Slouching Towards Statism

I've been thinking a lot lately about our globe's two basic forms of governance -- Statist nations that see the people as a means to government's ends and Individualist nations in which government represents and protects the will of the people.

I can find no better illustration of the Statist form than this clip of a Chinese small truck undergoing a 40 mpg front-end crash test. It's just 33 seconds long, so do click it (and excuse the oddly constructed note at the end).


This is undeniable evidence of what happens when production is put into the hands of a Statist government. China's government certainly had access to car safety technology -- it's stolen all sorts of other technology, after all -- but it willfully decided to keep the cost down in order to advance the state's goal of moving goods cheaply in order to expand the economy. (Notice how the goods being carried probably suffered little ill effect -- something that can't be said of the human occupants?)

In America a few years ago, Ford Explorers began to roll over because Ford was recommending too low a tire pressure in order to offset the top-heavy nature of the Explorer's design. Compared to the Chinese truck, this was a less willful act -- executives didn't foresee deaths, but almost 300 died and 700 were injured. (That stat has to be compared to the 12,000 SUV rollover deaths and injuries in other SUVs before any blame can be ascribed specifically to Ford's Explorer team.)

As a result of this, Ford was targeted for lawsuits and the Explorer fell from its perch as the #1 selling SUV to near oblivion.

No stats are available for deaths in the Chinese truck, but obviously if it had been as popular in the US as the Explorer was, and was operated at US highway speeds, its death count would have been spectacularly morbid. But what choice do the citizens of Statist China have? The nation manufactures all their automotive options (and the others are just as bad; see clips here, here, here, here.) And Chinese citizens certainly can't sue their government.

China's Statist mindset was also evident in the recent earthquake, where the collapse of schools and possible collapse of dams is more evidence that the state was more interested in taking care of its business than it was in taking care of its people.

Contrast that to Individualist America. When earthquakes hit or tornadoes threaten, where are we told to evacuate to? Schools. To us, protecting the next generation is our tantamount goal. To China, it is merely to educate them. (We could use a bit more emphasis on education, however ...)

Last week, we helped one of our water district clients win regulatory approval of a 266-million-gallon earth dam reservoir just up-valley from a high school. There wasn't a peep of protest, despite an extensive outreach campaign to inform the public. Why? Because people here have cause to trust our dam construction techniques and our government's watchful control. Why? Because they don't have any experience with dam collapses, since collapses are so rare.

Do you think the Chinese government would have carried out an outreach campaign? Would they give the Chinese people a voice in the decision-making, or would they just slap a shoddy dam wherever they wanted? The weak, threatening dams throughout the earthquake zone give us our answer.

One last example. When the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant failed, thanks to our Individualist state's reams of regulations designed to protect the public no matter the expense, no one was injured. Some radioactive gas was released; it dissipated; that was it.

In Statist Russia, where nuclear power plant technology was developed to speed production of power to feed Soviet industry, not to protect the Soviet citizens, when a failure hit the Chernobyl plant, there weren't the same safeguards:

All the Chernobyl reactors were of a design that the Russians call the RBMK--natural uranium-fueled, water-cooled, graphite-moderated--a design that American physicist and Nobel laureate Hans Bethe has called "fundamentally faulty, having a built-in instability." Because of the instability, an RBMK reactor that loses its coolant can under certain circumstances increase in reactivity and run progressively faster and hotter rather than shut itself down. Nor were the Chernobyl reactors protected by containment structures like those required for U.S. reactors, though they were shielded with heavy concrete covers. ...

No commercial reactor in the United States is designed anything like the RBMK reactor. Cohen summarizes several of the differences:

1. A reactor which is unstable against a loss of water could not be licensed in the United States.

2. A reactor which is unstable against a temperature increase could not be licensed here.

3. A large power reactor without a containment [structure] could not be licensed here. (source)

Such is the nature of radiation that we will never really know how many people were killed by the Soviet Statists. In 2006, the World Health Organization estimated up to 9,000 people died or will die of cancer because of the incident. The International Agency for Research on Cancer, an agency governed by the WHO and 16 member nations, published an estimate of 6,700 to 38,000 in a peer-reviewed journal. Greenpeace came up with 93,000 to 200,000, an overestimation typical of environmental hysteria cultists. (source)

But what of America's nuclear weapons tests in the atmosphere over Nevada and Utah -- were we behaving as a Statist nation? There were obvious strains of Statism in the decision to test bombs there, driven by heightened Statism that occurs during times of external threats to the nation. But there were also two arguments countering Statism in the testing: First, the nation picked the most remote, unpopulated part of the nation for the test, which reflects concern for the individual, and second, we didn't really know what we were messing with -- unlike the Soviets who made a willful decision in the design of Chernobyl.

I could go on: Katrina vs. Myanmar, hot weather deaths in Paris vs. St. Louis, or the poor Chinese school kids who died when the fireworks they were required by the state to manufacture during school exploded. But the case has been made. Putting the government first is bad for the health, welfare and happiness of the people.

And yet, there are factions in the US -- let's call them Democrats -- who want to give more power to the state. They want the state in control of education, health care, what we eat (fat bans in Dem stronghold of NYC), what we hear (the renewed Fairness Doctrine debate), how marriage is to be defined.

Despite myriad examples of what happens when power is taken away from the people, they press on towards greater and greater collectivism. And they're winning. The zenith of conservatism -- the Individualist state -- in the modern era was reached in either the 50s or the 80s depending on your perspective. Since then, America has been sliding over our protests towards collectivist Statism.

There will be no improvement in the short term since all three remaining presidential candidates (Is Hillary still remaining? I haven't checked in the last hour.) are all more Statist than Individualist, and Congress should be firmly in the control of the Statists for at least one more election cycle. I'm a believer in pendulum swings, and I trust America will come up with another Reagan at some point ... but the question is, how much irreversible damage will be done before that occurs?

Thank You, Sputnik!

When Ronald Reagan launched the Star Wars missile defense system initiative, the Soviet Union responded by collapsing.

Thirty years earlier, when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik in 1957, the United States responded by creating DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

What a good deal we got!

DARPA is turning 50 this year, and it's been a productive half-century, as Stephen Barr at WaPo points out today.

If we went no farther than the Internet, DARPA would have been successful enough. Lawrence G. Roberts led a small DARPA team that in 1967 designed the network that evolved into the Internet. He describes it as:

"Putting A and B together and getting Z. Taking obscure things and seeing there is an intersection there."

That doesn't seem like the normal way government agencies do things, but DARPA isn't like other government agencies, which is why it has given us much more -- the fundamental technology behind the computer mouse, the Saturn booster rocket, stealth technology and pilotless drones. On the drawing boards: two-way speech translation systems, artificial limbs controlled by the brain with dexterity and sensation feedback, and who knows what else.

All of which begs the question: How can this government agency be so darned effective when most wallow in bureaucracy, lack of inspiration and waste. There is a reason: DARPA isn't like other government bureaucracies:

Unlike most federal agencies, DARPA operates with little red tape. It has only two management layers, encouraging the rapid flow of ideas and decisions.

About 240 people work at DARPA, and 120 of them are program managers and office directors on appointments of four to six years. The agency does not own or operate labs, but sponsors research carried out by industry and universities.

By rotating technical professionals every few years, DARPA has "a constant freshness of people and energy," [agency director Anthony J.] Tether said. "Everything else we do stems from that."

Small, compact, outsourced, fresh. Imagine what could happen if we DARPAtized all levels of government!

Perhaps they could do so research in that area ... and given the nature of government, by the time DARPA's centennial comes around, nothing will have gotten better.

Fools Who Trust Big Government

In this week's Watcher's Council readings, there's a bright post, Have a Clear Identity, from Hillbilly White Trash on Dems and the GOP that includes this:

With all that division within their ranks why are Democrats so good at keeping their little fleet of ships all sailing in the same direction? It is precisely because the Democrat party is so fractured and fractious that it is so good at keeping order within its own ranks. It is a matter of survival. If they couldn't keep everyone more or less in line the party would fly apart and they would never win an election.

What unites Democrats is a desire for continued increase in the size, scope and power of government at the expense of the individual.

That's a good working definition, although I might simplify it to "faith in government's superiority." As a Christian, I'm used to challenges to prove my faith, and I can dish as well as receive, so what is the Dems' justification of their faith in government in light of stories like this:

SACRAMENTO (Sac Bee) -- California prison administrators and clerks reviewed the file of Sara Jane Olson multiple times since December, failing to catch the miscalculation that led to the premature release of the former 1970s radical, officials confirmed Thursday.

Olson, 61, was paroled March 17, a year before her sentence was to end. She was re-arrested five days later after the error was caught.

We've often heard people jibe the Dems, saying, "Would you trust your health care to the Department of Motor Vehicles?" Let's add to that, "Would you trust your security to the Department of Corrections?"

Traitors At Federal Immigration Service

Calling all leaders! ... Calling any leader at all!

Hello?

Is anyone out there?

No, Emilo Gonzales, head of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, you don't qualify. Go back behind your podium, because there's zero leadership at your agency if you're letting traitors work at your agency while w'ere engaged in Islamofascism's war against us.

A criminal investigations report says several U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services employees are accused of aiding Islamic extremists with identification fraud and of exploiting the visa system for personal gain.

The confidential 2006 USCIS report said that despite the severity of the potential security breaches, most are not investigated "due to lack of resources" in the agency's internal affairs department. (Wash Times)

What is USCIS spending money on that's more important that rooting out treason within its ranks? Could there possibly be a boondoggle or diversity sensitivity training program that could be cut in order to give the internal affairs department the money it needs to track down and prosecute these, I say it again, traitors?

Among the known crimes are these:

• Two District Adjudications Officers allegedly worked with known members of Islamic terror groups to query the DHS database and check on the terrorists' status. The group "was responsible for numerous robberies and used the heist money to fund terrorist activities."
  
  
• Employees, I'll say it again, treasonously shared detailed information on internal security measures with people (terrorists?) outside the agency.
  
  
• A Lebanese citizen (terrorist?) bribed an immigration officer with airline tickets for visa benefits.
  
  
• A USCIS officer in Harlington, Texas, sold immigration documents for $10,000 to as many as 20 people.

Bill Wright, a USCIS spokesman, would not comment to Wash Times about the investigations other than to say the agency "takes all internal allegations seriously."

Right. That's very reassuring, especially since he admitted that some of these investigations have been going on for three years -- and none of the 65 new authorized investigative positions at the agency have been filled.

Is it really impossible for government to act like the people it represents? If there's a terrorist milling about in my kitchen or garage, you'd better believe I'd take care of it -- in considerably less than three years!

Tahoe Residents Seethe At Greenies

Richard Carlson looks out his Tahoe cabin window at the beautiful view knowing that if he sees forest fire smoke below him, he has 10 minutes to clear out before the fire will block his only exit route. Carlson therefore knows a thing or two about managing forests for optimum fire safety. Why?

Behind my home, it's nearly impossible to hike off trail because you have to wade through knee-deep piles of dead branches.

The forest is ready to explode. We have too many trees, but no one dares do anything about it.

It's not a pretty thing, this forest management debate. Lumber company and radical environmentalists have staked out the extreme positions, with the Forest Services, forest residents and mainstream conservationists in between.

Reasonable people know the forest has to be thinned. People educated on the matter know that when the first photographers lugged cameras up the Sierras, the photos they took showed forests remarkably thinner than those today. And environmentalists know they'll always be able to make a buck by railing against loggers.

Against that backdrop, an agreement was struck to allow the sort of environmentally balanced thinning that might have prevented the Tahoe fire. It didn't pan out, says Carlson in an SF Chronicle opinion piece today:

Effective but environmentally safe forest thinning requires compromise between environmentalists and commercial loggers. Unfortunately, the new, more ideological environmental movement refuses such compromise. This refusal is exemplified by the Quincy Library Group.

The group drafted an agreement among Sierra conservationists, industry and political leaders that would have allowed enough controlled commercial thinning of Sierra forests to actually make a dent in the deadly growing forest fuel loads. The agreement was killed by lawsuits from the new, more radical urban environmentalists who value money and ideology above science, homes and human life.

The leaders of such groups as California's chapters of the Sierra Club knew that their urban constituencies could be depended on to contribute to any anti-logging campaign.

Compromise would lose money and support to more-radical groups. Having spent decades creating the image of the evil logger as their favorite fundraiser, the urban environmentalists didn't dare be caught talking to one. Allied as the Sierra Forest Legacy, these organizations have largely stopped effective efforts to deal with the fast-growing fire danger in Sierra forests.

It's not like there hasn't been sufficient time to implement the recommendations of the Quincy Library Group's agreement; it was inked in 1993, and DiFi submitted legislation in 1998. But nothing has happened except more of the insane status quo:

While the lawyers argue, and the environmental fundraisers happily collect their tribute, the forest fuel loads keep growing.

In Tahoe, the situation is exacerbated by the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency (known locally as the Tree Nazis). The agency's rules override fire marshal guidelines and generally make desperately needed tree thinning impossible. Unless you go through an insanely complex, expensive and lengthy permit process, you can't touch a tree that's larger than 6 inches in diameter, even if it's next to your house. And 6- to 12-inch firs are exactly the type of tree that is the greatest fire danger.

It's the same all over, and not just with the fires that preceded in Arizona and elsewhere. The California Coastal Commission forbids the repair or building of sea walls. A farmer in San Bernardino County was arrested for plowing a fire-break around his home because Stevens kangaroo rats might have been disturbed.

One of my clients recently spent $3 million fighting off (successfully) a Center for Biological Diversity lawsuit over air quality. Ironically, the project was able to fully mitigate its air quality impacts for one-sixth that amount, just $500,000, with which they bought new, clean diesel generators to replace dirty generators used by farmers in the area.

The Center didn't care. This client is a major fundraising source for them and like radical green groups everywhere, solutions aren't their goal; power and money is.

If people die and cabins burn because of their goals, so what? The world in their view is better without people and cabins anyway.

Tahoe Burn: Regulatory Nightmare Without End?

The cause of the devastating Lake Tahoe fire, which burned down 200 structures causing hundreds of millions of dollars in damage and who can measure how much heartbreak, has been found.

It is the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency (TRPA), a bi-state land czar bureaucracy dedicated to protecting the clarity of Lake Tahoe at all cost.

Among TRPA's passions is imposing maniacal restrictions on cutting trees because ... follow the logic ... a gone tree means more exposed soil (i.e., the area where the trunk once was), which would mean more sediment would run into the lake. So cut a tree in Tahoe and look at thousands of dollars of TRPA fines, which TRPA uses to find more people to fine.

Nevermind that tree branches shade the ground, limiting ground cover and that tree trunks absorb no groundwater; that's their position and they've stuck to it. Of course, there was this one minor negative side-effect: Homeowners couldn't cut trees near their homes, those trees caught fire, and voila, no more house.

Now that so many trees and houses are gone, rain and snowmelt will have hundreds of bare, disturbed acres like those in the picture, to run off, pummeling Tahoe with silt and ash. Nicely done, TRPA; a shining example of just how stupid environmental bureaucracies can be.

TRPA's executive director, John Singlaub, says the agency does allow trimming around homes, but the message just didn't get out. Well, whose fault is that? The OC Reg reports people aren't buying Singlaub's line ... or his attitude:

"I thought our message was out there better," Singlaub said "I was not expecting this."

Singlaub was less conciliatory during his first explosive encounter with the public at a town hall meeting Monday, when the blaze was still tearing through forests south and west of the local commercial hub of South Lake Tahoe. Many in the crowd of about 1,200 booed and shouted down a defiant Singlaub as he tried to defend the TRPA's policies.

Two days later, when he resurfaced to tour the destruction with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, local reporters and town leaders interrupted the governor's news conference to pepper the TRPA director with questions.

What is TRPA's vaunted new leniency? It allows homeowners to clear pine needles all the way to five feet from their homes. Any more will mean too much erosion, they say, and big trouble. Not all homeowners went along with this rule ... and they were the lucky ones:

"I went around my whole property and took out every single pine needle," said Neil Cohn, 35, pointing to a blackened line where the advancing fire that destroyed eight of his neighbors' homes stopped short of his own. "TRPA came up here last year and gave me a warning but I did it anyway, and I'll keep doing it."

After all this, Singlaub is unbending: preserving the lake's clarity is still job number one for TRPA, he says.

That's absolutely true. Following the fire, TRPA may be talking big about fire protection, but a review of the executive summary of the agency's 2006 Threshold Evaluation, basically an annual report, finds lots of talk about water quality and runoff control, but a search for "fire protection" yielded no results.

My heart goes out to homeowners who lost their homes, not just for their loss, but because they have only entered the nightmare; they're hardly over it. In the years since their homes were built, TRPA has screwed down the regulatory thumbscrews and what was permissible then will not be approved now. And pity the poor soul who attempts to add even one square foot to his home during rebuilding. They will be burned in a firestorm of regulatory paperwork -- and ultimately denied, I'll bet.

I predict something of a range war in the Tahoe area in coming years as residents who love and have protected the land there for years are told by TRPA that their plans for rebuilding just can't be approved. TRPA caused the fire, now they're going to cause the political fire that will follow.

But let's not over-demonize TRPA. It is not that much worse that land czar bureaucracies from sea to shining sea. These agencies have been completely overrun with hardcore, anti-development environmentalists -- Singlaub says humans degrade the environment "just by living here" -- and their agenda is to push us out of the areas they regulate.

The policy train has wrecked in Tahoe. Will the land czars be able to get it back on track, or will be people demand real change? My bet, sadly, is on the land czars.

Warning: Stupid People Driving ... Or Governing

According California DMV, some extremely stupid people are driving on our roads and highways. I have it on good authority -- it's right on the wrapper of my new license plate.

Right next to the "click it or ticket" logo is this:

A safety belt can

• Prevent painful injury
• Save your life

When you buckle up!
Protection is void if your seat belt isn't fastenened at time of impact.

Thank you for that helpful little tip, Mr. Schwarzenegger & Co. Here we thought we could avoid the discomfort of continual seatbelt clickage by simply waiting until we have an accident, then click it shortly after impact. Things are much clearer now.

Does the government really think they serve people this stupid? Or is the government so stupid that it actually thinks warnings like this are necessary?

Methinks the latter.