Hope is not a plan

Proposition 98: Eminent Domain. Limits on Government Authority. Initiative Constitutional Amendment. - recommend No

Eminent domain is the concept that, under proper circumstances, your government can claim your property for the greater good, more or less. The sticking point comes in deciding when this is acceptable (note that it is, in principle, Constitutional), and how much compensation you should receive. A classic case of "obviously good" eminent domain might involve a city government using that power to buy a crackhouse froma slumlord, converting it into a community center. A classic "obviously bad" case of eminent domain involves buying up large swathes or property at cut-rate prices, then handing them over to a private developer to build a mall.

I'm sure someone can argue about the obviousness of either case, but the argument over defining and limiting eminent domain is one that's been going on for a while, and the appeal of not having your personal property bought out from under you against your will is clear.

That said, Prop 98 is not simply another take on an eminent domain amendment. It proposes to do two things:

1) Prohibit taking or private property for private use, where private use is defined as transfer of ownership or use of that property to something other than a public agency.

2) Completely remove rent control.

This second goal is mentioned nowhere in the stated goals of the proposition, and is, instead, slipped into the definitions portion of the text, in the definition of the term "Taken":

"Taken" includes transferring the ownership, occupancy, or use of property from a private owner to a public agency or to any person or entity other than a public agency, or limiting the price a private owner may charge another person to purchase, occupy or use his or her real property.

The fact that this was "snuck" into the text in the manner in which it was added makes it clear that the proposition's authors were hoping that many people would get on board with the generally laudable goal of not having homes seized to make room for malls, without realizing that they might accidentally be voting to allow themselves to be priced completely out of the rental market. That's unfortunate, as it's never a good sign when someone is attempting to trick the electorate into voting for their law.

As always, we want to follow the money. Who's paying for Prop 98's campaign? Major supporters include the California Association of Realtors Issues PAC, the AOA Apartment Owners Association PAC, and the California Farm Bureau Federation. Major individual donors to the cause include the Chicago-based Equity Lifestyles Properties, Peninsula area landlord John Vidovich who appears to have a history of tenant issues concerning rent, and mobile-home-park owner Thomas Coates (who appears to have given around half a million). The rest of the pro-98 donor list comprises a myriad of rental management companies, mobile home park owners, and individual property owners.

It seems clear, based on the money, that the breaking of rent control is the primary concern of the major donors.

Opposition to 98 comes from a variety of neighborhood groups, including several centered in the East Bay of the San Francisco Bay Area. Significant contributions against 98 have also come from the Service Employees International Union, the California Teachers Association, the California State Association of Electrical Workers, Environmental Defense, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Audubon Society, and other environmental and labor groups. In a nutshell, that's environmental groups and unions representing lower-paid workers. The interest here is probably split between people who are concerned about the way Prop 98 would limit the ability to put restrictions on property use and people who are concerned about their union members being priced out of their homes.

We just recently saw another attempt at a disingenuous "eminent domain" bill that would have other collateral damage. Proposition 90, which voters rejected in 2006, included text that would have required extensive payouts from government agencies any time a law might have been deemed to have reduced the value of a property. Proposition 98 includes that provision and does it one better by attempting to introduce a statewide revocation of rent control. For this reason, I have to continue to recommend voting "no" on Prop 98, just as I recommended voting "no" on Prop 90.

You can find out more about who's paying money for and against Prop 98 by clicking here.

You can read the Legislative Analyst's summary and the full text of Prop 98 by clicking here.

Proposition 99: Eminent Domain. Limits on Government Acquisition of Owner-Occupied Residence. Initiative Constitutional Amendment. - recommend Yes

Over in my review of Prop 98, I discuss the general concept of eminent domain. Prop 98, while purporting to be about eminent domain, contains a major deal-breaker in the form of the statewide revocation of rent control. Prop 99, offered by many groups as an alternative, is a highly constrained take on eminent domain limitation. Very concisely, it would prevent the seizing of an owner-occupied residential property (i.e. a home) for a purpose other than improving public safety or providing public services. Once again, the nightmare case of housing seized to let a developer build a mall is prevented. Prop 99 does not, however, include any of the language present in 98 that would prevent rent controls or require payouts for perceived changes in property value due to government action.

Financial support for Prop 99 comes from many of the same groups that oppose 98. As a reminder, this includes a number of labor unions and environmental groups. There are no groups listed as being in opposition to 99.

You can read more about the groups supporting Prop 99 financially by clicking here.

You can read the Legislative Analyst's summary and the full text of Prop 99 by clicking here.

This Tuesday, June 3, 2008 is a statewide primary election. At the same time, we'll be voting on two propositions, both nominally concerning limiting eminent domain, although Prop 98 appears to primarily be an attempt to revoke rent control rather than an attempt to limit eminent domain.

Here are the links to the two summaries this time around:

Prop 98: Eminent Domain (revoking rent control) - recommend "No"
Prop 99: Eminent Domain. Limits on government acquisition of private homes. - recommend "Yes"

I spent most of this week in Boston, where I learned that Dunkin' Donuts is ubiquitous. As I walked away from Boston Common on my first day there, I played the game of seeing how many blocks I could make it without running into one.

This was, I suppose, serendipitous timing as it gave me a chance to not purchase anything from the chain, following their recent cave-in to a bunch of idiots in search of a win who decided that Rachel Ray was a jihadist because she wore a scarf in a donut ad. Led in the charge by "intern-all-brown-people-but-me" blogger Michelle Malkin, the wingiest of whining wingers decided that they could pressure a company into pulling an advertisement because Ray's scarf looked sort of like a keffiyeh, some Arab men wear keffiyehs, and some Arab men are terrorists.

Given that I was in Boston, home to a thriving Irish community, I shudder to think about the nakedness that would necessarily ensue if we pressed that rule concerning the traditional clothing of "Irish men." Some of them, after all, were terrorists, too. A friend points out that we should also ban all ads showing sandals, since Arab men sometimes wear them. Sad.

Malkin continues to confuse me. Given her heritage, I don't understand her willingness to vilify and persecute anything tangentially related to some form of terrorist. By that logic, her ethnic background should have her in a camp in the high desert as well, with all the other potential Filipino terrorists.

Well, she doesn't actually confuse me that much, as she buys into a philosophy that thrives on being unable to place yourself in anyone else's shoes, to comprehend how anyone has ever helped you, or to understand that your actions may have consequences that impact you.

So yeah, neither donuts nor coffee for me this week, I'm afraid.

David Davis, the Conservative opposition "shadow home secretary" (explanation of the "shadow" system can be found here) has resigned his position as a member of parliament following the passage of expanded detention without charge in the UK. Under prior law, terror suspects could be held for up to 28 days without charge; the new 42-day limit was pushed heavily by Gordon Brown's administration, although some members of his Labour party were unhappy with the idea and not particularly supportive.

Davis intends to immediately run for re-election for his same seat in parliament, campaigning on the issue of repealing the new 42-day limit.

So, to be clear, Davis resigned so he could run again and make a point about the new law. That's something.

Watching this from across the Atlantic, I admit to being unclear about why UK authorities don't simply charge terror suspects with something ancillary to the primary charges being investigated, thus allowing them to be held. Perhaps that would feel to improper for them. Regardless, the increasing upward trend in detention without charge is worrying, and as we've seen on our end of things, holding people indefinitely causes problems.

On that note, the Supreme court has ruled that detainees held at Guantanamo can contest their detention in civilian courts.

Justice Anthony Kennedy said: "The laws and constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times."

The court has ruled twice previously that Guantanamo inmates could go into civilian courts to ask that the government justify their continued detention.

But each time, the Bush administration and Congress, then controlled by Republicans, changed the law to keep the detainees out of civilian courts.

BBC article on Davis
BBC article on the Supreme Court ruling

The International Olympic Committee has warned the government of Iraq that it may not let that country or its athletes compete in the Beijing Olympics following the Iraqi government's decision to dissolve it's current national Olympic committee. The Iraqi government did so on the basis of supposed corruption and, more reasonably, the fact that several committee members have been kidnapped since it was formed and are probably dead by now. The point of contention here is that national Olympic committees are, per the Olympic charter, meant to be assembled by national, non-governmental sporting associations.

In other words, the government of Iraq was a little too obvious. They should have built a sporting association first, then mucked with the committee.

The attempt to sanction Iraq and its unfortunate athletes for this governmental misstep is risible. The IOC regularly manages not to sanction itself, even as the awarding of prior Olympics to Sydney, Salt Lake City, and Nagano (at least) are all under suspicion, or confirmed cases of corruption and buying off of IOC officials. And that's all independent of the recent attempt by China to use the torch run as a validation of territorial claims.

But then, what would the IOC do to a country like China, or the United States? In contrast, Iraq is an easy enough target for this kind of close attention, as the government is young, scattered, and highly unlikely to be bribing anyone anytime soon to have a summer Olympics in Baghdad.

BBC article

The High Court in Cape Town, South Africa ruled this week against German Matthias Rath and American David Rasnick after a case was brought against them by Treatment Action Campaign and the South African Medical Association.

The short of it is that they are no longer allowed to conduct "clinical trials" of vitamin treatments for HIV among the desperate sick in South Africa.

"It is declared that the clinical trials conducted in South Africa are unlawful," Judge Dumisani Zondi said in his ruling.

But critics say such trials had led to unnecessary deaths when HIV-positive people stopped using anti-retroviral drugs.

Rasnick has worked previously as an adviser to South African president Thabo Mbeki, which can' t have helped with South Africa's history of science-denying, people-killing approaches to the HIV/AIDS epidemic in that country.

Notably, Rasnick has also incorrectly claimed to be associated with UC Berkeley, following a short time there working with HIV-denying kook and tenured faculty member Peter Duesberg. Rasnick and Duesberg collaborated as recently as 2003 on this paper that refuses to acknowledge a link between HIV and AIDS, instead trotting out their favorite, Occam's Razor-denying idea that AIDS is actually caused by recreational drugs, anti-viral therapy, and malnutrition. This never adequately explains, of course, why targeted protease inhibitors that are completely specific to HIV manage to push AIDS symptoms into remission. Duesberg has made a career, in the past decade and a half, of being contrary just to be contrary, and in so doing has enabled the kind of cruelty that Rath has been perpetrating on the unsuspecting in South Africa. Duesberg has, however, restrained himself to making the case for his kooky ideas. Others, like Rath and Rasnick, have gone and actually killed people in promotion of ideas that are not merely unorthodox, but actually ignore the hypothesis-driven science they claim drives their contrariness.

It is, in a word, criminal.

Good on the High Court for stopping it.

BBC article

With upwards of 24,000 people displaced and the loss of most of the potable water in Cedar Rapids, the destruction in Iowa is hard to legitimately comprehend. It's hard to actually visualize 1,000 city blocks being under water.

More problems may be on the way, on the order of the recent levee break in Des Moines or worse. Downriver, we have to hope that cities and towns can be reinforced to avoid even more disastrous flooding.

Beyond the tragedy for us, however, this natural disaster is going to be extremely relevant for the rest of the world, as the flooding has canceled out this year's soybean and corn crops. In 2007, Iowa produced 2.37 billion bushels of corn and 439 million bushels of soybeans. That's more corn than we export annually.

This may be an even hungrier year than the rest of the world expected.

BBC article
Washington Post article

This week, the Lithuanian parliament passed a law making it illegal to display Soviet and Nazi images, including images of leaders, the swastika, the hammer and sickle, and other relics of the two totalitarian powers.

BBC Russian affairs analyst Steven Eke says these are the toughest bans on symbols from the Soviet past adopted in any of the 15 countries that emerged from the USSR.

Moscow's official interpretation of history is that Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia were liberated from Nazi Germany by, then voluntarily joined, the Soviet Union.

In contrast, Lithuania and its neighbors look to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and the subsequent illegal invasions and annexations of their countries as being perhaps more official than the Russian line.

Certainly, while the common Soviet soldier made a heroic contribution to ending the Nazi menace during the second world war, the government of the Soviet Union has a history of relocation, genocide, and invasion that argues successfully that the Lithuanians are not mistaken in throwing hammers, sickles, and swastikas together in one big box.

BBC article

In a recent policy piece in Science Magazine titled The MPG Illusion, Richard Larrick and Jack Soll bring up the issue of how the basic way we visualize fuel efficiency -- in terms of miles per gallon -- may mislead us into making incorrect choices when it comes to prioritizing changes we make in favor of more efficient vehicles.

In short, increases in fuel efficiency among low efficiency vehicles have a much more dramatic effect than increases in fuel efficiency among higher efficiency vehicles. Consider this excerpt from the article:

To illustrate these issues, consider the criticism that has been directed at adding hybrid engines to sport utility vehicles (SUVs). In a New York Times Op-Ed column, an automotive expert (4) has said that hybrid cars are like "fat-free desserts"--they "can make people feel as if they're doing something good, even when they're doing nothing special at all." The writer questions the logic of granting tax incentives to buyers of "a hypothetical hybrid Dodge Durango that gets 14 miles per gallon instead of 12 thanks to its second, electric power source" but not to a "buyer of a conventional, gasoline-powered Honda Civic that gets 40 miles per gallon." The basic argument is correct: The environment would benefit most if all consumers purchased highly efficient cars that get 40 MPG, not 14, and incentives should be tied to achieving such efficiency. An implicit premise in the example, however, is that an improvement from 12 to 14 MPG is negligible. However, the 2 MPG improvement is actually a significant one in terms of reduction in gas consumption... A car that gets 12 MPG consumes 833 gallons to cover that distance (10,000/12); a car that gets 14 MPG consumes 714 gallons (10,000/14). The roughly 120-gallon reduction in fuel used is larger than the reduction achieved by replacing a car that gets 28 MPG with a car that gets 40 MPG over that distance.

This isn't just an abstract concern -- studies with American consumers back the idea that by cleaving to the MPG standard, we confuse ourselves about what constitutes real gains in efficiency. This has implications for upgrading vehicles as a response to resource limitation, both in the abstract ("Let's use less petroleum") and in the personal and specific ("How 'bout I spend less money on gas for my next car").

In other words, make your van more efficient before you make your car more efficient, if you have to choose. And, if you're mandating efficiency via legislation, focus on the low end first, because it's where the largest gains can be made.

You can also hear an interview with the authors on the June 20, 2008 Science Magazine podcast.

This week BBC South released the results of its investigation into the use of special surveillance powers by local councils in southern England. These powers -- that allow active surveillance, phone monitoring and email interception by local councils to combat crimes -- were created to help in the fight against domestic terrorism and similar serious offenses withing the United Kingdom. In practice, however, the BBC found that many local councils have spent a significant amount of time putting their constituencies under surveillance in the hunt for comparatively trivial offenses.

Highlights include:

• A family being under constant surveillance, including people casing their home and following them, to determine if they actually lived in the school district into which they were enrolling their children
• In-depth undercover investigations to prevent dog fouling (that is, people letting their dogs poop in public parks)
• Catching people harvesting clams from unauthorized sites

The concept of your city or county government actually tailing you, wiretapping you, and reading your email just to find out if you're letting your dog mess up the local park likely seems patently ridiculous to an American reader, but it's an excellent example of power creep. It's mostly human nature. If you're given a plate full of food, you eat it, and if you're given a tool, you feel strange letting it sit around unused.

This is why the arguments in the US that torture should be legal under some circumstances are so dangerous and corrosive. If a tool is approved for use some of the time, both the opportunity and the pressure are there to apply the tool to other situations.

It is ridiculous to think of using active surveillance teams to check that someone isn't fibbing about which school district their kids belong in, but nonetheless, that happened. You really don't want to be the person who disappears one day off the street on your way to work because an administrator decided that they haven't made a warrantless seizure of someone in a while -- and that's why it's best that these tools never, ever be legal.

BBC article

In response to a letter from the normally completely docile International Olympic Committee complaining that recent remarks made at a torch ceremony in Tibet were political in nature, the PRC's foreign ministry denied any attempt to politicize the Olympics.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao also said he had no knowledge of the IOC letter, but insisted that Zhang's remarks had intended only to foster a "stable and harmonious environment for the Olympics," and did not constitute politicization.

"China's solid position is against the politicizing of the Olympics," Liu said at a regularly scheduled news conference.

Indeed. Here are the entirely apolitical remarks Zhang Qinglin made at the closing ceremony for the torch relay in Tibet:

"The sky above Tibet will never change. The red five-star flag will always fly above this land," said Zhang, referring to the Chinese national flag that was adopted by the communist regime that occupied Tibet in 1951.

"We can definitely smash the separatist plot of the Dalai Lama clique completely," Zhang said.

One can hardly see the politics.

On that note, have there been prior Olympic ceremonies in which a political figure actually referred to smashing their enemies?

CNN article