Nope. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, random global warming people who thought Katrina was Exxon’s fault. But at least it spurred you to buy a hybrid, right?
Right?
Oh. Well, there’s always next year. Unless they’re too expensive, in which case I recommend picketing till Congress lowers the price for you.
[Update 11/30/05: Er, smoke it. Duly corrected. Mental note: don’t blog in a rush.]
Cato VP and fellow Vanderbilt alum David Boaz reprints a classy editorial that takes a moment to give thanks for what we have as a result of living in this country, a much-needed reflection as he and I and many others expend a lot of energy talking about what we don’t have or what we should and shouldn’t have. (Also available here.)
Here’s a short story about a little “Southern” restaurant a few colleagues took me to in D.C. last month. It’s called Georgia Brown’s, and it’s about as Southern as the Hollywood producers who likely bankrolled Gone with the Wind. Is it a decent upscale restaurant for a nice upper mid-priced dining experience? Sure. Is it also a rather haughty example of parody masquerading as reality? Absolutely.
Five telltale signs a restaurant isn’t Southern:
1. Menu items named after regions. Charleston She Crab Soup. Savannah Caesar Salad. Carolina Gumbo. Not the best move if you’re trying to seem authentic rather than a novelty.
2. Here’s the top entree description, straight off their menu: “Southern Fried Chicken Marinated in Buttermilk and served piping hot with Mashed Potatoes, braised Collard Greens, and Pan Gravy $18″
3. One of the cheapest wines on their wine list is a Beringer merlot. Price: $32. ‘Nuff said.
4. Strangely, neither authentic nor novelty fits the description of the service. We had a polite, quality high-end experience, but distinctly un-Southern. No accents, no joviality, lots of bleached white aprons and dessert trays presented with the white cloth on the arm. Ever see an untainted white apron in the South?
5. Check out a photo of the restaurant, courtesy of their website. Again, ‘Nuff said:
Recommendation: great place for a date from the North. Decent place to chucle at how things are named without letting it affect your actual perception of stereotypes or of reality. Not so hot if you’re a Southern boy looking for some down-home cuisine in the city for a change.
Memo to the District: get a Monell’s. Or a Dotson’s. Or a restaurant so deep in the South them internetin’ cityfolk ain’t even found it yet.
Since I’m in a football mood, here’s a great Tennessean season recap of the Commodore roller coaster. It’s a perennial ride, but this year it was definitely more exciting than most!
Oh, and I also enjoyed this sports commentary about the University of Tennessee in the same paper. Summary: when you suspend players for spitting but not for assault, your team might develop a discipline problem.
That’s PC for political correctness, which frequently seems to approach hysterical proportions at my alma mater.
This time it’s shutting down the College Libertarians’ bake sale [via Tom Palmer] to promote legalization of marijuana and advertise the new student club. Apparently the administration was concerned about the possibility that students might think there was marijuana in the brownies.
Just out of curiousity, do you think the administration would be more concerned about the students who oppose the possibility of drug-laced brownies, or the students who would be angry after buying the brownies and finding out the recipe was just Betty Crocker’s?
For the most part I don’t discuss work-related topics on my blog, but occasionally worlds collide. One of the primary services my organization, the Institute for Humane Studies, provides is to alert undergraduate and graduate students and young professionals to various opportunities including scholarships, internships, and career-development activities. In addition, IHS also sponsors a few of its own:
Felix Morley Journalism Competition
In honor of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Felix Morley, the Institute for Humane Studies awards $5,000 in cash prizes to outstanding writers whose work reflects the principles of individual and economic freedoms including the First Amendment, voluntarism, the rule of law, and inalienable individual rights.
The competition is open to young writers (25 years of age or younger as of December 1, 2005) and all full-time students. Articles published July 1, 2004 through December 1, 2005 are eligible for consideration. For more information or to apply online, please visit the contest website at www.TheIHS.org/morley or apply directly at apply.theihs.org.
I’ll be posting these opportunities from time to time. Hope those of you who are eligible will consider applying, or that you’ll pass along to friends you think would be interested.
I’ve gone from high to low about Vanderbilt football this season. I watched them start 4-0 and then lose six straight, including last-minute one score losses to Middle Tennessee (blocked field goal), South Carolina (turnover on downs), and Florida (in overtime). After falling behind 48-14 at home to the likes of Kentucky, then scoring four unanswered touchdowns only to lose narrowly at the end I’d finally written them off. I assumed even a moral victory at then end wouldn’t cheer me up.
I was wrong.
In dramatic fashion, Vanderbilt snapped a 22-game losing streak to Tennessee by mounting a dramatic goal line stand with one second left to defeat the Vols in Knoxville for the first time since 1975. For more glorious celebration:
Vandy Stands Tall on Rocky Top
Vandy Bowls over Vols
Big Orange Red-Faces; Only Three Discuss Loss
Johnson’s Decisions Defended
QB Cutler, Bennett Connect
Vanderbilt Report Card
Tennessee Report Card
Vanderbilt snaps 22-game skid to Vols with late TD pass
Vanderbilt-Tennessee Box Score
Vanderbilt-Tennessee Slideshow
To put it in perspective, the seniors on the team weren’t born the last time Vanderbilt beat Tennessee. It was the second-longest active losing streak to a single team (behind Notre Dame over Navy).
Predictions: Vanderbilt WR Earl Bennett will be SEC Freshman of the Year and QB Jay Cutler will be SEC Player of the Year.
And now, of “infamous” Vanderbilt football streaks only one remains: 23 years since its last bowl eligibility, currently the longest in the nation. And as Vanderbilt fans know, there’s always hope for next year!
[Update 11/25/05: Here’s a few more game articles:
Cutler Relishes Final Drive
Vandy Leaves Vols Battered and Beaten
VU’s Earl Sets SEC Mark
You know, the more people I talk to the more I realize something about this victory. It means a lot, and I mean a lot to Vanderbilt fans to beat UT, but not as much as it means to UT fans to lose to Vanderbilt. Why? Because Vandy fans have spent the last 22 years convincing themselves that they have more than football, while UT fans have spent the last 50 years convincing themselves that little else matters as long as they have football. There’s a moral here involving eggs and a basket….]
Vanderbilt football watching compadre Jay recaps the season so I don’t have to. In short, aspirations turn to dust once more.
Let me just add that, as perenially — no, perpetually — painful as it may be to be a Vandy football fan, at least the precious few of us can take pride in being “true fans”, by which I mean fans that still understand that every weekend has potential for excitement and that don’t abandon their team when it falls out of the national championship picture.
And by the way, Jay Cutler is going to be voted SEC Player of the Year.
In light of the recent oil company hearings by the Senate Energy and Commerce committees regarding the industry’s 62% “windfall” third-quarter profits, I thought it might be nice to include a few meaningful quotes from the hearings and related commentary. I encourage you to think seriously about each one before deciding on its merits:
“Most Americans and most of the polls show that our people have a growing suspicion that the oil companies are taking unfair advantage of the current market conditions to line their coffers with excess profits.”
-Sen. Pete Domenici, R-NM, New York Times
“My constituents, and actually most Americans, think that somebody rigs these prices. That in the process, somebody’s getting ripped off, and they think it’s them.”
-Domenici, Knight-Ridder
“Today’s higher prices are a function of longer-term supply and demand trends and lost energy production during the recent hurricanes.”
-ConocoPhillips CEO James Mulva, New York Times
“[Consumers are] mistaking the size of our earnings for a windfall, not realizing the enormous levels of investment required to achieve those earnings and bring new energy supplies to the market.”
-Mulva, Los Angeles Times
“These are extraordinary times that call for extraordinary measures. We expect oil companies to do their part to help ease the pain American families are feeling from high energy prices.”
-Rep. Dennis Hastert, R-IL, quoted by Walter Williams, Professor of Economics at George Mason University, Townhall.com
“Windfall or supernormal profits are any profits in excess of normal profit and are above and beyond that necessary to keep entrepreneurial resources in their current usage. However, windfall profits are a vital component to a smoothly operating economy. Windfall profits serve as a signal that there are unmet human wants.”
-Walter Williams, Professor of Economics at George Mason University, Townhall.com
“[The no. 1 question asked at my recent town hall meetings was] about you and your profitability. And I must tell you, it’s not terribly fun defending you.”
-Sen. Larry Craig, R-ID, Los Angeles Times
“Taxes that discriminate against specific industries, even ones as popular as the oil industry at the current moment, are a bad idea.”
-Sen John Sununu, R-NH, CNN Money
“The truth is that the American oil companies set the domestic price of fuel based upon what they think they can get away with…. My contention is the oil companies don’t have to double their profits. They can maybe make them two-fifths [40 percent]. Take a little less for the good of the nation.”
-Bill O’Reilly, quoted by Cato Institute Senior Fellow Alan Reynolds, Washington Times
“If prices or crude oil and gasoline really rise and fall at the whim of U.S. petroleum companies, why would oil and gas prices ever fall? Texas crude fell to $12 in February 1999. Was that because U.S. oil companies suddenly became less greedy?”
-Alan Reynolds, Cato Institute Senior Fellow, Washington Times
“In the midst of pain, in the midst of suffering, the public sees headlines about record profits.”
-Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-HI, CNN Money
“Higher prices - as tough as they are to swallow, and they are - help curtail panic buying and the topping off.”
-Deborah Platt Majoras, FTC Chairwoman, New York Times
“Let the American people understand, agriculture is going to get shut down…. We’re not going to turn on one tractor to produce food and fiber for this country under these kind of conditions. We have to do something different.”
-Sen. Conrad Burns, R-MO, New York Times
“True, the total dollar numbers are large, but so are the billions of dollars that petroleum companies have invested to supply energy to U.S. consumers.”
-Shell Oil Co. President John Hofmeister, Los Angeles Times
“To my constituents, today’s hearing is about shared sacrifices in tough times versus oil company greed…. Working people struggle with high gas prices and your sacrifices appear to be nothing.”
-Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-CA, CNN Money
“It is deeply concerning and, frankly, outrageous that oil companies are boasting record-breaking profits…. These large energy companies simply must not unfairly and overwhelmingly benefit at the expense of our nation’s citizens, for whom heating fuel is a basic necessity of life.”
-Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-ME, CNN Money
“We are in line with the average of all U.S. industry…. Our numbers are huge because the scale of our industry is huge. How are these earnings used? We invest to run our global operations, to develop future supply, to advance energy-producing and saving technologies, and to meet our obligations to millions of our shareholders.”
-Exxon Mobil CEO Lee Raymond, New York Times
“History teaches us that punitive measures hastily crafted in response to short-term rises in prices will have unintended consequences and disincentives to investment…. In politics time is measured in increments of two, four and six years…. In the energy industry, time is measured in decades, based on life cycle of our projects.”
-Raymond, CNN Money
“The petroleum industry’s earnings are at historic highs today. But when you look at our earnings per dollar of revenue - a true apples-to-apples comparison - we are in line with the average of all U.S. industries.”
-Raymond, Knight-Ridder
Additional Resources:
The Windfall Profit Tax. Staff Editorial, The New York Times, November 9.
Governments Should Not Influence Oil Prices. George Mason University Economics Professor Russell Roberts, NPR’s Morning Edition, October 31.
So, in making one’s decision about the right thing to do, what criteria should we consider? Desire to help the poor? Understanding of economics? Concern for the environment? Understanding of basic business principles? Intuitive beliefs about perpetual corporate greed? Understanding of corporate incentive structures? Now I’ve made my decision personally, but of course some would call me biased, so I prefer to let you intuit my opinion and let others make up their own minds. And of course, I’m always happy to hear additional thoughts on the matter.
Or at least it should be! Whether or not we should prop up an economic sinkhole is open for discussion, but making one’s case devoid of facts should not be the preferred method. This from my new favorite punching bag, the Times editorial page:
The sudden firing by the Amtrak board of David Gunn, the best president in years of the nation’s only passenger railroad, was a body blow to anybody who cares about long-range passenger trains.
Mr. Gunn has done a masterly job in the last three years of holding down costs without dismantling the railroad. That, apparently, was his problem. Mr. Gunn was trying to save Amtrak, but the Bush administration wants to privatize it, bit by bit….
For Amtrak’s 25 million passengers, this should be a call to arms. Amtrak should be a public transportation trust. It will never be self-sufficient, nor show a conventional profit, any more than the airline industry can fly without federal help. The Bush administration long ago threatened to disassemble Amtrak. Yesterday it began at the executive suite.
Assertion: Bush is firing a good president of an inefficient business that will never ever break even because he wants to privatize it.
Underlying Claims:
1. The AmTrak president was good.
2. Anyone who would fire him doesn’t care about long-range passenger trains.
3. “Privatization” is bad.
4. AmTrak “will never be self-sufficient”.
5. “Public transportation trusts” are necessary and good.
I’m admittedly not the authority on this topic, but I did write a brief something about it a few months ago addressing a few of these issues. In my opinion none of these five claims are categorically true, but the Times seems to think it can make such statements without evidence and expect the world to just nod and approve.
I may have to stop reading the Times editorial page altogether. I thought it would give me some additional insight into the newspaper’s methods or something, but the more editorials I read the more blatantly single-minded and irreverent to logic I think they are and the less respect I have for them.
Florida Gators Vanderbilt Commodores
Gators Quarterback Chris Leak
Chris Leak Overrated
(Just a few key phrases so Google will direct the Gators fans this way….)
Florida quarterback Chris Leak is the most overrated player in the NCAA. He is skilled in exactly three moves: the “fake left pitch right”, the “run scared from the pass rush and dump to the running back”, and the “look for the first read then bolt for the sideline”. In other news, Vanderbilt quarterback Jay Cutler rules. Check out the money quote from the AP game story:
Leak finished 32-of-41 for 257 yards with three touchdowns. He also ran for a career-high 67 yards and two scores — though most of it came on broken-down passing plays and not running the option.
“He had probably the best running game of his career,” [Florida coach Urban] Meyer said. “We did a little more to get him on the edge. He did great for us tonight.”
But Cutler was clearly the better quarterback Saturday night — doing more with less surrounding talent. He finished 28-of-42 with two interceptions.
“Jay Cutler is a big-time quarterback,” Meyer said. “That’s an NFL quarterback.”
So now Vanderbilt is 4-5 with two games remaining and must win out — at home against Kentucky and at Tennessee — to become bowl eligible. If they play like they did against Florida it shouldn’t be a problem, but with Vandy football it never quite works out that way. Hopefully they won’t look past the Wildcats.
And, as usual, we won’t discuss this.
