The Washington Post has reported that a new report compiled by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative division of Congress, throws another stone at the rosy picture the White House has been painting of the surge in Iraq. The official report will be delivered to Congress on Tuesday of next week. However, the advanced copy obtained by the Washington Post indicates the GAO has found failure across the board with respect to both military and political objectives.

Iraq has failed to meet all but three of 18 congressionally mandated benchmarks for political and military progress, according to a draft of a Government Accountability Office report. The document questions whether some aspects of a more positive assessment by the White House last month adequately reflected the range of views the GAO found within the administration.

Despite positive reports from the White House that have been echoed by Gen. Petraeus, the GAO has found that attacks on civilians has remained generally the same in the past sixth months. Additionally, the number of Iraqi army units capable of independent action decreased from 10 in March to six last month. A July report from the White House noted there had been a “slight” decline with the Iraqi units, though it did not mention the minimal drop had actually been one of 40 percent.

“Overall,” the report concludes, “key legislation has not been passed, violence remains high, and it is unclear whether the Iraqi government will spend $10 billion in reconstruction funds,” as promised. While it makes no policy recommendations, the draft suggests that future administration assessments “would be more useful” if they backed up their judgments with more details and “provided data on broader measures of violence from all relevant U.S. agencies.”

The conflicting reports from the White House and other U.S. agencies casts a dubious light on what can actually be believed in the greatly anticipated Sept. 15 report.

From US Libertarian Party

Tags: Libertarian, Politics, Liberty, Freedom

Some people, even quite inteliigent people who have magazine columns and publish books even, haven’t quite grasped this idea that the value of something is what someone will pay for it. So perhaps a note to fashion writers? If you think that luxury dress isn’t worth it, why not, umm, not buy it?

There are areas of the economy where we’d happily sacrifice a little efficiency: in the administration of justice perhaps? Grinding small is the idea, not quickly.

Certain economic ideas, even such things as comparative advantage, for all their truth, can make human relationships a little tricky if applied too rigidly.

When mortgage companies wouldn’t lend to the poor they were accused of acting disgracefully for not lending to the poor. Now they have lent to the poor they’re being accused of acting disgracefully for havin leant to the poor.

As Paul Krugman has found out, it can be disconcerting to use an analogy you yourself find patently absurd and then look around at all the nodding heads thinking, well, yes, now that is a good idea, isn’t it?

In an infinite universe, everything must happen: even an amusing and erudite piece on accounting standards.

And finally, neither unusual nor funny but still highly enjoyable. Lawyers suing each other. Such a pity that only one side can lose.

From Adam Smith Institute

Tags: Libertarian, Politics, Liberty, Freedom

As is well known to the readers of The Liberty Papers and The Unrepentant Individual, I love beer. It’s also true, largely due to drinking beer, that I could stand to be in better shape. So when I one day found the sport of hashing, I was excited. Sometimes called “a drinking […]

From The Liberty Papers

Tags: Libertarian, Politics, Liberty, Freedom

The Bush Adminstration recently announced that it will not reimburse hospitals for services that left patients with damage caused by poor performance, for instance by falls on hospital wards or nasty hospital aquired infections. Every year 1.7 million people in the US contract infections during their stay in a hospital resulting in as much as $473 million extra costs.

With an estimated 90,000 US patients dying each year from germs they catch after surgery or while tethered to a breathing machine, government agencies and hospitals are confronting healthcare-associated infections with unprecedented speed and determination. In Massachusetts, public health authorities plan to make hospital infection rates public. In Washington, D.C., Medicare has vowed not to pay hospitals for costs rung up when patients catch preventable infections.

One wonders why this sensible step, finally creating financial incentives to avoid hospital-aquired infections, was not taken earlier. The answer seems to be, we now know a lot more than we used to. As a result patients and their families should take care of themselves whilst in hospital and dare to question health professionals compliance with hand-washing rules.

It can mean paying attention to everything from when to get antibiotics before surgery (no sooner than an hour before), to the angle of the bed for a ventilator patient (30 degrees), to asking whether all those tubes are really needed (they may not be).

Look up ‘hospitalinfection.org‘ for the rid-campaign that offers a comprehensive list, including all scientific references, of fifteen useful steps you can take to reduce your risk of a hospital infection. Wouldn’t anyone agree, that these steps are probably even more appropriate in the NHS?

From Adam Smith Institute

Tags: Libertarian, Politics, Liberty, Freedom

Jack decided to go skiing with his buddy, Bob. They loaded up Jack’s station wagon and headed north. After driving for a few hours, they got caught in a terrible blizzard. They pulled into a nearby farm house and asked the attractive lady of the house if they could spend the night.
“I’m recently widowed,” she explained, “and I’m afraid the neighbors will talk if I let you stay in my house.”
“Not to worry,” Jack said, “we’ll be happy to sleep in the barn.”

Nine months later, Jack got a letter from the widow’s attorney.
He went to see his friend Bob and said, “Bob, do you remember that good-looking widow at the farm we stayed at?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Did you happen to get up in the middle of the night, go up to the house and have sex with her?”
“Yes, I have to admit that I did.”
“Did you happen to use my name instead of telling her your name?”
Bob’s face turned red and he said, “Yeah, I’m afraid I did.”
“Well, thanks! She just died and left me everything!”

From Adam Smith Institute

Tags: Libertarian, Politics, Liberty, Freedom

The National Center for Policy Analysis has recently produced A Global Warming Primer, which lays out the facts of climate change. The NCPA’s very worthy goal is to distribute the primer to the media, general public, and schools.

I hope they succeed: the primer explains climate change in easy-to-understand graphs and charts, with a bare minimum of accompanying words. The sound science and “just the facts” approach is a welcome alternative to the hysterical and politically motivated approach taken by environmental activists (not to mention the BBC).

Here are a few of the facts contained in the primer:

* Greenhouse gases make up no more than 5 percent of the Earth’s atmosphere. CO2 accounts for just 3.6 percent of that. Humans only contribute 3.4 percent of annual CO2 emissions. This means humanity is responsible for just one-quarter of one percent of the greenhouse effect.

* Over the last 600 million years, there is no close relationship between CO2 levels and temperature.

* Over the last 400,000 years, there has been a series of ice-ages interrupted by warm periods. In ice ages the temperature drops, sea levels fall and glaciers expand. In warm periods sea levels rise and glaciers retreat. We are currently at the tail end of a warm period.

* During those 400,000 years temperature and CO2 levels have varied together. However, rises and falls in temperature have consistently preceded rises and falls in CO2 levels by several hundred years.

* In the Roman and Medieval eras, the earth was as warm (and frequently much warmer) as it is today. A mini ice age began in the 1300s and ended in the mid-1800s.

* In the last century, the earth’s temperature has risen by less than one degree Celsius. Nearly half of that warming occurred before 1940 - even though human greenhouse gas emissions began to rise substantially only after the 1950s.

* Despite larger population growth and higher economic growth, the US has slowed its emissions growth faster than the EU since 1997. Up to 40 percent of human CO2 emissions in the US are reabsorbed, primarily by vegetation.

Get your own copy of the primer here.

From Adam Smith Institute

Tags: Libertarian, Politics, Liberty, Freedom

The holy grail is to be able to generate hydrogen on demand without using more energy to get it than it releases. It might have been found by Purdue University researchers. They’ve developed a method which uses an alloy of aluminium and gallium. Add water to it and the aluminium attracts teoxygen, liberating hydrogen. The problem has been that aluminium has a tendency to form an oxide skin, creating a barrier to further reaction. The gallium hinders the formation of that surface skin on the aluminium, and allows all of it to be used to release hydrogen.

The team found they could create particles of the alloy by slow cooling, giving 80 percent aluminium and 20 percent gallium, a ratio that gives good stability in dry air, and rapid reaction with water. It’s important that the gallium component, currently much more expensive than aluminium, is inert in this reaction and can be recovered and re-used. It is also significant that the gallium can be relatively impure, and less costly than the high grade gallium used in electronics.

The technology has the potential to generate hydrogen as and where it is needed, avoiding the costly process of storage and transportation.

From Adam Smith Institute

Tags: Libertarian, Politics, Liberty, Freedom

Not that I think hes’ got a shot; but he IS a declared candidate, he should be up there.

From The Liberty Papers

Tags: Libertarian, Politics, Liberty, Freedom

On March 4, 2007, U.S. Comptroller General David Walker appeared on 60 Minutes to discuss a national emergency. Was it terrorism? No. It was the economic disaster that is getting closer every day. I’m not entirely sure if this was covered on this blog, but it came to my attention again today and I felt it should be shared.

“We suffer from a fiscal cancer. It is growing within us. And if we do not treat it, it could have catastrophic consequences for our country.” - David Walker, head of the Government Accountability Office

From US Libertarian Party

Tags: Libertarian, Politics, Liberty, Freedom

An old report but one worth digging up again as Guido does. Cars can be, and often are, less emittive methods of transport than trains.

You’ll recall the outcry over payday loans and the like, the huge annual interest rates that are charged? Well, one company in the US has gone off to provide them and insists at doing it at cost: no profits. Amazingly, they still have to charge very high interest rates (250%!) to cover the costs. Perhaps lending small sums for short periods is inherently expensive then?

Much ire in the newspapers today about the levels of executive pay. A pity that all too many have the causality around the wrong way. It’s the newspaper headlines that cause the salary inflation.

Another causality issue: does banning guns reduce gun crime? Well, no, not really, given that we’ve banned guns and gun crime rises.

Someone who has worked with macroeconomic forecasting models (and we know how well they work) thinks about climate forecasting models. Not impressed.

Another installment of statistics showing that the good old days are right now.

And finally, even more correlation and causality. Drinking coffee leads to trust in one’s fellow man.

From Adam Smith Institute

Tags: Libertarian, Politics, Liberty, Freedom