And now a ranting digression into Canadian politics.

When I moved here in 2001, everybody knew that the government -- more to the point, the entire federal Liberal party -- was corrupt. Everybody knew it. People would joke about Canada being a one-party state, like Mexico or Japan. So why exactly do people care about the particular mechanics of this corruption? It's not like it'll affect the election results.

As far as I can tell, in the next election it's all up to Quebec, as usual. The west doesn't matter, as usual. The Liberal party still has the best hope of forming a government, and Ontario voters have a choice between sending a Liberal (good - ensures patronage for your riding) or a Conservative (bad - ensures your riding is screwed over for generations to come.)

Quebec voters choose between Bloc Quebecois and the Liberals. Every election, Qubec sends enough Liberal MPs to make a majority, but enough Bloc MPs to scare the Liberal government into continuing to steal from Alberta and pay off Quebec. I don't see what exactly in the scandal revelations that has overturned this traditional arrangement.

Even supposing that the Liberals can be unseated, what are we hoping for? A return to the way the country was under Mulroney in the 80's? "Corruption-free" is not an adjective I've heard applied to those years. Or are we hoping for a return to the good old days before WWII and the Canada Health Act? Brother, whatever you're on, you're not sharing.

Most of the libertarians I know are funny, smart, competent people with solid rational arguments for their positions and a passionate commitment to promoting their views through argument. If they have such great advocates, why are libertarians so unsuccessful politically?

I've been thinking about this for a while, and I have a few thoughts about it, which are almost certainly non-orignal. But here goes.

Libertarianism appeals to smart, hardworking, moral people. A libertarian is not merely angry that the state is stealing his money and giving it to other people, he is also indignant that the state steals other peoples' money and gives it to him. If you are OK with statism to the extent that the state steals from others for your benefit, there is no appeal to libertarianism. You can achieve that by having nothing to steal -- e.g., by being poor, stupid, or lazy; or by illegally concealing your wealth, which is at least illegal if not immoral. Clearly there are fewer people who are (smart AND hardworking AND moral) than (stupid OR lazy OR immoral), so there's a smaller pool of potential converts for libertarians to draw from.

Libertarianism is a purely rational political philosophy. As such it appeals only to people who choose to reason about politics, a minority of the electorate. Worse, libertarians disdain irrational people instead of pandering to them as do the two major American political parties. (Imagine someone saying "I'm voting Libertarian because my grandpappy was a Libertarian.")

Finally, Libertarians have some weird blind spots. Who runs a blue guy for U.S. Senate? Didn't anybody understand that this guy was totally unelectable because he was blue? I suppose this is another manifestation of libertarian rationalism: Jones was probably selected by the Libertarian Party of Montana as the objectively best candidate on objective grounds such as experience, speaking ability, etc. -- but nobody in the Libertarian Party was able or willing to say "We can't run this guy because people will laugh at us."

And we are.

Too good to pass up: ASCMC President-elect Marc Bathgate in a press release about the car-vandalism:

"We've taken our second stab in the back at a time when we thought we were secure," Marc Bathgate, president-elect of the Claremont McKenna student government, told the Associated Press.

Nothing deep here, just wanted to remind everyone that one of Hitler's favorite rhetorical devices was to claim that Germany hadn't been defeated in 1918 -- it had been "stabbed in the back" by the "November criminals". Mr. Bathgate must lack a sense of history to so casually throw those words around -- by which I mean I hope he's ignorant of the connection.

Chicano racial supremacy wacko site La Voz De Aztlan descends into Onion-like self-parody: Beware of Zionist-Controlled Paypal

Some people have made an analogy between Professor Dunn's car vandalism and the Reichstag Fire.

This is silly and false. First, there is no comparison in scope: burning down the legislative building which is a national landmark vs. breaking some windows and spraypainting a private car. Enough said.

Second, historians don't even agree that the Nazis set the Reichstag fire. Basically there are three sensible theories: 1) there was a Nazi conspiracy; 2) there was a communist conspiracy; 3) the Reichstag was burned by a lone nut. My ill-considered opinion is that #3 happened. See for example Daniel Pipes's book Conspiracy or this page (that second guy, I don't know his agenda, so caveat lector).

Certainly the Nazis successfully turned the Reichstag fire to their advantage. But they may not have burned it, and there are so many things that they indisputably did do that are more heinous....

Drifting off topic here, but some people like to compare the 9/11 attacks to the Reichstag fire and thus imply 1) that Bush organized the 9/11 attacks and 2) we're heading for dictatorship. Now, since it's not clear that the Nazi government even burned the Reichstag in 1933, I don't know how they get 1). As far as #2 goes, after the Reichstag fire, the Reichstag passed the Reichstag Fire Decree which removed the constitutional protections of habeas corpus, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and the right to be secure against unreasonable searches. In the US, Congress passed the PATRIOT Act. As far as I can tell, the worst provision of that was to allow delayed notification of searches.

Well, maybe it was, but if so it was a crime of self-hatred...

Claremont Police and the FBI have concluded their investigation into the car vandalism and determined that the crime was committed by the victim herself. Here's an article from the Pasadena Star-News, which is free. There's a longer, better article in the LA Times, but registration is required.

This is, sadly, probably the best possible resolution of the case. As I hoped, the culprit was a lone, bigoted asshole. Bonus: it wasn't a student, or even a member of the permanent campus community, as Dunn is merely a visiting prof.

At Claremont McKenna College, somebody vandalized a professor's car, breaking the windows, slashing the tires, and spraypainting racial epithets on it. Here are some pictures of the car.

AP reported this yesterday:

CLAREMONT, Calif. - Students rallied and teachers canceled classes Wednesday at a group of colleges where a rash of hate incidents has been reported in recent months.

[rest of article cut -- last paragraph:]

At Harvey Mudd College, a group of four students set fire to an oversized cross used in an art project in front of a dormitory in January. They were put on probation by the college and required to perform 100 hours of community service.

Emphasis added above. Boy, that's really what all current and past Claremont Colleges students want to hear -- "a rash of hate incidents" at the 5 C's. Maybe I'll start pretending that my degree is from a community college. Thank you also, AP, for making it sound like all four cross-burner idiots were Mudders (they weren't) and for making it sound like they got a slap on the wrist for a hate crime (the administration apparently determined that the students actually didn't know what a burning cross signifies in our culture). Thanks, AP.

Reuters reports today that the FBI is now investigating, and that:

The Federal Bureau of Investigation was working with college police to investigate the vandalism as well as several other incidents that are being reconsidered as possible hate crimes.

My take on this: In four years at Mudd, I never witnessed a single overt act of racism -- by which I mean, not even somebody using a racial epithet in private in the dorms in the evening. I find it hard to believe that a climate of acceptance to racism exists at HMC. I don't know much about the other colleges, but it seems unlikely to me.

In any case, I fervently hope that the person(s) responsible are caught and prosecuted, and for the sake of the 5C community, I hope that the culprit turns out to be a lone, bigoted asshole.

I worry that the students who voluntarily came forward in the "cross-burning" incident in January (see here and herefor my take on that) will have their case re-opened by the FBI, and will be even more severely punished for what I continue to believe was an act of monumental ignorance.

Spalding Gray is dead, an apparent suicide.

I've been busy. Regular blogging will resume eventually, possibly up to my one-post-a-day marathon from the last half of February. I'll leave you with this from the IMAO archives:

On whether there would be a backlash against Jeffords when the Republicans take the majority in the Senate, Fleischer said, "Are you reporters all retarded? Of course we'll seek vengeance. We have a mandate from the people to hand out punishment to all our enemies. He is going to wish he was never elected to public office. Originally, we were going to have Trent Lott beat him up on the floor of the Senate until the president pro tempore would finally yell, "Finish him!" Then Lott would rip Jeffords head out along with his spine and hold it up for a nice photo op and warning to all other potential Judases. Unfortunately, we found out we would need a two-thirds majority in the Senate to do that.

We have a refrigerator. It works fine. It does not go with our stove, though. Here is one that does:

From Elmira Stove Works, only 3 grand.

Somewhere around here I have photos of our stove. I will have to post those too.

UPDATE: Here is the stove:

Joe Drymala, the chief speechwriter who received the e-mail, resigned in protest. `I refused to believe it because I didn't want to,' he said. `To believe that was to believe that Howard Dean was a fraud.'"

I never thought about it this way before, but today I realized that part of the reason health care costs are high in the U.S. is that insurers and doctors both have an incentive to raise them, and these two parties can collude against the others (government, pharma, employers, consumers).

Doctors obviously have a direct incentive to raise rates -- higher rates = more income. Insurers would seem to have an incentive to keep rates low, but if insurance overhead and "reasonable profit" are calculated as a fraction of rates, then insurers are basically getting a commission on their payments to doctors. So insurers have an incentive to pay more, because they then earn more.

It's not a perfect alliance -- HMO's, for example, are where the insurers stab doctors in the back -- but it helps explain high-priced procedures.