Adjusting My Position on Inheritance Taxes

Inheritance taxes are one area I've never been particularly libertarian or right-wing on.

It has always bothered me that some children are born with every advantage while others basically start out homeless, and a confiscatory inheritance tax goes a long way towards leveling that playing field. And the Paris Hiltons of the world really undermine the argument that with inheritance comes some enhanced ability (presumably from the environment they were raised in) to manage that wealth better than someone else could.

However, a random Slashdot comment has shown me the light.

Inheritance tax like many other ideas has merit to it, but when implemented is not actually a good idea. I do not stand to inherit much in the scheme of things, but would be pissed if the government took it away. I do chores and general upkeep at my parents house. I save them money and keep the house valuable.

What I got out of this comment is that inheritance is why people die with anything of value. If you have no control over what happens to your possessions when you die, why would you not just burn them all for heating? If your house will go to the government after your death, your kids have no reason to maintain it, and every funeral will have to be accompanied by the condemning of the decrepit primary residence.

It is the chain of ownership that provides the incentive for well maintained property. The higher the inheritance taxes, the closer we are to the Tragedy of the Commons.

Chris Buckley on Admiral Dennis Blair

Chris Buckley has a funny story up about Admiral Dennis Blair, who is apparently likely to be Obama's Director of National Intelligence.

Then, two days later, the Good Lord, having heard my whingeing, took pity upon and delivered Commander Blair unto me. It happened in this way.

He gave me back the draft of speech number two. I went through it, page by page, and then found it had two extra pages. He had accidentally paper-clipped something to the bottom of my draft. What was this? I read. My eyes widened. My jaw dropped. This was no boring, bureaucratic jibber-jabber. Au contraire—it was a TOP SECRET/CODEWORD document of sizzling import. My little hands practically melted, just holding it.

Emphasis on the funny - I'm not suggesting that Blair is poor choice because of this.

The allegation that Blair worked against then-President Clinton's foreign policy from the inside is a bit more concerning...

Admiral Blair at no point told Wiranto to stop the militia operation, going the other way by inviting him to be his personal guest in Hawaii. Blair told Wiranto that the United States would initiate this new riot-control training for the Indonesian armed forces. This was quite significant, because it would be the first new US training program for the Indonesian military since 1992. Although State Department officials had been assured in writing that only police and no soldiers would be part of this training, Blair told Wiranto that, yes, soldiers could be included. So although Blair was sent in with the mission of telling Wiranto to shut the militias down, he did the opposite.

Good Customer Service? Priceless.

After having my MasterCard declined today with a particularly unhelpful message ("05-481" NOT APPROVED), I tried to call up and find out what is going on.

The only positive part of that experience was the initial "the wait is longer than 20 minutes" warning. OK, leave it on speakerphone and do something else.

It turns out that "longer than 20 minutes" is code for "we are screwed and would rather waste your time than admit how long the wait really is". At no point did they provide updates as to how long a wait was remaining, or even a general network status type message so I would know if the problem was likely not isolated to my card.

So here I am with a possibly non-functional credit card and over half an hour of my life wasted so far. Thanks MasterCard.

How Not to Encourage Old Growth Trees

Laws protecting things on private property from the owners of said property are typically misguided.

The strategy has become wearyingly familiar to preservationists. A property owner — in this case Sylgar Properties, which was under contract to sell the site to Related — is notified by the landmarks commission that its building or the neighborhood is being considered for landmark status. The owner then rushes to obtain a demolition or stripping permit from the city’s Department of Buildings so that notable qualities can be removed, rendering the structure unworthy of protection. . . .

My local example of this effect is a bylaw protecting old trees. The intent of the law is to stop anyone from cutting down old trees (over 30 centimeters in diameter), presumably to give the city some character.

In practice, there are two results:

1. Property owners are careful to never let a tree reach that size before cutting it down.
2. There is apparently a booming business for arborists who can always find some reason that a tree is unhealthy or a menace or otherwise not worth protecting.

Presidential Pardons

Like, what's up with that?

On the one hand, I like that miscarriages of justice can be easily overturned, and I don't trust government agencies very much to begin with. On the other hand, the pardons that do get granted are all stupid, offensive, or totally sleazy.

One of Bush Jr's recent beauties: Obie Gene Helton of Rossville, Ga., whose offense was unauthorized acquisition of food stamps.

Send in your parking tickets now! Only a few weeks left to get your presidential pardon!

Seriously, if I was President I would have staff actively looking for people currently in jail that were convicted based on BS evidence. And I would at least have the decency to publish a paragraph to go with each pardon, explaining why I thought it was justified.

Sheesh.

BC Ferries Sinks Another... Government?

It's looking like the replacements for the "Fast Cats" that sunk the NDP might be an unmitigated disaster.

One day last week, 18 fully loaded gravel trucks rolled onto the vehicle deck of B.C.'s newest ferry, the last of the Super C-class vessels to arrive, the Coastal Celebration. In an unusual test, engineers were filling the ship to its maximum to see if they could sink it far enough to get the propellers deep enough into the water to reduce the noise and vibration it makes when it's running.

Asked about the gravel trucks, Marshall wrote, "They wanted to simulate normal operating conditions." She did not respond to further questions about whether or not the full load helped.

Cavitation can cause a number of problems. According to three naval architects and marine engineers interviewed for background, cavitation can cause vibrations, noise and a loss of thrust. That loss of thrust can lead to higher fuel consumption, as appears to be happening with the Coastal Renaissance. It can also do long-term damage to a ship, leading to a pitting or erosion of the propeller, further reducing efficiency.

I don't suspect that any amount of privatization will insulate the powers that be from another ferry fiasco, at least not within a few decades of a full sale of the BC Ferries corporation. Perhaps the BC Liberals will get off easier than the NDP because of the pattern developing?

I can't imagine who is still willing to sign off on these giant R&D projects. Why not just build a ferry based on working designs? Why not get more smaller ferries and actually have some redundancy? Crazy.

The Golden Compass is Incomprehensible

The Golden Compass might be worse than Eragon. I didn't think it was possible. They share many of the same deep and terrible flaws.

You have been warned.

Heathens Undermining Christmas

Tony's comment perfectly captures the essence of a post I've been planning to write for a long time.

I think that Christians should be more concerned about the gross commercialization and paganization of their holiday - and that started a long time before certain people started pushing to stop using the word “Christmas”. If anything, shifting the public name to “holidays” or (less religiously) “season” helps Christians to retrench and re-establish a more meaningful celebration of the birth of their saviour within their own community … Why would those pushing the non-Christian line stop now when they can remove even the name from institutional memory?

Although I had never considered the benefit to anti-Christians of diluting Christmas, it really does seem like both sides are taking positions contrary to their actual goals.

Personally, I have stuck with "Merry Christmas" for two reasons:

1. I like the implicit nod to the people that had so much influence on Western life today, something I appreciate very much.
2. It seems likely to offend all the right people. Not exactly a kind holiday sentiment, no, but here we are.
   

Sports Parents

After attending my first soccer game (my cousin's junior league), I think I finally understand why parents make asses of themselves screaming at the kids, the ref, the coach, and everybody else.

It is brutally hard to silently watch mistakes being made that are clearly going to cost your team. For the love of God, stop passing and make the shot!!!

Luckily I am wholly ignorant of the rules of soccer, so I didn't see all the mistakes the ref was allegedly making.

The whole thing was surprisingly engaging - and frustrating.

How Not to Make a Point

A recent comment on my municipal election endorsements post (which has turned out to be quite the search engine fodder - not much coverage otherwise I guess) has inspired to me to discuss effective communication. I'm sad that I won't be bothering to respond to the comment, in spite of the fact it looks like the author invested some real time writing a coherent post (he gets a point for that).

So here is some advice to commenters that would like a response from me.

"You Are Wrong" Is Not Constructive
Asserting that my opinions are wrong without providing reasons is not much of a basis for a discussion. A statement as to why you believe I am wrong would at least give us something to talk about. (The commenter in question isn't too bad in this regard - there are points of substance behind at least one of his three core complaints.)

Narrow Your Focus
OK, so we disagree on everything. Please don't try to address every issue at once. I really don't like writing rambling responses, and an unfocused critique puts the burden on me to tease out one high value thread to continue with.

"I Hate You" Makes Me Dismissive
An excerpt, to demonstrate my point.

Let me guess: you voted Conservative a month ago and you would have liked for the Republicans to continue their reign of terror with John McCain?

I interpret this to mean the author personally dislikes anyone who votes Conservative in Canada, or Republican in the US. That's roughly 40% of Canadians, and 45% of Americans. How can one go through life hating that many people that you don't know? That probably isn't really the case for this author, but I only have his written words/rhetoric to go by.

Movie Review: 30 Days of Night

30 Days of Night is a solid vampire flick.

It's light on charming prettyboys and lacks an elaborate backstory, and instead focuses on the eating of the pitiful humans. Something about the whole "cut off from civilization" thing made it very effective.

And it gave me nightmares, which is extremely unusual.

If We Lose This Election...

Some of the best parts of US elections are the threats to emigrate if the Democratic candidate loses. Not that Alec Baldwin ever leaves...

With the old stock of countries like the UK and Germany leaving their own homelands at a good clip (OK, those are some ancient stories - I've been planning to write about this for a long while), one wonders where you would go if you seriously wanted to leave the US.

Anthonyology took a stab at this recently, from the hypothetical perspective of a conservative wishing to emigrate to somewhere with more economic freedom than the US. Your choices are limited...

My initial intuition is verified by this list - according to the Heritage Foundation, there aren’t many countries in the world that are more economically free than the U.S. is (now).

Here are the top 15:

Hong Kong - 90.3
Singapore - 87.4
Ireland - 82.4
Australia - 82.0
U.S. - 80.6
New Zealand - 80.2
Canada - 80.2
Chile - 79.8
Switzerland - 79.7
U.K. - 79.5
Denmark - 79.2
Estonia - 77.8
Netherlands - 76.8
Iceland - 76.5
Luxembourg - 75.2

Over the Top Media Bias

Normally I let this stuff slide, but this was too funny to pass up.

Europe's markets take profits on Obama win. When, precisely, does an editor decide that markets are "taking profits" rather than "tanking"?

The Constitution as a Weapon Against the Judicial System

Everyone is so shocked that liberal California passed an anti-gay marriage constitutional amendment (or maybe not, depending on the court challenge to it). While there are no doubt people fundamentally opposed to the idea of gay marriage, a fair bit of the hostile reaction (rightfully) comes from the path taken through the justice system to get there.

People need to understand what it means for the justice system to make these kinds of decrees. If all laws that discriminate in any way are unconstitutional, there are no laws left. If Equal Protection constitutional clauses mean gay marriage cannot be made illegal, good luck with progressive taxation, welfare programs, etc.

Predictions for the Obama Presidency

Nothing earth-shattering... just trying to set some realistic benchmarks.

I predict that by the end of Obama's presidency (four years or eight):

• There will still be US soldiers in Iraq
• American energy consumption habits will be virtually unchanged

Anyone else have any thoughts?