The Nadernaut Rolls On!

Posted on October 13, 2008, 7:17pm | David Weigel

Ralph Nader's received a fraction of the attention he craved from this, his fifth presidential bid. The most coverage he's gotten since announcing came at the Ron Paul third party presser. But he's hitting swing states like New Hampshire with a stirring message worthy of Eugene V. Debs:

Nader noted that fewer than 10 of the approximately 40 audience members appeared to be Dartmouth students. He criticized the “sterile political debate at Dartmouth,” adding that the College is known as the most conservative school in the Ivy League.

Who's paying for this? Well, you are. In July Nader hauled $411,187.85 in matching funds, paid for by voluntary donations to the public financing fund, distributed by the FEC. That's roughly a quarter of Nader's overall fundraising. No matter what damage Barack Obama wreaks, if he actually succeeds in blowing up the public finance system, he'll have done us all a favor.

Five years ago Radley Balko had some more examples of Nader living off of political welfare.

Economic Anxiety Leads to Smoking, Especially in Casinos

Posted on October 13, 2008, 5:08pm | Jacob Sullum

Atlantic City's ban on smoking in casinos takes effect this week, but only for a week. "In a last-minute change," the Press of Atlantic City reports, the city council "voted 5-4 on Wednesday to delay the smoking ban for at least a year to give the casino industry time to recover from the nation's economic woes. The final vote on that delay won't come, however, until the next regularly scheduled council meeting [on] Oct. 22." A.P. says the move was "due to the economic crisis and fear of massive casino losses and layoffs." But it reports that "four casinos owned by Harrah's Entertainment say they will go smoke-free on the gambling floor anyway on Wednesday, and stay that way, offering patrons ventilated smoking lounges." In the absence of government mandates, it seems, consumers get a diversity of options. But apparently this is the sort of thing that can be allowed only during economic crises.

[Thanks to an unidentified reader for the tip.]

Listen to the Great Debates of '08

Posted on October 13, 2008, 5:07pm | Damon W. Root

In Saturday's Wall Street Journal, Terry Teachout reviewed the intriguing new CD Debate '08: Taft and Bryan Campaign on the Edison Phonograph, a collection of 22 speeches recorded in 1908 by presidential candidates William Howard Taft and William Jennings Bryan. As Teachout notes,

Bryan and Taft were the first political candidates to make commercially recorded campaign speeches on their own behalf, and the records they made were frequently played in alternation at public meetings in order to create the illusion of an actual debate. One enterprising nickelodeon operator in New York City even set up wax dummies of the candidates standing behind a pair of flag-draped podiums that flanked the door to his store.

There's also this bit of timeliness:

Most of what they have to say is now of purely academic interest, though once in a while their comments make you sit up and take notice. It's startling, for instance, to hear Taft, who at the time was Theodore Roosevelt's secretary of war, state unapologetically that "Christianity and the spread of Christianity are the only basis for hope of modern civilization in the growth of popular self-government," or to listen to Bryan, the Great Commoner, castigate the evils of American imperialism: "Instead of profit it has brought loss. Instead of strength it has brought weakness. Instead of glory it has brought humiliation. It has more than doubled our standing army, and there is talk of further increase."

Read the rest here, complete with audio clips from both candidates.

New at Reason: Katherine Mangu-Ward on Naomi Wolf

Posted on October 13, 2008, 4:38pm

Katherine Mangu-Ward reads Naomi Wolf's latest opus and finds a rambling, paranoid account of her wrestling match with modern American democracy.

Read all about it here. 

Maf54, Where Are You?

Posted on October 13, 2008, 3:58pm | Nick Gillespie

Oh, the irony:

West Palm Beach Congressman Tim Mahoney (D-FL), whose predecessor resigned in the wake of a sex scandal, agreed to a $121,000 payment to a former mistress who worked on his staff and was threatening to sue him, according to current and former members of his staff who have been briefed on the settlement, which involved Mahoney and his campaign committee....

Mahoney was elected two years ago following the abrupt resignation of his disgraced predecessor, Republican Mark Foley, whose lewd internet messages to teenage boys and Congressional pages created a national outrage.

More here.

Lest we forget, the scandal involving Mark Foley (whose AIM handle was Maf54, hence this post's title) had a serious effect on the 2006 elections. And on downward-sloping approval ratings for Congress. A serious part of it was the hypocrisy involved: Foley was a proponent of wide-ranging databases and tough laws to police cyberstalking of kids online.

reason on the Foley scandal.

Drug Czar Fail

Posted on October 13, 2008, 3:47pm | Radley Balko

John Tierney digs up the Bush administration's 2002 National Drug Control Strategy, and notes that the administration has unsurprisingly come up far short in its goal to reduce illegal drug use by 25 percent within five years.

There has been an overall decline, but it's been marginal—less than four percent.  Nevertheless, we continue to set new annual records in overall marijuana arrests, and drug czar John Walter's office is dubiously trumpeting the slight declines as vindication that the Bush-Walters overall strategy is working.

But there's a side to this discussion that's quite a more nefarious than your usual drug warrior manipulation of data. 

The ONDCP has been celebrating these marginal declines (largely driven by declines in the use of marijuana) as a "success" for a couple of years now.  From a piece I wrote in February:

In December 2006, the ONDCP put out a triumphant press release celebrating a five-year decline in the use of illicit drugs among teens.

"There has been a substance abuse sea change among American teens," Walters said in the release. "They are getting the message that dangerous drugs damage their lives and limit their futures. We know that if people don't start using drugs during their teen years, they are very unlikely to go on to develop drug problems later in life."

But here's what the ONDCP doesn't want to talk about:

But the following February, the Centers for Disease Control reported that deaths from drug overdoses rose nearly 70 percent over the previous five years.

Half the overdose deaths were attributable to cocaine, heroin, and prescription drugs (the number of overdose deaths caused by marijuana—the drug most targeted by the ONDCP—remained at zero). One of the biggest increases (113%) came among aged 15-22, those same teenagers Walters was celebrating just three months earlier.

We're told that drug war is a moral imperative because, in the words of Walters himself, "dangerous drugs damage [children's] lives and limit their futures."  But like most temperance zealots, Walters measures success not by actual lives wrecked or ended prematurely, but merely by how many people are and aren't getting high. 

Switching from the "drugs ruin lives" justification for the drug war itself to "how many people are getting high" when measuring the same drug war's effectiveness, then, hides a more important statistic:  How many people have had their lives ruined and futures limited by the drug war?  The vast majority of the 873,000 people arrested for marijuana offenses last year, for example, likely had more damage done to their lives by the prohibition of marijuana than could ever be done by the drug itself.

Such is why drug warriors like William Bennett, Karen Tandy, and Walters can assert with a straight face that alcohol prohibition was, also, a "success."  Sure, the crime rate spiked, alcohol hospitalizations soared, and corruption and contempt for the rule of law was rampant.  But fewer people swallowed down less demon rum.  So, score one for social engineering.

Sure, deaths from drug overdose have jumped 70 percent, and more than doubled among young people.  But fewer people are smoking pot.  And that means we're winning.

McCain's First Priority: Repealing the Law of Supply and Demand

Posted on October 13, 2008, 3:22pm | Jacob Sullum

In his latest radio address, John McCain responds to Barack Obama's criticism of his mortgage plan (emphasis added):

It's critical that we stabilize mortgages, or else the housing market won't stabilize and homeowners across our country face troubles even greater than they face now. The housing market faces distortion by a glut of low-priced, foreclosed homes. And this would lead to a crash in the value of the number one asset of a majority of Americans. With so much on the line, the moment requires that government act—and as President I intend to act, quickly and decisively.

Where McCain sees "distortion" I (with a mere bachelor's degree in economics) see the interaction of supply and demand. Other things being equal, it's natural that a glut of homes would reduce home prices. The distortion occurs when the government uses taxpayers' money, as McCain proposes, to buy the mortgages on these homes at face value and turn them into fixed-rate, 30-year loans at 5 percent, reducing the size of the principal based on the decline in the value of the homes. Assuming this plan works as McCain intends, the government will be artificially propping up the price of these assets, based on his judgment that market prices are too low.

If there were no principles at stake, I'd love to take advantage of the McCain Resurgence Plan by reducing the principal and interest rate on my mortgage, or at least benefit from the higher sales price he is promising. For that matter, what about the glut of low-priced journalists who are distorting the market for my services, thereby depressing my income?

New at Reason: Arnold Kling on Paul Krugman's Nobel Prize

Posted on October 13, 2008, 3:00pm

Economist Arnold Kling explains why Paul Krugman deserves the Nobel Prize for his pioneering work on international trade theory.

Read all about it here.

Happy Times Are Here Again

Posted on October 13, 2008, 2:42pm | David Weigel

Barack Obama was in Toledo today, giving a lengthy, detailed speech on the economy; slowly, he's adding more and more proposals to his generic "dudes, I got this" anti-panic agenda. The speech is up here, and the big proposal is this:

For those Americans in danger of losing their homes, today I’m also proposing a three-month moratorium on foreclosures.  If you are a bank or lender that is getting money from the rescue plan that passed Congress, and your customers are making a good-faith effort to make their mortgage payments and re-negotiate their mortgages, you will not be able to foreclose on their home for three months.  We need to give people the breathing room they need to get back on their feet.

That's an idea bandied around since last year, when Hillary Clinton proposed it. It's also, as Ben Smith points out, something Obama once proposed. This stage of the campaign, though, feels like 1992 or 1980 or even 1932, with the challenger, feeling his oats, proposing more action items as the big day gets closer. Combine it with Obama's attacks on Republicans and you start to see similarities to late stages of the FDR-Hoover race. (Late into the campaign, pundits like Mencken still thought Hoover would pull it off.) From an FDR speech at about this stage in the campaign:

The farmers of the United States know that today thousands of mortgages upon the farms of the United States are being foreclosed. The president stated that most of those mortgages now being foreclosed represented cases where the farmers were willing to have such mortgages foreclosed. I think I know the mind and the heart of the American farmer, and it is inconceivable to me that the president of the United States can believe that the farmers of the United States are willing and anxious to have foreclosed the mortgages upon their homes in which their fathers and mothers lived and died and in which their children were born.

If the president is sincerely of the opinion that these farmers are willing to be driven from their homes we cannot hope for any enthusiastic action upon his part to stop the foreclosures. I know that the last thing upon earth that a farmer wants is to be foreclosed, to give up his home, and it will be our aim to provide a practical and immediate remedy for the intolerable situation now existing.

At the same it feels like McCain's proposal for the government to buy up bad mortgages and provide a 30-year fixed rate is falling off the radar. But it's clearly the best thing McCain has going for him; hence Obama's attempt to short-circuit it.

UPDATE: To be clear, when I say the McCain plan is his "best bet" I mean that it's polling well. And the continued McCain rout in the polls suggests that Ayers Week did nothing for him.

Fogies: Ready to Lead

Posted on October 13, 2008, 1:46pm | Katherine Mangu-Ward

Birds of a feather flock together, and the oldsters love Sen. John McCain. Pew Research Center reports:

"Among older registered voters (those aged 65 and older) John McCain has widen[ed] his lead over by Barack Obama to 48%-to-35% margin; he led among these voters by only 5 points in early September (45% to 40%)."

Maybe the shift is in the demographic that remembers the Depression, and wants someone in office who does too?

Register Now for Reason Goes Hollywood, November 14-15! Speakers Include Drew Carey, Bjorn Lomborg, and Rep. Jeff Flake!

Posted on October 13, 2008, 12:24pm

Lights! Camera! Action!

Reason Goes Hollywood!

Nothing captures the American imagination like Hollywood—and now, lovers of liberty will gather on the Walk of Fame to explore the ways in which film and freedom converge. Come find out more about the future of American cinema—and join in the party of the year as we celebrate Reason's 40th anniversary!

What: Reason Goes Hollywood! and 40 Years of Reason Gala Dinner

When: Friday, November 14 and Saturday, November 15.

Where: Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, Hollywood, California

The event will be emceed by Price Is Right and Reason.tv host Drew Carey and speakers include Skeptical Environmentalist author Bjorn Lomborg, Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), and many Reason all-stars. 

Registration for Reason Goes Hollywood is open to all, but space is limited. Sponsorship opportunities are available. If you would like to sponsor the event or have any questions, please contact Jennifer Kambara at jennifer.kambara@reason.org, or (310) 391-2245.

Why John McCain Loves Being the Underdog—an inside look at the candidate's "runt" psychology

Posted on October 13, 2008, 12:00pm

Polls show John McCain trailing Barack Obama in the presidential race by as many as 10 points. reason Editor in Chief and McCain: The Myth of a Maverick author Matt Welch delves into the psychology of the Arizona senator and tells voters why you should expect to see him grinning more and more as he falls further behind. (And yes, we know that Marlon Brando played the title role in Viva Zapata!)

reason on John McCain.

My Shih Tzu Is a Republican (Campus Button Police Edition)

Posted on October 13, 2008, 11:19am | Nick Gillespie

A short while back, the indispensable Inside Higher Education ran an interesting story about University of Illinois' "button police":

The university system's ethics office sent a notice to all employees, including faculty members, telling them that they could not wear political buttons on campus or feature bumper stickers on cars parked in campus lots unless the messages on those buttons and stickers were strictly nonpartisan. In addition, professors were told that they could not attend political rallies on campuses if those rallies express support for a candidate or political party.

Faculty leaders were stunned by the directives. Some wrote to the ethics office to ask if the message was intended to apply to professors; they were told that it was. At Illinois campuses, as elsewhere, many professors do demonstrate their political convictions on buttons, bumper stickers and the like.

Cary Nelson, a professor at the Urbana-Champaign campus and national president of the American Association of University Professors, said that he believes he is now violating campus policy when he drives to work because he has a bumper sticker that proclaims: "MY SAMOYED IS A DEMOCRAT."

More here.

I've never bought into the idea of a university as a safe haven from the hurly-burly of everyday society, including  and maybe especially politics. This is particularly true of state-supported insitutions such as Illinois, where the space is totally embedded in politics of the most basic sort. I'm also always wary of attempts to stymie any sort of speech or discussion. They are almost always noxious (and almost always ineffective to boot).

However, I do find something intimidating and unseemly about people in power positions pushing a very particular political agenda, especially in a way that is not explicitly dialogic. I don't think there should be a ham-fisted policy such as Illinois', but as I've suggested before in connection to a different case of professorial political speech, actually foregrounding debate and disagreement, along with pushing actual pluralism, would make campuses much more interesting.

A related follow-up: In the town I live in in Ohio (and where my sons attend public school), there's a bond issue for a new high school on the November ballot. A few weeks ago, students were offered free pro-school bond T-shirts during lunch (no public funds were used to create the shirts, which were handed out by school administrators and teachers). Regardless of the point of view expressed on the T-shirt, is this acceptable behavior? Does the involuntary nature of K-12 education change the rules compared to college (that is, if going somewhere is mandatory, should the free speech of people be curtailed somehow)?

Update: Scott Stein sends along this interesting exchange about politics and the classroom from the blog When Falls the Coliseum. A snippet:

Two of my favorite professors in college were politically conservative. Sometimes their conservatism spilled over into the courses they taught. In fact, I would say that their conservatism was fundamental in some ways to what they were teaching.

This did not bother me or my friends at the time because we knew both of these people were spectacularly smart and interesting. And there was room in their classes to reach conclusions at variance to what the professors reached. They also avoided extraneous comments about controversial issues that could be divisive.

More here.

Every Time the Poll Numbers Rise, a Kook Gets His Wings

Posted on October 13, 2008, 11:03am | David Weigel

Five years ago blogger (and reason contributor) Megan McArdle formulated "Jane's Law."

The devotees of the party in power are smug and arrogant. The devotees of the party out of power are insane.

After spending plenty of time dumpster-diving in the Obama conspiracyverse, I'd like to propose my own law.

The multiplication of conspiracy theories about a presidential candidate is a function of his/her success in the polls.

When McCain was surging two months ago, theories swirled about the veracity of his "cross in the sand" story. During that fortnight when Sarah Palin was popular and credible, people questioned whether her youngest son was really hers. Now McCain is fading, so: Back to the Obamaswamp! And the latest Obama conspiracy is... well, I wouldn't say the best (not while a wanted con man is driving around the country bullhorning about a two-day Obama drug binge that never happened), but it's pretty hilarious. It's Jack Cashill's theory that Bill Ayers wrote Obama's first book, Dreams from my Father.

Like all the great pieces of Obama conspiraciana, Cashill's piece is half throat-clearing and half assertion. The evidence:

- Obama hasn't released much of his pre-Dreams ouvre, and what we have seen doesn't read like Dreams. Cashill refers to poems written when Obama was 20 and legal work written before he was 30.

- Obama met Bill Ayers a few months before Dreams was published. Thus, "Ayers had the means, the motive, the time, the place and the literary ability to jumpstart Obama's career."

- Ayers and Obama were both community organizers, both struggled with their identity, and both gave their kids African names.

- Ayers' 2001 memoir gets similar numbers to Dreams on the Flesch Reading Ease Score.

- Dreams from My Father includes a number of naval metaphors, and Ayers was a merchant marine.

Seriously, that's it. This was enough for National Review's Andy McCarthy to link Cashill and send a boatload (naval metaphor! Is Bill Ayers writing this blog?) of traffic his way.

I don't want to feed into what sounds, at first blush, like Vince Fosteresque paranoia.

You know... if that thought crosses your mind while posting, it's probably time to step away from the Movable Type.

Cashill's article is kookery: Ayers hadn't met Obama when the book went to the publisher, Obama's naval metaphors can be explained by his childhood in Hawai'i and his reading of Moby Dick, etc, etc. But there are two telling nuggets in this conspiracy theory.

First: Why does Cashill rule out the possibility that Ayers—whose own memoir was released six years after Obama's—was influenced by the state senator, and not the other way around? As Cashill points out, in a 1997 book Ayers refers to Obama as a "writer" who lives in his neighborhood. Ayers has an epic case of white guilt and an obsession with African culture (African art decorates his Hyde Park home). Isn't the most likely explanation for Obama-esque passages in Ayers' own book that Ayers read his neighbor's book? (After all, the education book Ayers wrote in 1997 reads nothing like Dreams.)

Second: Why, in 1995, would Chicago's left-wing assume that the best way to send their agent, Barack Obama, into power politics, was with a warts-and-all literary memoir that discussed his drug use and thoughts on Black liberation?

I don't know what it is about Obama that inspires this stuff. How hard is it just to run against the man with the most liberal voting record in the Senate in the year 2007?

Girls Gone Wild Killed

Posted on October 13, 2008, 11:02am | Matt Welch

Via Drudge comes this ominous sign of Barack Obama's taste for forcing "service" down the throats of United States citizens:

During a CNN/YouTube debate for Democratic presidential candidates last year, [Obama] said he doesn't "agree" with the draft.

But he did say women should be expected to register with the Selective Service, comparing the role of women to black soldiers and airmen who served during World War II, when the armed forces were still segregated.

"There was a time when African-Americans weren't allowed to serve in combat," Mr. Obama said. "And yet, when they did, not only did they perform brilliantly, but what also happened is they helped to change America, and they helped to underscore that we're equal.

"And I think that if women are registered for service -- not necessarily in combat roles, and I don't agree with the draft -- I think it will help to send a message to my two daughters that they've got obligations to this great country as well as boys do."

Because nothing says "equality" like equivalent servitude, and nothing says "selective" like government coercion to sign up as possible cannon fodder under the threat of federal punishment.

reason on "Selective" Service here.

No, Not Jack Klugman...

Posted on October 13, 2008, 10:23am | Jesse Walker

Sam Staley -- director of urban and land use policy at the Reason Foundation, the organization that publishes this magazine -- defends Paul Krugman's Nobel Prize:

Krugman is best known for his explicitly liberal NY Times column, arguing for more redistribution, government subsidized (and run) health care, and all manner of government activism in the economy. Policy positions aside, Krugman is a[s] deserving a winner of the prize as any economist the Nobel committee could choose.

The Nobel Prize is awarded for contributions to the academic and research side of economics, not policy positions. Here, Krugman has made lasting, meaningful, and insightful contributions to our understanding of international trade and the growth of cities. If anything, his academic work has strengthened the case for economic freedom on international trade by weakening the hands of central planners....

Krugman's work is now standard in international trade courses and I continue to make his insightful and pathbreaking book Geography and Trade required reading in my classes on urban and regional economics.

Not every libertarian is so pleased, to judge from the reactions this morning from Peter Boettke and Jeff Tucker. Tyler Cowen, on the other hand, seems delighted.

I am not an economist, and I only know Krugman's technical work by reputation, so I can't engage this topic on anything approaching a deep level. I can say that back before he had a home at the New York Times, I enjoyed Krugman's 1994 book Peddling Prosperity and several articles he wrote for pop venues like The Wilson Quarterly. There's much more to the man than the standard-issue liberal that manifests itself in his op-eds, and I hope -- but doubt -- that the broader reaction to his award will go beyond the knee-jerk cheers and jeers from the fans and foes of his column.

Update: Bryan Caplan is happy about Krugman's victory.

The Curious Case of Lousiana Film Subsidies

Posted on October 13, 2008, 9:53am | Nick Gillespie

One of the biggest bills has come due in Louisiana, where residents are financing a hefty share of Brad Pitt's next movie: $27,117,737, which the producers will receive by cashing or selling off valuable tax credits.

Louisiana, one of the most assertive players in the subsidy game, wound up covering $27 million of the nearly $167 million budget of Pitt's "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"—the state's biggest movie payout to date—when producers for Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros. qualified the movie under an incentive that has since been tightened....

Until two years ago, Louisiana's program offered a 15 percent credit for virtually the entire budget of a qualified film. Mark Smith, who oversaw the program, pleaded guilty last year to taking $67,500 in bribes to inflate budgets for a company that authorities did not name.

In case you're wondering, there's no evidence that such plans, on whatever scale, actually create jobs (duh).

"There's no evidence yet that this is a particularly efficient or effective way to create jobs," said Noah Berger, executive director of the Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center.

The nonprofit center reviews budget and tax policies in Massachusetts, which is spending about $60 million a year on producer credits. A recent study by the center found that the state's film credit, at 25 percent, is five times what is offered to those who build in designated economic opportunity areas and more than eight times the state's standard investment tax credit.

More here.

Do subsidies really swing that much business? Or are they a waste of tax money? reason has answers dammit.

Intern at reason This Spring!

Posted on October 13, 2008, 9:30am

reason is now accepting applications for the spring 2009 Burton C. Gray Memorial Internship. The intern will work in our Washington, D.C. office for 10 weeks during the spring semester, and receives a $5,000 stipend.

The job includes reporting and writing for reason and reason online, helping with research, proofreading, and other tasks. Previous interns have gone on to work at such places as The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, ABC News, and reason itself.

To apply, send your résumé, up to five writing samples (preferably published clips), and a cover letter to:

Gray Internship
reason
1747 Connecticut Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20009

Electronic applications can be sent to intern@reason.com, with the subject line "Gray Internship Application." The deadline for applications is November 7, 2008.

Paul Krugman Wins the Nobel Prize in Economics

Posted on October 13, 2008, 7:38am | Damon W. Root

Via The New York Times:

American economist Paul Krugman won the 2008 Nobel prize for economics for bringing together analysis of trade patterns and where economic activity takes place, the prize committee said on Monday.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said the prestigious 10 million crown ($1.4 million) prize recognised Krugman's formulation of a new theory to answer questions driving world-wide urbanisation.

"He has thereby integrated the previously disparate research fields of international trade and economic geography," the committee said in its statement.

Rest here. reason Contributing Editor David Henderson on Krugman's The Return of Depression Economics here. Contributing Editor Mike Lynch on why "Krugman may be a smart economist, but he's a stupid columnist" here.

Barack Obama Is John McCain's Black Baby

Posted on October 13, 2008, 7:35am | Jesse Walker

Jesse Singal has an interesting article in the Boston Globe applying recent social science to the rumors circulating on the campaign trail. An excerpt:

Experts began to look at rumors more analytically in the 1940s and 1950s, in a wave of research fueled by concern about how rumors could be managed during wartime. Though interest waned during the following decades, rumor studies have seen a resurgence in the last decade or so - partly because researchers are now more able to tackle complex, dynamic phenomena, and partly because they're newly armed with the biggest ongoing social psychology experiment in human history, the Internet, which provides them with terabytes of recorded rumors and a way to track them.

In 2004, the Rochester Institute of Technology psychologist Nicholas DiFonzo and another rumor researcher, Prashant Bordia, analyzed more than 280 Internet discussion group postings that contained rumors. They found that a good chunk of the discourse consisted of the participants sharing and evaluating information about the rumors and discussing whether they seemed likely. They realized, in other words, that people on the sites weren't swapping rumors just to gossip; they were using rumors as a vehicle to get to the truth, the same way people read news....

Other than denying a rumor that's true, perhaps the biggest mistake one can make, DiFonzo and other researchers say, is to adopt a "no comment" policy: Numerous studies have shown that rumors thrive in environments of uncertainty. Considering that rumors often represent a real attempt to get at the truth, the best way to fight them is to address them in as comprehensive a manner as possible.

Anthony Pratkanis, a psychologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who studies persuasion and propaganda, says that an effective rebuttal will be more than a denial - it will create a new truth, including an explanation of why the rumor exists and who is benefiting from it.

I don't agree with all of the article. Specifically, I don't think it's always true that "To the extent people do have an agenda in spreading rumors, it's directed more at the people they're spreading them to, rather than at the subject of the rumor." But there's a lot of good sense here as well, all of it rooted in the recognition that rumors are "inherent to human nature - naturally occurring, inevitable human social phenomena, rather than pesky distractions from more civilized discourse." Even false tales can reflect real fears. In many ways, the stories people are telling about Palin and Obama are more interesting than Palin and Obama themselves.

New at Reason: Steve Chapman on the Disastrous Economic Policies of Obama and McCain

Posted on October 13, 2008, 7:00am

When it comes to taxes, writes Steve Chapman, this election presents a clear choice. On one side you have a Democrat who proposes to raise taxes. On the other, you have a Republican who proposes to raise taxes.

Read all about it here.

Hayne, West Sued

Posted on October 12, 2008, 7:55pm | Radley Balko

Escape From Berkeley...By Any Non-Petroleum Means Necessary

Posted on October 12, 2008, 11:48am | Brian Doherty

The alt-energy experimenters who I wrote about in this May reason feature are sponsoring a unique road race this weekend, which launched from Berkeley yesterday and is expected to end in Vegas on Monday. The idea is, from the event's own site:

the rally challenges contestants to start their “engines” on something other than petroleum based fuel, and by any means necessary, cause their “vehicles” show up in Las Vegas three days later- using only fuels/power/motive force scavenged “for free” along the route.

All types of vehicles are welcome. All schemes for non-petroleum based transport are encouraged. In short, everything is permitted– just as long as your “fuel” is from a non-petroleum based source, your acquisition of “it” does not require money, and you start the race with no more than 10kwh of “it” on board.

The full field of power generation and conversion is open for your pleasurable scavenging and creative hacking– biomass gasifiers, WVO, steam, on board fermentation stills, fast starch anaerobic digesters, solar, pneumatic, creek side hydro and lots of batteries, tesla free energy vortexes, cold fusion, humans, hamsters, etc etc etc.

Want to test out your 40% efficiency triple junction PV cell covered Prius? Or maybe see if your steam cracking anaerobic digester hydrogen producer can keep up with the intake of your fuel cell Honda Civic prototype? We welcome you to join us- and risk getting beat by a young punk on a rat bike, running on granulated McDonald’s napkins and hair spray.

DARPA had a Grand Challenge. . . the rednecks a Cannonball Run. . . and the hippies a bunch of WVO buses broken down on the side of the road. Now, NASA scientists and junkyard fabricators go head-to-head in a no holds barred battle of engineering prowess and creative excess. Hanging somewhat in the balance, are bragging rights for saving the world. That, and a grand prize of $5,000.

At least one of the cars had not quite moved a block in the first hour--they were still chopping wood for their gasifier engine.

This long East Bay Express feature profiles some of the racers and their scheme. Wired.com does the same in this story.

I have the good fortune to be one of the event's official judges (important in a race where actually reaching the finish line could be unlikely for many entrants) and expect to be reporting on some of what I learned here in the future.

Read Up on the Bailout and More Before Monday's Opening Bell Signals More Losses!

Posted on October 12, 2008, 10:38am | Nick Gillespie

Recent reason coverage of the bailout.

And go here for Hit & Run posts on the topic.

Abandon All Hope: Everybody's running against the bailout, but nobody's serious about killing it. David Weigel 

Rescue or Waste?: Why the bailout isn't working. Steve Chapman

Private Accounts Still Make Sense: Why the market meltdown doesn't negate the case for privatizing Social Security. Radley Balko

Building a Better Bailout: How Washington could have helped the market at no cost to taxpayers. And what it should do if it's hell-bent on spending $700 billion. Veronique de Rugy and Philippe Lacoude

Economist Russell Roberts on What You Need to Know About the Bailout (and Why You Should Be Really Worried:

The Winner of Last Night's Debate? Washington: Both candidates embrace central planning as prudent economic policy. Matt Welch

What Would Mises Do?: Confessions of a free-market, anti-bailout operator. Matt Kibbe

The Roots of the Crisis: How did Wall Street get into this mess? Michael Flynn

Does It Take a Panic to Stop a Panic?: The Wall Street bailout and the perils of bipartisanship. Jacob Sullum

An Expert-Induced Bubble: The nasty role of ratings agencies in the busted housing market. David M. Levy and Sandra J. Peart

Why Paulson is Wrong: Saving capitalism from the capitalists. Luigi Zingales

Economist (and former Freddie Mac staffer!) Arnold Kling on The Big Bailout:

Beg, Borrow, or Steal: Why the bailout is a terrible idea. Steve Chapman

Five Questions About the Short-Selling Ban: The