I'm not asking, I'm driving.

Happy Grover Appreciation Day (HT Boing Boing):

John Scalzi has unilaterally declared February 15th to be Grover Appreciation Day, commemorating the world’s greatest Muppet. Consider me part of the Coalition of the Willing on this.

Video evidence proving Grover’s superiority can be found at Scalzi’s Whatever. Alternately, you could just go re-read The Monster at the End of this Book.

The better part of two decades ago, JJ Baskin asked me if I would like a cat. JJ had given the cat to his brother and sister-in-law the previous year, but she developed allergies and they could not keep him any longer. I agreed to take him, and Festus entered my life. A Russian Blue, Festus had a very regal air about him. He acted as if the whole world was his domain. He was not a lap cat by any means, but night after night he would always curl up at my side (after we got married, his preferred spot was by Anne’s legs). He loved to climb, and when I was in Austin I’d leave the door to the balcony open so that he could come and go as he pleased. When I moved into Buell Court I tried to replicate this be placing a 2×12 with rope wrapped around it between the balcony and the tree to serve as a cat bridge (it sometimes served as a raccoon bridge). In his youth he was an avid hunter, regularly bringing birds and squirrels to me.

Festus had been losing weight for several months before Anne & I started dating, and my vet didn’t really have any answers, so I took him to a new place: The Cat Doctor. Dr. Caroline Oeben determined that Festus was suffering from Lymphatic Plasmasitic Stomatitis, which caused inflammation in Festus’ gums and throat, making it difficult for him to eat. Through her dedication and care, Festus was given a new lease on life.

When Anne & I were married, I brought Festus to live with us…and Casey, Anne’s ten-year-old yellow lab. Casey was very curious about Festus, but Festus wanted nothing to do with her, and let Casey know that in no uncertain terms with lightning-fast bops on the Casey’s nose (but never with his claws extended). We had an uneasy truce for a while, but eventually they grew to at least tolerate the others presence (at least as long as Festus stayed away from Casey’s food bowl).

On New Year’s Eve 2008, Festus woke up from a nap and had lost most motor control of his head: he held it at an odd angle, and it would rotate counterclockwise. We spent the evening at the emergency clinic, and the next several days tests were done on him, but they never really determined what went wrong. His head returned to normal after about six weeks, but a lot of his former energy was gone.

Over the past couple of months, his appetite shrank more and more, as did the time between his required injections. He spent most of the day asleep on the sofa or in the front yard, watching the kids play across the street or the birds that would come and eat his food. He got to meet Kate on Monday when we brought her home from the hospital, and that evening he ate more than he had in months. But he didn’t eat anything on Tuesday, nor on Wednesday. He was fighting a cold that had come and gone for a while, and Wednesday night he didn’t even have the energy to jump on the bed. Today we took him to Dr. Oeben for one last visit, and she helped us say goodbye by making him comfortable and relieving his pain. It was one of the hardest things I’ve had to do, but it was the right decision.

Goodbye, buddy, my boon companion. Festus was the bestus.

Born January 29, 2010, 6:19pm.
7 lbs., 8 oz.
19.5 Inches.
Kate and Anne are doing fine; I’m still thunderstruck.

Does CRA Undermine Bank Safety?:
By Mark A. Calabria

A recent policy forum here at Cato discussed the role of the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) in the financial crisis. While the forum focused on the federal push for ever expanding homeownership to marginal borrowers, the analysis did not touch directly upon the question of whether CRA lending undermines bank safety.

Fortunately this is a question that one economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas bothered to ask. While his research findings were available before the crisis, they were clearly ignored.

In a peer-reviewed published article, appearing in the journal Economic Inquiry, economist Jeff Gunther concludes that there is “evidence to suggest that a greater focus on lending in low-income neighborhoods helps CRA ratings but comes at the expense of safety and soundness.” Specifically he finds an inverse relationship between CRA ratings and safety/soundness, as measured by CAMEL ratings.

In another study Gunther finds that increases in bank capital are associated with an increase substandard CRA ratings. Apparently bank CRA examiners prefer that capital to be lend out, rather than serve as a cushion in times of financial distress.

Given the current attempts in Washington to expand CRA, it seems some people never learn. One can always argue over how CRA should work, but the evidence is quite clear how it has worked, once again proving: there’s no free lunch.

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it; but what about those who willfully ignore the past?

The Pilgrims’ Real Thanksgiving Lesson: Newsroom: The Independent Institute:
The Pilgrims’ Real Thanksgiving Lesson
November 25, 2008
Benjamin Powell
Alexandria Daily Town Talk, Advocate-Messenger, Hillsdale Daily News, Current-Argus

Feast and football. That’s what many of us think about at Thanksgiving. Most people identify the origin of the holiday with the Pilgrims’ first bountiful harvest. But few understand how the Pilgrims actually solved their chronic food shortages.

Many people believe that after suffering through a severe winter, the Pilgrims’ food shortages were resolved the following spring when the Native Americans taught them to plant corn and a Thanksgiving celebration resulted. In fact, the pilgrims continued to face chronic food shortages for three years until the harvest of 1623. Bad weather or lack of farming knowledge did not cause the pilgrims’ shortages. Bad economic incentives did.

In 1620 Plymouth Plantation was founded with a system of communal property rights. Food and supplies were held in common and then distributed based on equality and need as determined by Plantation officials. People received the same rations whether or not they contributed to producing the food, and residents were forbidden from producing their own food. Governor William Bradford, in his 1647 history, Of Plymouth Plantation, wrote that this system was found to breed much confusion and discontent and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort. The problem was that young men, that were most able and fit for labour, did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men’s wives and children without any recompense. Because of the poor incentives, little food was produced.

Faced with potential starvation in the spring of 1623, the colony decided to implement a new economic system. Every family was assigned a private parcel of land. They could then keep all they grew for themselves, but now they alone were responsible for feeding themselves. While not a complete private property system, the move away from communal ownership had dramatic results.

This change, Bradford wrote, had very good success, for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been. Giving people economic incentives changed their behavior. Once the new system of property rights was in place, the women now went willingly into the field, and took their little ones with them to set corn; which before would allege weakness and inability.

Once the Pilgrims in the Plymouth Plantation abandoned their communal economic system and adopted one with greater individual property rights, they never again faced the starvation and food shortages of the first three years. It was only after allowing greater property rights that they could feast without worrying that famine was just around the corner.

We are direct beneficiaries of the economics lesson the pilgrims learned in 1623. Today we have a much better developed and well-defined set of property rights. Our economic system offers incentives for us—in the form of prices and profits—to coordinate our individual behavior for the mutual benefit of all; even those we may not personally know.

It is customary in many families to give thanks to the hands that prepared this feast during the Thanksgiving dinner blessing. Perhaps we should also be thankful for the millions of other hands that helped get the dinner to the table: the grocer who sold us the turkey, the truck driver who delivered it to the store, and the farmer who raised it all contributed to our Thanksgiving dinner because our economic system rewards them. That’s the real lesson of Thanksgiving. The economic incentives provided by private competitive markets where people are left free to make their own choices make bountiful feasts possible.

This:
The Hubris of the Trillion-Dollar Man:

Former President George W. Bush

said Thursday that America must resist the “temptation” to allow the government to take over the private sector, taking a subtle shot at his Democratic successor by warning that too much state intervention and protectionism will squelch the economic recovery…

“As the world recovers, we will face a temptation to replace the risk-and-reward model of the private sector with the blunt instruments of government spending and control. History shows that the greater threat to prosperity is not too little government involvement, but too much,” said Mr. Bush.

Um, what? The president who

expanded federal spending by more than a trillion dollars a year, before his disastrous last hundred days
federalized education
laid out “a smorgasbord of handouts and subsidies for virtually every energy lobby in Washington.”
protected the steel, agriculture, and textile industries from foreign competition
backed farm bills with lavish subsidies for producers
created the biggest new entitlement since Lyndon Johnson
bailed out Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, AIG, Bank of America, Citigroup, and dozens of other banks
provided government support for mortgages, credit cards, auto loans and other consumer debt, and
bailed out Chrysler and General Motors in direct defiance of Congress’s refusal to do so

now says that his successor is about to “replace the risk-and-reward model of the private sector” with “too much government involvement”? Shouldn’t President Bush be doing penance in a monastery somewhere, rather than embarrass the free-market cause by pretending that he wasn’t the biggest-government president in decades?

You can play for free if you want, but where’s the fun in that?

Go to

and enter as many guesses as you want: gender, date & time, weight, and length. If you want to play for free, you are done! If you want to pay $1/guess, drop me an email; there will be winners in each category, as well as an overall winner, which will be the guess with the fewest points, awarded as follows:

Let the games begin!

Unions prod Obama to fix ailing airline industry – Yahoo! News:

“U.S. aviation is facing severe economic uncertainty, and an open and frank conversation will help begin a continuing dialogue about the industry’s future,” Transportation Department spokeswoman Sasha Johnson said.
[...]
The forum, which is closed to the public and the media, was organized at the request of the AFL-CIO’s Transportation Trades Department.

Now Playing at Reason.tv: Remembering the Victims of Communism – Hit & Run : Reason Magazine:

Twenty years ago today, the Berlin Wall was breached and Soviet communism, at long last, entered its death spiral.

After claiming approximately 100 million victims in the 20th century, communism was dismissed to the ash heap of history. But those who suffered under its boot heel have largely been confined to the history books when not forgotten altogether.

Author and historian Lee Edwards set out to correct this oversight with the creation of the Victims of Communism memorial and online museum, dedicated to those who perished because of Communist regimes between 1917 and 1989.

Reason.tv spoke to Edwards about the importance of historical memory, plans for a forthcoming bricks-and-mortar museum in Washington, DC, and the paintings of Ukrainian gulag survivor Nikolai Gettman, currently on display at the Heritage Foundation, where Edwards is a “Distinguished Fellow in Conservative Thought.”

Produced by Meredith Bragg and Michael C. Moynihan.

So now the government wants to usurp the bankruptcy laws and directly seize troubled financial institutions. As Chidem Kurdas points out in Too Big to Fail Red Herring:

Scroll back to September 2008. Lehman Brothers files for bankruptcy, the credit market seizes up and stocks tank. What difference would the proposed law make in that situation? Lehman management is out and shareholders are wiped out anyway. Instead of regular bankruptcy, where the creditors exert influence, government directly takes over.

So the difference is that lenders will no longer be able to enforce their contractual claims. Oh yes, that will be just the right remedy for a fragile credit market. You’ll tell lenders they’re toast! That will really get credit flowing.