage, which has prompted a backlash across the country.  San Francisco’s mayor tweeted “Very disappointed #ChickFilA doesn’t share San Francisco’s values & strong commitment to equality for everyone” followed by “Closest #ChickFilA to San Francisco is 40 miles away & I strongly recommend that they not try to come any closer.”

Wow. It wouldn’t be much of a stretch to substitute “Closest Jews are 40 miles away and I strongly recommend they not try to come any closer.”  Mayor Lee would have fit right into 1930’s Nazi Germany.

The proper response to those who take offense at the CEO’s statement is a boycott, which just might work if Chick-fil-A were to set up shop in San Francisco.  It’s a totally different story when a mayor, backed by the armed might of the police, issues veiled threats against people who hold unpopular views.  This is a huge demonstration of our descent into fascism, right in front of our eyes.

By the way, do I recall correctly that the majority of California voters in 2008 approved Proposition 8 which banned gay marriage?

 

Romney and “Defense”

Warren Gibson Current Events, Politics , , , , ,

“If you don’t want America to be the strongest nation in the world, I’m not your President.”  Thus spake candidate Romney recently.  Well, I don’t and he’s not.

Sure, you could interpret “strongest” to mean most prosperous, fairest, etc.  But we all know darn well what Mitt, who is pals with the Zionist militant Netanyahu, had in mind: military might.

Of all the urgently needed reforms in this country, I submit that dismantling the empire is #1.  It is bankrupting us, generating enemies for us, and turning our homeland into a police state.

Yes, I said empire.  Depending on how you count, there are as many as 737 US military bases scattered across the globe, about 38 of which are medium- to large sized.  The number of military and other government personnel involved plus private contractors runs into the millions.  The CIA is hated all over the world and for good reasons.  And as Brandon Christensen pointed out, the US defense umbrella weakens incentives for the Europeans, Japanese, et. al., to take care of themselves.

Obama’s record on these matters is mixed.  The good news: the Iraq war has ended (for the present; keep your fingers crossed), Afghanistan is winding down, and cuts in the “defense” budget are coming.  On the other side of the ledger, there have been ominous buildups in Australia and Central Africa.  On the home front, the police state is escalating and the spiral toward bankruptcy is accelerating.  A pretty awful report card in all, yet Romney could make it worse.

No, I haven’t lost my senses.  I will not vote for Obama, who I believe to be hell-bent for fascist dictatorship, in consequence if not by conscious design.  If you forced me to choose between him and Romney I would cross my arms and refuse to choose.  I’m voting for Gary Johnson, who has called for a 43% cut in “defense” spending.

Guns and Truth

Jacques Delacroix Current Events, Law, Liberty, Politics , , , , , , ,

I have stayed away from this blog too long. I wasn’t cruising the South Pacific on my McGregor 26, as you might expect. I was just editing my memoirs; I was trying to be thorough. (It’s called: “I Used to Be French: An Immature Autobiography.” There are excerpts of it on this blog.)

On my last radio show, I made the subject of gun control come up. I did it because I had heard one of my colleagues, a liberal talk-show host on the same station make a statement that sounded bogus to me. (The station is KSCO A.M. In Santa Cruz; it’s available on-line. My show is called “Facts Matter.” It’s every Sunday 11a.m. – 1p.m.)

The statement that caught my attention was this:

For every time a gun is used in legitimate self-defense, a gun is used nineteen times for illegitimate or illegal purposes.

The figure was just too pat. It was calculated to be remembered by regular folks who are assumed by the Left to have no head for numbers. It sounded like pure propaganda. I thought it might also be trivially true, correct but without any meaning.

I called the liberal host during his show and challenged him to produce a source. He could not. We had eleven email exchanges. The other guy says he gave me the references. I say he did not.

If you insist on you shoring up your argument with figures – a good thing- you had better be prepared to explain where they come from. I think the Left is forever quoting imaginary numbers and numbers they misinterpret. Some just cheat and make up facts. Others are just conveniently loose with numbers, making mistakes always in the same direction.  Continue reading →

My Thoughts on the Aurora Shooting

Brandon Christensen Current Events

I don’t have much to say, only that we need much stricter gun control laws now. This was the last straw. Also, more people die on our highways than anywhere else. So we should get rid of all of our roads too. Or at least restrict access to people who know how to use them properly: the police and the military, of course. And, you’ll notice that the police and the military are increasingly hard to differentiate these days. Bin Laden may be dead, but he was always thinking about the Long Game.

So, now would be a good time to politicize a shooting. I am not complaining. I’d rather hear all sides of a story than get my information from a single source. The Huffington Post politicizes events better than anybody else. They just came out with a story on a $2 million tab for one of the moviegoers who is still hospitalized. Thanks to this story, the young man won’t have trouble paying his bills (Americans are the most generous people on the planet, despite our excessive tax burdens).

Europe has had its fair share of shootings, too. I am not speaking just of the recent shooting in Norway. Germany, France, Britain, and Switzerland have all had to deal with such events. Some of these states have stricter gun control laws than we do. Some of them don’t. Oftentimes there is mixing and matching. Some states have restrictions on pistols. Others on high-powered rifles. Some have bans on assault weapons. Crazy people still find ways to get guns and shoot people, though. Always have, always will.

So the Left (and the neoconservatives still pretending to be on the Right) demands stricter gun control laws. They don’t really care if such laws are effective or not. They only care about telling others what to do.

Italy and National Debt and Everyone Else

Jacques Delacroix Current Events, Economics, Politics , , , , ,

I have been inactive. Some catching up to do. I will go straight to the Italian situation because I don’t see it addressed in the media with anything resembling insight based on good information. I am it by default.

It’s human nature I suppose to want simple solutions to complex problems and easy solutions to hard problems. Italy is out of the swamp and therefore, the Euro is saved and therefore, the sterco is not going to hit the fan on this side of the Atlantic. Reason: Old bad boy Silvio Berlusconi resigned. Not much analysis, not much going below the surface by the American press. I have to do their elementary work for them.

First, I suspect there is a monstrous confusion in the minds of many in the media between the accounts of Italy, the state, the Italian republic on the one hand, and the figures pertaining to the Italian economy, on the other hand. The Italian economy comprises a few highly visible major corporations such as Fiat and myriads of small businesses.

The Italian Republic is in debt. The Italian economy is doing well. It’s on the healthy side of economies of developed countries. It’s a lot better than Japan’s for instance. It’s also true that, as elsewhere in Europe, the budget of the state is large relative to the national economy. My bet is that it is smaller than say, in France, or in Sweden, or even in Germany, because the black economy in Italy is so large. The Italian government is just not able to get its grubby little hands on much of what’s generated within Italy. Nevertheless, it’s true that the government budget and the private sector economy influence each other in Italy, as they do elsewhere. That’s not excuse to confuse the one with the other. My wife and I influence each other. It does no mean that we are one and the same. (For one thing, she is both attractive and intelligent.)

Berlusconi did not accumulate the large sovereign debt of the Italian Republic. The debt goes back a long way, some say to the aftermath of WWII. Successive governments just left it alone or they contributed to it. Continue reading →

Elites and Housing Segregation: What Gives?

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Liberty, Links , , , ,

Virginia Postrel has a provocative post on How Elites Built America’s Economic Wall up at Bloomberg (ht Wilson Mixon). The gist of the post is summed up as follows:

Housing prices have always been steeper in high-income places, but the difference is much greater than it used to be […] This segregation has social and political consequences, as it shapes perceptions — and misperceptions — of one’s fellow citizens and “normal” American life. It also has direct and indirect economic effects. “It’s a definite productivity loss,” Shoag says. “If there weren’t restrictions and you could build everywhere, it would be productive for people to move. You do make more as a waiter in LA than you do in Ohio. Preventing people from having that opportunity to move to these high-income places, making it so expensive to live there, is a loss.” That’s true not only for less-educated workers but for lower earners of all sorts, including the artists and writers who traditionally made places like New York, Los Angeles and Santa Fe cultural centers.

This excerpt gets a high place for my Obvious Statement of the Year Award, but are elites listening? Government regulations hurt workers and drive out competition. This is a given, but I have some questions I thought readers could help me answer.

My questions are both broad and messy: Continue reading →

Rights of “Occupy” Crowd Violated

Jacques Delacroix Current Events , ,

The First Amendment specifies that “Congress” shall make no law interfering with the right of citizens “peaceably to assemble.” The Bill of Rights of the State of New York contains no such provision. I have no legal training but I deplore admitting that it sounds to me as if the city police of New York faces no constitutional impediment when it orders the “Occupy” movement to stop camping on that private park where they have been for weeks.

I deplore this reading of the law because I believe, by instinct, and possibly by a common misreading of the Constitution, that the right of all and any Americans to assemble is central, absolute and all too often stepped on by local authorities and by petty tyrants. All too often, I see locally or, indirectly, everywhere through the national press, the nuisances crowds create used to interfere radically with what I take to be the right of assembly.

Whenever this happens, it disturbs me that many of my fellow conservatives seem to buy the authorities’ reasoning. Here, locally, in Santa Cruz, the reasons local power gives to begin dismantling the “Occupy” encampment are fire risk and public health. The way I understand it, this does not make moral sense to me. I don’t like the “Occupy” crowd, I have expressed why in previous postings.

But my dislikes have nothing to do with my understanding of the guarantees under which we live. Or they should have nothing to do with this understanding. Continue reading →