Steve H. on the Los Angeles ban on new fast food restaurants:

This ban is blatantly racist. Once again, leftists are showing us they think minority members are too stupid to take care of themselves, and because leftists lack the ability to perceive their own faults, they don’t even realize they’re doing it. If a leftist does a thing, it can’t be racist. You have to wonder how far that principle can be pushed. Maybe in a few years, black people and Mexicans in Los Angeles will be required to turn in their driver’s licenses, so they can lose weight by walking. Hey, it would be healthy. And think of the lives that would be saved, because fewer drivers will be on the road, having accidents.

…

Liberals think “the soft racism of lowered expectations” is a canard. They think it’s something conservatives say in order to avoid helping minorities. And regrettably, a small faction of true racist idiots infests the political right, and sometimes their set of hateful, stupid ideas intersects with the well-intended set of ideas of the conservative mainstream. But overall, conservatives are sincere and right when they say the left treats minorities like children or as if they’re slightly retarded.

Quick aside: Steve goes on to point out that fast food restaurants are the ones that serve food that lower income individuals can afford, but there’s another problem — this ban will keep jobs out of the area, too. Maybe they’re not the best jobs, but it’s not like keeping out fast food restaurants will suddenly make a bunch of other jobs spring to life in these areas.

Back on topic, this sort of racism is, in my opinion, more dangerous than the more “traditional” form of racism, because the people engaging in it are, for the most part, honestly trying to help. They just don’t see that their attempts to help are extremely condescending and pretty counterproductive, besides. This form of racism is extraordinarily insidious, and that’s something we need to be extremely careful about.

As I’ve said here many times in the past, I’m a big fan of Dafydd ab Hugh’s Big Lizards blog. Perhaps it’s because I share his cynicism about politicians.

In a post from Sunday, Dafydd writes about Obama’s Wailing Wall prayer and its subsequent release by an Israeli newspaper:

Having read the so-called prayer, I am completely convinced that Obama fully intended for it to be “intercepted” and published… and may even have arranged for it. The “prayer” is impersonal and vague, yet contains the perfect code phrase designed to help Obama with evangelicals; I do not entertain the slightest doubt that he wanted it to be published — and published in a way that makes him out to be the “victim” of a spiteful invasion of his privacy. (In fact, Maariv says that the Obama campaign itself released the prayer to the media before the supposed theft.)

I’m agnostic, and it still infuriates me.

The whole thing is worth a read.

If Obama’s prayer was sincere, then whoever stole and released it should be ashamed. On the other hand, if he went out there with the intent of making it public, he should be ashamed.

And That’s Free As In Beer, Not Speech

In an Op-Ed from yesterday’s Charleston Gazette, Carl F. Shaw argues that land should be free:

Here are some lessons our society has learned: In the 1860s we learned that black humans should not be kept as slave laborers – and we did something about it. In the 1920s we learned that females were entitled to vote and hold public office – and we did something about it. In the 1960s we learned that black citizens still did not have equal rights promised to them a century earlier – we did something about it.

It is time we learned that land should be free of cost, and we should do something about it now. Poor economic conditions and unemployment, outsourcing jobs for lower production costs, are all results of treating land as a commodity. When people can’t find a job it is because a speculator is holding land off the market or waiting for an ideal price.

I have read and re-read this opinion piece, and I honestly can’t make heads or tails of it. I’m not sure why the civil rights movements that are mentioned have anything to do with land being free of cost, and Shaw never explains what links them. I can assume that, because it is almost unthinkable to question these tenets (“Slavery is bad,” “Women should vote,” “Racism is bad”), Shaw mentions them in conjunction with his “free land” ideal not because they are somehow related to that ideal, but because he hopes the association will keep people from thinking about what he’s proposing.

Unfortunately, that didn’t work, and I’ve now spent an entire day trying to figure out exactly what Shaw is proposing (and why he’s proposing it). I’m more confused now than I ever was.

He starts out saying that “[w]e are hearing daily that home prices are falling,” and then insists that, because the raw materials aren’t free and builders don’t work for minimum wage, that home prices cannot be falling. Therefore, he concludes, it is the price of land that is falling. None of this works, logically. Raw materials are not free is not sufficient evidence to indicate that home prices are not falling. Heck, that the price of raw materials hasn’t dropped at all would not be evidence that home prices are falling. The only thing that indicates whether home prices are falling would be whether homes (of approximately equal quality in both structure and location) are cheaper now than they were previously. Shaw never touches on whether that is the case, yet he acts as though he has proven that home prices are not falling.

Then there’s the artificial distinction between “home prices” and “land prices.” Generally speaking, the price of a home and the price of the land it is sitting on are irrevocably entwined, assuming the home exists on the land at the time it is purchased^[a].

Folks, we never complain about low costs, but now that real estate buyers see falling land prices they complain while waiting for it to hit bottom. No sense buying today at $10,000 if the price may fall to $9,000 next month. This is what is happening to the real estate market today. As the cycle reaches bottom and land prices begin inching upward, buyers will again buy land, homes, commercial and industrial property, hoping to beat a higher price later.

I haven’t got any idea what world that Shaw is living in, but I hear people complain about falling prices all the time. One of my irregular commenters, Shinzou, always complains that every time he buys anything, the price of that item drops almost immediately afterward. It’s not that the price he paid was necessarily bad, it’s just that he missed out on a better deal. Is it any wonder that those who are looking to buy real estate, one of the most expensive purchases we can ever make, are complaining because they want to buy, but also want to make sure they get the best deal possible? This is even more to be expected if those buyers are looking to purchase real estate as an investment.

Shaw then moves from illogical to completely incomprehensible. I assume that he’s simply using jargon from his previous career as a real estate appraiser that would make sense to someone, but it seems odd to me that such jargon would find its way into a paper for laypeople without having some sense made out of it:

Now look at the real estate market in another way. Suppose we operated our land system in a fair and just way. Suppose we ran our tax system so that no site rent (the annual price of land) was left over after taxation to be used to capitalize into sale price. If all the rent of land was taxed there could not be any sale price. The land would be free, just like God’s air, rain, snow, sunshine and broadcast spectrum. The real estate market would not need to wait for land prices to turn around and go back up.

If I read this correctly, Shaw means that any value that an owner gets from his/her land would be taxed so that the owner made no profit whatsoever. This would negate the ability of a property owner to make money from his property, which would then… what? Cause him to let people use the land out of the goodness of his heart? I’ve seen what people put up with from tenants, the sort of damage people can (and, almost invariably, will) do to rental property. Trust me when I say that suddenly stopping landlords from obtaining profit from renters will not suddenly make all “rent” free — it will make all property owners absolutely refuse to let anyone use their property (and if they can’t make any profit on it, they sure as heck won’t sell the property, either).

How many people rent land, anyway? One might rent a spot in a campground or trailer park, I assume, but other than that, people pay to rent not the land, but the facilities that are on the land. Yes, the land might add value (I would certainly expect to pay more to rent a house with a five acre lot than I would to rent a house with a half-acre lot), but it is still the facility, not the land, that is being rented. (This gets back into the relationship between land and home prices mentioned above.)

Finally, Shaw gets back to the point I quoted above, that joblessness is caused (apparently solely) by “a speculator holding land off the market or waiting for an ideal price”. He elaborates, but the elaboration doesn’t really mean anything. Shaw seems to assume that the only startup cost for new businesses (or farms?) is the cost of the land that the business will sit on, and that the only reason that anyone is out of work is because they can’t afford the land with wich they would start their own business.

Assuming he’s right (which he’s almost certainly not), Shaw never explores the other consequences of what he is proposing. Everyone who has ever invested in real estate, particularly those who have purchased land sans development, would immediately lose every cent of equity. That would devestate a lot of people, especially those who invested in the land expecting to use it to generate income for their retirement (e.g., by selling off lots of the land).

Combine “free land” with Eminent Domain, and you have a recipe for disaster. Own a house with an acre of land? Why, that acre could be used to generate tax income for the city, and it’s free. Enjoy your check for $0.00; you’ve just been screwed by your local government (with the wholehearted endorsement of the Supreme Court).

Honestly, this opinion piece wouldn’t have bothered me (it’s an absurd idea that falls apart even with even the most basic of scrutiny, which makes it more laughable than anything else), except that the Gazette chose to publish it. Apparently, they need better editors and less sheer partisanship (My theory on how it got published is that it sounds pretty communistic, which appeals to the Gazette’s leftist editors).

1. Also, assuming the home isn’t a mobile home that could easily be moved. [↩]

Mayor Danny Jones, on the week-long shutdown of the Kanawha Boulevard for the 20th Annual Convention of the Chevrolet Nomad Association:

“It’s not a big car show,” Jones said. “It will take [the Boulevard] between Capitol and Court all next week. It’s the first time they’ve ever had a venue like this. I don’t know of a city in the country that will shut down a four-lane highway for a week.“

Emphasis Mine.

One has to wonder if Danny Jones ever considered why other cities don’t shut down one of their biggest roads for an entire week in order to accomodate conventions for obscure cars. This shutdown makes rush-hour traffic absolutely horrendous for anyone who has to get anywhere near the affected blocks, and it doesn’t help that the City of Charleston seems shut down the Boulevard every other week.

Of course, Mayor Jones has proven, time and again, that he doesn’t care what the residents (and workers) of the city of Charleston want or need. If they leave, why he’ll just expand the city limits to keep the population up!

A couple of days ago, my dad called and asked if I was going to a midnight showing of The Dark Knight. I told him that I’d taken today off, but that, no, I wasn’t really planning on going to see it until after my wife got off work.

Fast forward to yesterday. We got home from work, and my wife says that, if I really wanted to, we could go to the midnight showing. It won’t be long before she learns not to make offers like that, but, luckily for me, she’s not quite there yet. So, last night, at 12:01am, we were sitting in a packed movie theater watching The Dark Knight.

Heath Ledger did a better job that I expected with the Joker. While he’s not the manic Joker that I prefer, it was much, much better than Nicholson’s travesty. Ledger’s anarchist Joker pulls no punches, and there’s always a sense that he’s enjoying himself regardless of what’s going on around him (even if “what’s going on” is that Batman is beating him up). He’s laughing or otherwise obviously having fun, even when he’s doing some very, very nasty things. (My one complaint about the audience we had was that there were a couple of teenagers sitting behind us laughing hysterically at the Joker’s antics. He’s having fun, but I really couldn’t see how one could find him funny without being something of a sociopath themselves.)

Overall, I loved the movie, but be warned that it’s relentlessly dark. There really aren’t many bits of levity to break the mood. I am honestly amazed that it managed to keep its PG-13 rating.