Intellecutually Bankrupt

Over to the Crooked Timber there are a series of post dedicated to the proposition that Libertarianism is load of bullocks. The last link is especially fun as it  makes clear that, as I have mentioned, Tyler Cowen is a horrid little man.

Geniuses Relieve Needs; They Don't Create Wants

I've been reading Neoliberal Hegemony, which is an edited volume dealing with and detailing the individuals and institutions involved with the creation, fostering, and dissemination of neoliberalism as a project. Obviously, some of the contributions are stronger than others. One I found interesting is Peter Josef Muelbauer's" Frontiers and Dystopias: Libertarian Ideology in Science Fiction." Among other interesting arguments, he insists that market-based success requires attracting the approbation of the masses. This fact, he insists, shows that at its core there is a contradiction between being true to one's vision and selling enough crap to make a buck. Obviously, Ayn Rand's various visionaries avoid this by catering to the plutocracy. One wonders if the various obits of the late Steve Jobs, which emphasized his genius for knowing what consumers needed before they did, was or is an attempt to overcome this basic fact of market capitalism.

Is it the case that creating or more precisely manipulating preexisting technology to create, market and sell over-priced and unnecessary bits and bobs of technology is a sign of genius? Is it all that difficult to appeal the infinite wants of the mind, as Nicolas Barbon put it, to make a buck instead of working on providing the finite needs of the body? I say no it isn't. ShamWow, which is aptly named, made somebody rich but none of us better off. Having an overpriced bit of Apple gadgetry does little to ensure that, as one example, the majority of the world has a sufficiency.

Instead, the various Jobs encomium serve to continue the approbation of a spokesman for a trinket that fails to address the pressing problem of, what we might as well call, capitalists' hatred of humanity should their bodily needs interfere with profit maximization.  Indeed, the old Cynic, Stoic, and Christian trope of the wisdom of not wanting that served for a long time to restrain, at least in the west, the adoration of merchants and capitalists more generally argues against valorizing catering to the infinite wants of the mind.

It seems to me that real genius has better things to do than find a better way to peddle a mousetrap.

Glibertarianism

Rand Paul was on TDS and he was horrid.  Paine said the government that governs best governs least not Jefferson.  Paine is someone that Paul would most likely despise because he was a professional revolutionary and outside agitator.

More to the point, as Stewart was at pains to point out, the problems that regulations aimed at fixing all went away or, to be precise, got somewhat better because of state intervention. Paul would agree Paul's attempt to explain that we need a smaller government now because government has fixed all the problems of bad food and etc. is a nearly perfect example of what's wrong with Paine's claim in the first place. Go figure, a really smart guy from hundreds of years ago speculating on the advantages of limited government involvement in the market as part of a larger project designed to increased individual liberty insisted that freedom from constraint was always the best thing for humanity in a social and civil situation was wrong about something. It's not like we have to give up the important individual and human freedoms and liberties so corporations can befoul the world and cheat workers.

Here In Wisconsin

Ron Johnson, who is a manufacturer, accountant, and lucky in his wife's family's business acumen, is running for US Senate in the great state of Wisconsin, home to the House on the Rock, was quizzed recently on his plan for the middle class.  He said, in part, nothing. When not saying nothing, he promoted the policies that failed for the past 30 or so years as the policies he, as an accountant and manufacturer, would put in place.  Ron Johnson follower of failed policies wants a chance to watch those policies fail yet again.

Conservatives Explained

This has been making the rounds and with the point that the guy's trashing of the woman is kinda of creepy, and it is. Watch:



What is creepier, I think, is Goldberg's belly laugh when the prematurely aged begins to make sleazy allegations about his ex. Even odder is the description he provides of the woman's ideas. Finally, Goldberg is an editor?


UPDATE:
Apparently the guy wrote a blog post explaining how he wasn't a creep. Oddly enough, yesterday I could access his blog and today? Restricted access. One wonders why.

In England

Education reform and market-based solutions in England lead the Con/Lib government to try and

cut about 80 percent of the current $6.2 billion it pays annually for university teaching, and about $1.6 billion from the $6.4 billion it provides for research. 

This latest battle against education leads universities and colleges

[i]n anticipation of further cuts, many are beginning to lay off instructors, reduce the number of classes and shut down departments. Some instructors and researchers, dismayed by how little money they are being offered and worried about future financing, have abandoned Britain for more lucrative offers at universities abroad.

What does that mean as a practical matter? This:

Middlesex University said last spring that it intended to close its philosophy department. Cardiff University in Wales announced proposals to reduce the teaching staff in its modern languages department to 10 people, from 22. King’s College London said it would abolish its chair in paleography, the study of ancient handwriting — the only such post in Britain. (After an international outcry, it proposed creating a new position in “paleography and manuscript studies” that would be “fully funded from philanthropic monies.”)

 That's right cut funding so that you can have fewer educated citizens and a state-sponsored brain drain.  What is the cause of all this?  Folks like a Mr. Browne, who used to work for that paragon of private enterprise BP, whose

report also proposes withdrawing government support completely from subjects in the arts and humanities and concentrating it in areas he believes contribute more to the economy, like science and engineering.

Vote for Walker and he can do the same to the UW.

Too Few Choices

For the longest time, Conservatives and Neoliberals have argued for more testing and greater choice, through charter schools and vouchers.  Recent studies suggest that none of this works. When confronted with these facts of the matter, the intellectually honest thing to do would be stop rooting from them.  Ross Douthat, however, thinks the thing to is repeat old and discredited canards, "incompetent teachers" cause low performance among students, and double down on choice, vouchers, and other even yet more idiotic solutions, "fund students" and allow the magic of the market place to sort it all out. About one sensible point made in this column is that testing doesn't provide the evidence necessary to find the answer to the question "is our children learning," which comes because testing delegitimatizes Douthat's preferred solution: choice. 

When it comes to education reform, Conservatives really do suffer from a dearth of choice.

Glibertarians

Tyler Cowen writes concerning the fire department kerfuffle:

They wouldn't even let him pay up ex post.  David notes that this is a government-run fire department and thus the story is not much of a moral reductio on the market.  Arguably a private company would behave the same way, sometimes, but it 's odd to claim that government failure reminds you market failure is possible and so let's damn the market.  By the way, markets do pretty well at setting up schemes with a penalty for late payment; that's how my mortgage works.

The reason this failure by a state agency is used as a "moral reductio on the market" is that the state agency was acting like a for profit enterprise when it collected subscriptions for service, instead of acting like a state agency funded by an equitable tax on all those who potentially need protection from fire.

It is odd for proponents of smaller states and market solutions for the provision of social goods to insist that the results of smaller states and market solutions for the provisions of social goods aren't the fault of smaller states and market solutions for the provision of social goods. Kind of like the Dilemma of Franklin's Pickle, if you are too blinkered by your idealization of smaller states and market solutions for the provision of social goods that you can't see that smaller states and market solution for the provision of social goods leads to having your house burn down when you haven't paid the subscription,  idealization of your argument has blinded you to the the implication of your argument.

Let's call this one the Glibertarian Conundrum.

In Defense of Punctuation

Recently a NYTimes reporter reported on the Tea Partiers' intellectual lineage.  In the course of this she quoted Ron Johnson, who is running to be the new and infinitely incompetent Senator of the this great State, who

asserted that the $20 billion escrow fund that the Obama administration forced BP to set up to pay damages from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill circumvented “the rule of law,” Hayek’s term for the unwritten code that prohibits the government from interfering with the pursuit of “personal ends and desires.”

Various Conservatives and Gliberatarians jumped to the conclusion that the reporter reporting Johnson's remarks doesn't know what the rule of law, let alone Hayek's view of it, is.  I wonder how it is they arrive at this conclusion. The false claim that the 20 billion escrow fund violates the rule of law comes from Johnson; it was he who introduced the phrase "rule of law"; we have no reason to think the next quote isn't from Johnson.  While it's true that he is a manufacturer and an accountant, his views on punishing child abusers and climate change aren't examples of a man who can think things through. Indeed, the garbled definition of the rule of law reads exactly like what someone who has never thought about the rule of law or read Hayek might end up burbling.  Johnson is, after all, a Tea Partier and their intellectual leader is Glenn Beck, a man who never lets an opportunity to misrepresent the past by garbling and misrepresenting quotations and ideas pass him by.

UPDATE:
The punctuation mark defended here, I should have been clear, is the coma.  Comas link things to previous things, like the individual expressing an idea to the idea's content.  Periods, on the other and, mark the end of sentence, after which the speaker might change.

UPDATE:
Here is Kate Zernike reporting on McCain's and Obama's response to a supreme court ruling.  She quotes Obama as praising the because it is

re-establishing our credibility as a nation committed to the rule of law, and rejecting a false choice between fighting terrorism and respecting habeas corpus.

She doesn't add any odd definitions here.

Here she quotes Bush to the effect that

Saddam Hussein’s trial is a milestone in the Iraqi people’s efforts to replace the rule of a tyrant with the rule of law.

Again no odd interpretation added.

I'll ask, who do you think made the error? Zernike or Johnson?  My money's on the manufacturer and accountant because, after all, only a lawyer would care about the rule of law.

UPDATE:
Here she quotes Maliwki:

Iraq will not forget those who stood with her and continue to stand with her in times of need,” he told Congress. “We have gone from mass graves and torture chambers and chemical weapons to the rule of law and human rights.

 Here she provides a quote that modifies the rule of law

'There's the rule of law, and there's the rule of law in Texas,'' said Rob Martin, a 38-year-old resident in neurosurgery who had come to watch the trial today. ''The rule of law in Texas is kind of cowboy law."

It's very hard to believe that she doesn't know what the rule of law is; and it is very easy to believe that Ron Johnson doesn't.

Free Riders

Everybody in the known universe has weighed in on the case of

Gene Cranick, a rurual homeowner in Obion County, Tennessee. Cranick hadn’t forked over $75 for the subscription fire protection service offered to the county’s rural residents, so when firefighters came out to the scene, they just stood there, with their equipment on the trucks, while Cranick’s house burned to the ground.

And, as is often the case, various morons have tried to defend fire departments not putting out fires because of a failure to pay 75 dollars on the grounds of glibertarian nonsense, I'd just like to remind the world, who might think we Americans have lost our minds, that a truly great American once argued that

Suppose my neighbor's home catches fire, and I have a length of garden hose four or five hundred feet away. If he can take my garden hose and connect it up with his hydrant, I may help him to put out his fire. Now, what do I do? I don't say to him before that operation, "Neighbor, my garden hose cost me $15; you have to pay me $15 for it." What is the transaction that goes on? I don't want $15--I want my garden hose back after the fire is over.

He then went on to win WWII over the objections of right wing nut jobs who hated democracy. Were he alive today and were he confronted with the stupidity of a fire department on the scene refusing to put out a fire and, it seems, allowing dogs and a cat to die, his response is easy to imagine. That anyone anywhere defends the fire department's failure to act is a condemnation of their commitment to real America.

UPDATE:
Read the whole of the link for FDR. It really very good.

Professors as Profiteers

Megan McArdle blames the high and increasing cost of higher education on state intervention into the market.  Who would have thought.  She also writes that

[b]ut beyond the high default rates[on student loans], consider what a student loan does.  In the past, college degrees conferred higher incomes on those who earned them.  But almost all of that surplus went to the student rather than the college, because aside from a small number of extremely affluent families, the students were young and did not have that much cash.  If colleges wanted to expand their market, college tuition was constrained to what an average student, or their family, could pay.

Introducing subsidized loans into the picture allowed students to monetize that future income now. It's hardly surprising that colleges began to claim more and more of the surplus created by their college degree. Think about it this way: if colleges create an extra million in lifetime salary, you're theoretically better off if you pay them the discounted present value of $999,999 in order to earn that extra million.

What does a student loan do?  Pays for an education which sometimes leads to a better paying job but the "surplus" created by the better paying job isn't returned to the university so tuition had to go up to pre-capture the potential surplus and this was only possible because the state guaranteed student loans.

Have I got that right? McArdly is blaming the capitalist drive for profit maximization for increasing tuition costs? Sure the state had to step in to allow the capitalists' desire for more profit to work, which is a big glibertarian sin, but the universities are acting like good capitalists.

Am I the only one who finds this less than compelling?

Here's a slightly different suggestion about why the costs of education have gone up at least at state schools declining state support, increased enrollment, etc combined with an increase  in the size of university administrations.

Thoughtful Critique

After  rehashing a brief blog post on, among other things, a documentary about education that, for all Yeglesias knows, either does or doesn't improperly compare Finnish students to American students, Yglesias pivots to with a now patented

That said, this kind of thing can be taken too far.

What is being taken to far?  Reading blog posts? Making inapt comparison? Running down the teaching profession? Concern about syntax? Making informed critiques of badly thought out arguments about education reform?

There’s a newish library branch in my neighborhood that’s quite nice looking. I don’t think anyone expects its existence to transform the radically transform the educational experience of children living in the area.

No, of course not.  All kids have access to the computers, books, research material, low-cost or free enrichment programs, magazines, professional aid in finding books that libraries provide.  Well maybe one or two don't.  I betcha that the none of the parents of the kids will  benefit from the various programs the library runs for adult literacy, aiding non-native speakers of English improve their language skills, that tiny fraction of adults without computer skills gain them, or whatever other unnecessary public goods libraries provide their patrons.

And I bet reasonable people could disagree as to whether or not it made any real sense to build the library in the first place. But the library is there nonetheless, and the city is running it.

Damn it, if only the reasonable people who stood on either side of the issue had the opportunity to discuss the library it might not even be there to not provide the unneeded benefits to kids and adults.  Instead, the busybodies downtown crammed the library down his throat and then they have the temerity to run the damn thing; run it right into the ground, I bet.

So given that the city is running the library, we should try to run the library well. From the little things to the big things to the things that are core to the library’s function (deciding which books to stock) to the things that are peripheral (cleaning the floors in the bathroom) it all makes some kind of difference.

Yeah, hear that downtown busybodies no more reductions in funding due to Neoliberal, Reaganite, and Glibertarian tax policies.  Hire a janitor or two.  Oh and as by the way, I betcha that all those fancy rules and regulations about who is and who isn't a librarian are just to protect the librarian industry from fair competition.

And for any given quantity of resources allocated to the library, we should be doing our best to ensure that those resources are well spent. Whether or not there are other problems in the community that it’s beyond the capacity of the library to overcome, the public is still well within its rights to demand that the library be the best library it can be.

Yes, yes they are right to demand that. Although, as seems obvious from Yglesias' tone here, the state will screw it up because of, no doubt, its ignorance of market forces.

And that’s the real issue here. It’s great for skeptics about this or that proposed reform to how public schools operate to challenge the ideas on the merits. But the idea that it’s somehow unfair to be pressing for a more optimal allocation of resources is the flipside of destructive libertarian nihilism about the possibility of better-managed public agencies. And it actually makes less sense. If you want to argue (as I think liberals do) that it’s worth investing money in public schools, then you have to accept the corollary that the quality of the schools is important independently from other social issues.

Hear that Strawmen Liberals  whose voices ring in the confines of Yglesias' brain pan?  If you want to fix things stop just throwing money at things and start being more respectful of arguments for educational reform that hinge on turning schools into Olive Gardens.

Or get with the technology gurus, like Bill Gates who predicts that

Five years from now on the Web for free you'll be able to find the best lectures in the world. It will be better than any single university."
A year at a university costs an average $50,000, the Microsoft founder and Harvard dropout said last month. The Web can deliver the same quality education for $2,000.

 Don't just sit back and point to all the non-Harvards where education is cheaper or worry about who or what will be giving the lecture, hint: Robots, or what canned lectures might mean to the future of education:

Or point out that in any number of classrooms all across this land of waving wheat hard-working teachers, administrators, professors, and others are working to improve education through theory and praxis.  Be respectful, damn it.

He starts off with someone else's informed critique of a program for educational reform and then sternly warns of the dangers of spending on social goods without the stern discipline of market forces, and concludes that people who are concerned about educational reform need to be more knowledgeably when they criticize educational reform. See how it all hangs together?  I don't either.

Tour Guides

You know why regulating tour guides is worth the effort?  Because the people who make use of their services are, generally speaking, from out of town and are not going to be in a position, more often than not, to wait around and file complaints and then come back to testify at the trials of those who have engaged in "abusive practices."  This means, it seems to me, that the abusive practices will be in play for much longer than they ought, if not forever.  If the regulators are underfunded, regulations rarely enforced or badly written this is an argument for funding, enforcement, and rewriting not for babies and bath waters.

Furthermore, it seems to me that if you want to make the argument that neither the state nor the tour guide industry has an interest in seeing to it that visitors to the seat of the Federal Government in these United States are not screwed, blued, and tattooed by incompetent tour guides, you might maybe want to consider the importance of visiting the seat of the Federal Government in these United States as it concerns continuing education in matters of some relevance, to say nothing of the blow to the Federal Government of these United States' reputation by those who were screwed, tattooed, and blued as well as those they related the tale of being screwed, tattooed, and blued.

You might also consider that, oddly enough despite their general failure to be like Olive Garden, our non-Olive-Garden institutions of higher education have been busy training individuals in public history for lo these many years, almost as if these institutions of higher learning were aware that there was a need for individuals trained in providing accurate, assessable, and interesting histories of the various sites of historical interest scattered hither and yon.

Granted, of course, that if the tour guide industry were to set about recruiting well-trained and well-educated tour guides their bottom lines might suffer, which is to say it might not be economically efficient to hire well-trained and well-educated tour guides, but, then again, having well-trained and well-educated tour guides might prove to be a boost for the tour guide industry. And, additionally, when did economic efficiency become the be all and end all of life on earth?  1976? 1980?

Attacks on regulatory regimes that rely on the "universal acid" arguments of Cato, AEI, etc, legitimate the universal acid of Cato, AEI, etc. The topic under consideration here is the need and ability of the state to intervene in the market to reduce abusive, incompetent, or dangerous practices and, in so doing, protect workers as workers and citizens as consumers. Should an industry capture the state, which oddly enough seems almost never to result in regulations that provide protection for either workers or citizens, then -- by golly -- let's rewrite the regulations.

Then again in a Ygelsian world retrospective prosecution is better than prophylactic regulation because the free market might work and if it doesn't other underfunded enforcement agencies might maybe prosecute. Unless, of course, they have been captured by the wealthy and the powerful, which -- of course -- won't happen.

And, relatedly, economic efficiency is not the proper measure of the rationality of having more than one, two or even three quality quarterbacks or nearly anything else of importance.  Consider, for example, the Pittsburgh  Steelers or poets. Indeed, it is possible to argue that focusing on economic efficiency when it is inapt, which it almost always is, is a Neoliberal, Reaganite, and (perhaps) Glibertarian attempt to convince folks that all issues are best debated and understood in terms of economic efficiency when, in fact, many, if not all, issues large and small have nothing whatsoever to do with economic efficiency. Consider the death penalty or whether your butt looks big in those jeans.

A Man of Principles.

A short while ago, a very-rich man complained about being insufficiently rich and was roundly derided for being a whiny, very-rich man. Today if you click the link to his original lament you get a 404 Error and a search for the term super rich fails to turn up the malodorous post.  So, for those of you interested, here's the Google Cache version.  Do you think he took the post down because he was winning the argument?

Definite Article

The use of the definite instead of the indefinite article is sometimes revealing.  After defending his industry getting a bazillion dollars in bail outs, this crazed maniac argues

Now, if you talk about bailouts for everybody else, there comes a place where if you just start bailing out all the individuals instead of telling them to adapt, the culture dies.

Because

[t]here’s danger in just shoveling out money to people who say, ‘My life is a little harder than it used to be,’” Munger said at the event, which was moderated by CNBC’s Becky Quick. “At a certain place you’ve got to say to the people, ‘Suck it in and cope, buddy. Suck it in and cope.

You might think that he has in mind a specific culture dying form the specific mistake of giving money to people who, through no fault of their own, cannot find work.  And you'd be wrong.  Giving money to the bankers and etc would've have saved Weimar Germany.  Leaving aside that this is most likely wrong, Weimar Germany also didn't give money to people who couldn't find work through no fault of their own but Charles Munger is okay with that..

What he means is that if you give people the money they need to survive the catastrophes created by efficient markets, profit maximization, and financial innovation the culture of not giving money to people who aren't Charles Munger or his ilk will wither and die. Therefore to ensure that the culture of giving money to the creative class, that is the the class that created the catastrophes through their worship of efficient markets, financial innovation, and profit maximization, and not to the parasites, that is the people who do all the work but were fooled by all that efficient market, financial innovation, and profit maximization stuff , endures you must give the money to Charles Munger and not the tens of millions of unemployed.

One wonders what, exactly, he'd like us to suck in.

Gottcha.

Being Absurdly Rich is Not the Same as Being Super Absurdly Rich

Some guy who makes a bunch of money complains that he doesn't make enough money to live like somebody who makes considerably more money than he makes because Obama is a poopy-head, or something like that.  In the various tooing and frooing of the intertubes and their related webs lots of people are accused of being looters and lots of other people are doubled over in laughter at the oddness of some guy who makes a great deal of money complaining that he can't afford the stuff that some other guy who makes a lot more money has.  Some other other guy makes the wholly obvious point:

September 18, 2010 at 11:39 am I had to rewrite this post so you could read it directly Mr. Henderson. I originally had it as a reply to a guy named Justin Case, but I feel the need to say it to you and the people who follow your logic directly. It’s actually more adressed to them in fact:
Read the article again, people. The gist of it is this guy is whining that his GARDENER and his HOUSEKEEPER will suffer and you are CRYING for him??? Shame on your greedy little hearts. He’s going to have to give up extra lessons for his kid? He may have to *gasp* enroll them in PUBLIC SCHOOL??? Will the tragedy never end for him? I love the (implied) impossibility of finding a home with a lower mortgage in a less chic area (by the way, before you hop on your fear stallions, not everything that is “less chic” is a “cesspool of seething drug crime”. Even in Chicago). I adore the attack on “Marxism”.
There’s been an argument that the rest of us attack guys like Henderson because we are jealous; because we ENVY them. No one ENVIES this putz. We PITY him for his tremendous effort to cling to his undeserved entitlement issues. This isn’t an “increase” in taxes. It’s a roll back.
Let me explain a “roll back” like this (in hopes to put the whole argument to bed): you get a coupon from the supermarket and now cereal is cheaper. You love your coupon, but it has an expiration date printed on it. One day the coupon EXPIRES. Naturally, you cry “Marxism!!!” at the top of your lungs and sue the supermarket, smearing them at every turn for their massive unfairness. Wait… you DON’T cry “Marxism!!!” at the top of your lungs and sue the supermarket, smearing them at every turn for their massive unfairness? Then, please, shut up. Whiner. The tax rate is going BACK to what it WAS. Was this guy BORN in 2001? If not, he survived prior to the roll back.
Lastly… turbo tax? How much crack is he smoking? Invest in an accountant (they are deductible, you know) and learn how to make your money create something as far as jobs (involve friends, assuming you have some, it’ll be fun) and guess what? Your tax deductions will magically offset the losses at this “Marxian” (really? None of you readers see this sloganism as tired and lazy? Really?) “increase”. I mean, I don’t make 250k a year. I only make a fraction of that. Yet I have the common sense to employ an accountant (not a fancy one either. Nice implication, there, that those are the only kind worth having)for the hard stuff. I’ve gone from paying taxes for my contract work to (QUITE legally) getting refunds.
The real takeaway here is this guy Henderson spent a big wad on a good education, got a worthy job with it, then decided his education was over. He didn’t need to adapt. He didn’t need to learn how to manage his money. He was all set because he was better than the rabble in college and he is by default better now. He’s the high school jock who is still living his winning TD while working at the Jiffy Lube; the 275 pound homecoming queen who is watching Oprah. He’s lazy about adapting his ACTUAL life by CONTINUING to learn.
And you who pity him are equally lazy. Keep pointing your fingers at us who don’t, but we make FRACTIONS of what he’s making, work just as many hours (if not more often doing physically taxing labour) and make ends meet without crying. This is pathetic to listen to. OUR money goes to ACTUAL survival and you want to cry because his GARDENER is possibly going to suffer? Perspective. Please.

 There are other equally highlarryious rejoinders and comment threads strewn from one end of the Intertubes to the other. It is, in short, a battle to the death between John Galt and the looters.  For what it is worth the looters win the argument but not the policies put in place.

A Little Deregulation Never Hurt Anyone

Recently a pipeline blew up in California and it has come to light that from

a consumer advocacy group [that] has discovered that the company that operated the faulty pipeline, Pacific Gas & Energy (PG&E), had classified it as “high risk” and failed to utilize the funds it had collected from a rate hike to repair it. The Utility Reform Network (TURN) has obtained documents detailing the energy giant’s request to the California Public Utilities Commission (PUC) for a rate hike in 2007. PG&E asked the PUC for permission for a $5 million rate hike to “replace a section of the same pipeline that blew up in San Bruno.” The PUC approved PG&E’s request, allowing it to hike its rates so that it could repair the line in 2009.

Yet the energy giant failed to go through with its scheduled repairs. And in 2009, it once again requested a rate hike from the PUC, again for $5 million. In its request, PG&E warned that if “the replacement of this pipe does not occur, risks associated with this segment will not be reduced. Coupled with the consequences of failure of this section of pipeline, the likelihood of a failure makes the risk of a failure at this location unacceptably high.” Despite these admitted risks, the company could only promise to make its repairs by 2013.

There is considerably more skulduggery available at the link.  One might wonder why the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) didn't intervene and force the PG&E to fix the damn pipeline. It couldn't be because for the past 30 years or so all the cool kids having screaming like a bunch of flying monkeys that regulation of industry is unnecessary, stupid, and wasteful.  Could it?  It couldn't be because if you shout that kind of stuff loud enough and long enough regulators become ever laxer. Could it?

UPDATE:
More Neoliberal, Reaganite, and (possibly) glibertarian complaints about regulation

Coburn's office said Wednesday the senator will object to bringing up the bill if his concerns aren't addressed. His objections are a major blow to supporters' chances of passing the legislation this year.


The legislation would give the agency more power to recall tainted products, require more inspections of food processing facilities and require producers to follow stricter standards for keeping food safe. Currently, the FDA does not have the authority to order a recall and must negotiate recalls with the affected producers. The agency rarely inspects many food facilities and farms, visiting some every decade or so and others not at all.

As Tom Scocca, from whom I found out about this, puts it

This is just hostage-taking. Coburn's concern about the deficit is one-sided—he's not asking for taxes to go up to cover the cost of the bill, which is a scary-sounding $1.4 billion, or a considerably less scary $4.67 per American citizen. Taxes are bad. He is expressing the political opinion that removing disease-ridden feces from the food supply is a responsibility that the government should not take on. This is what Tom Coburn stands for: he believes that, on top of everything else, you can actually go eat shit.