James Taranto has given a name to the idea that the country is getting more and more anti-abortion partially due to abortion being legal. Calling it “The Roe Effect”, it postulates that since those who favor legal abortion are more likely to get one, and assuming children generally follow the political leanings of their parents, more abortion foes are being born than abortion advocates, and thus over time support for legal abortion will dwindle. (See the Wikipedia entry for links to other articles on this.)

After the Roe decision, it would take at least 18 years for the effect to start being seen, when the post-Roe kids were of voting age. However, there’s another trend occurring that may have an effect on American politics without the waiting period.

Blame Canada!

It may seem like a quiet country where not much happens besides ice hockey, curling and beer drinking. But our neighbor to the north is proving to be quite the draw for thousands of disgruntled Americans.

The number of U.S. citizens who moved to Canada last year hit a 30-year high, with a 20 percent increase over the previous year and almost double the number who moved in 2000.

In 2006, 10,942 Americans went to Canada, compared with 9,262 in 2005 and 5,828 in 2000, according to a survey by the Association for Canadian Studies.

According to this survey, the increase is mostly politically-related.

The current increase is fueled largely by social and political reasons, says [Jack] Jedwab [ACS’s executive director].

“Those who are coming have the highest level of education – these aren’t people who can’t get a job in the states,” he explains. “They’re coming because many of them don’t like the politics, the Iraq War and the security situation in the U.S. By comparison, Canada is a tension-free place. People feel safer.”

If most of these folks are generally Democrat voters, depending on the places and districts they moved from, over time this could also help swing American politics more to the right. 10,000 may not be enough to swing a presidential election, but a Senator here and a Congressman there would matter after a while.

So I’m going to coin a term here for what happens when liberals move to Canada and take their politics with them: The Roeaux Effect (pronounced “the roe effect”).

Aside from its effects on American politics, the article notes the reasons of a couple of the 10,000 emigrants, and they are indeed political and social. One person is Tom Kertes. One of his thoughts on the move gives a peek into the liberal mind and its thoughts about soaking off the money of others.

Kertes, who moved with his partner, is happy in his new home. “Canada is a really nice country. My mother is thinking about it. My stepfather has diabetes and has health issues. So, he’d be taken care of for free if he moved up here.”

Sure, his stepfather could go up and get it for free — really free — because he hasn’t paid in to the system for his whole life. He’d essentially be living off the “forced charity” (oxymoron) of others. And, of course, it all depends on how long he wants to wait for treatment.

And here’s another testimonial:

Jo Davenport, who wrote “The Canadian Way,” moved from Atlanta to Nova Scotia in December 2001. She also cites political reasons for her move, saying that she disagreed with the Bush administration’s decisions after 9/11.

“Things are totally different here because they care about their people here,” she says, explaining that she’s only been back home once or twice.

By December 2001, Iraq wasn’t even on the Congressional funding docket, so Ms. Davenport couldn’t even abide going after those who harbored bin Laden. Definitely a reliable Democrat vote gone north.

Her comment that “they care about people here” insinuates that they simply don’t here. Well, there are some folks who might think differently about that. Earlier in the article it adds just a bit of perspective.

Of course, those numbers are still outweighed by the number of Canadians going the other way. Yet, that imbalance is shrinking. Last year, 23,913 Canadians moved to the United States, a significant decrease from 29,930 in 2005.

So over twice as many people come here as go there every year. First of all, you’ll note that none of them were interviewed for the article. Secondly, if people here simply didn’t care, I daresay the numbers would be quite different. One wonders how many of them come here to escape the waiting lists in the Canadian health care system.

And it would be interesting to find out the political and social leanings of those folks. It could be that the Roeaux Effect is not just about the 10,000 going north, but also the 20,000 coming south. Again, no mention of that in the article.

So now I’m going to put out the call to whoever has the resources to do a study on the effect of immigration & emigration from & to Canada has on American politics. If you just read the ABC News report, you’d think quite a lot, based on the interviews. But then again, this is the MSM. There might be nothing to it.

Technorati Tags: Canada, immigration, US politics, Roe Effect, Roeaux Effect, James Taranto, Association for Canadian Studies, Jack Jedwab, socialized health care, Afghanistan, media bias

First they came for the TV stations, but I didn’t say anything because I didn’t own a TV station. Then they came for the critical foreigners, but I didn’t say anything because I wasn’t a critical foreigner.

President Hugo Chávez said Sunday that foreigners who publicly criticize him or his government while visiting Venezuela will be expelled from the country.

Chávez ordered officials to closely monitor statements made by international figures during their visits to Venezuela — and deport any outspoken critics.

”How long are we going to allow a person — from any country in the world — to come to our own house to say there’s a dictatorship here, that the president is a tyrant, and nobody does anything about it?” Chávez asked during his weekly television and radio program.

So if someone comes to his country and calls him “the devil”, that’s a deportable offense. But if Chavez does it in America, the world applauds. (Well, the UN at least.)

Closed circuit for Harry Belafonte, Danny Glover, Cindy Sheehan, and other Chavez supporters: Can you say “stifling of dissent”? Can you recognize it when it’s really happening? Do you remember this ever happening before in history? Do you remember how it all ultimately turned out?

Hat tip The Liberty Papers via Q&O (who points out the similarity with North Korea).

Technorati Tags: Hugo Chavez, Venezuela, Harry Belafonte, Danny Glover, Cindy Sheehan, free speech, dictatorship, stifling of dissent

Shire Network News #96 has been released. The feature interview is with Nick Cohen, Guardian writer and now the author of What’s Left: How Liberals Lost Their Way. He talks to Tom Paine about how he’s been using his journalism in the UK to try to convince the Left not to drink the “Bush is Hitler and America is the re-born Roman Empire” kool-aid. Click here for the show notes, links, and ways to listen to the show; directly from the web site, by downloading the mp3 file, or by subscribing with your podcatcher of choice.

I have no segment this week since I was on vacation last week.

OK, that’s a “dog bites man” headline if there ever was one, but here’s the latest example. A report by CAP, the Center for American Progress (PDF is here, though I had trouble loading it into Acrobat Reader), entitled “The Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio” notes how many more conservative talk radio stations there are than liberal ones. No news there.

What the report suggests is that the government should step in and “fix” this. Again, no news there. What’s really funny is how they frame it. They play both the race and gender card, and bring up the non sequiter of who owns the radio stations. From the coverage on “Think Progress”, here’s the two paragraph they quote from the report discussing this (emphasis theirs).

Our conclusion is that the gap between conservative and progressive talk radio is the result of multiple structural problems in the U.S. regulatory system, particularly the complete breakdown of the public trustee concept of broadcast, the elimination of clear public interest requirements for broadcasting, and the relaxation of ownership rules including the requirement of local participation in management. […]

Ultimately, these results suggest that increasing ownership diversity, both in terms of the race/ethnicity and gender of owners, as well as the number of independent local owners, will lead to more diverse programming, more choices for listeners, and more owners who are responsive to their local communities and serve the public interest.

So if only more radio stations were owned by women and minorities, we’d have more liberal talk radio.

Short answer: No.

Liberals once again demonstrate their lack of familiarity with that concept called the “free market”. People don’t listen to a radio program — music, talk, news, entertainment, whatever — based on who owns the station. They listen to what they want to listen to based on content. They have their preferences, and that’s what they listen to. This isn’t to say a rock-and-roller won’t occasionally peek over to the jazz station, or that folks can have very eclectic tastes, but by and large people stick with their preferences.

Now, a radio station stays in business, generally, by making money. (This is central to the “free market” thing. Liberals, please read this. Others can skip to the next paragraph.) They do this by finding a need or want in the community and filling it. Not enough hard rock? Play it! Not enough 18th century classical? Get it! Not enough hard news? Report it! Not enough comedy? Program it! But here’s the catch: if you’re wrong — if there is enough 18th century classical music on the radio — you won’t have enough listeners to allow the advertising revenue pay for your expenses.

If you’re operating at a loss, generally you go out of business, or try another idea (not enough 20th century avant-garde new age pipe organ music?). Unless you’re Air America, in which you just get infusion after infusion of cash from big, corporate rich guys, and if that fails, you legislate.

And that’s precisely what CAP is suggesting; making laws to determine how much anybody can own in a market so that they can, maybe, get people to listen to their programs. As I said, a non sequiter. When Air America came to Atlanta, the radio station carried the whole slate of talkers, morning til night. I would occasionally listen to Randi Rhodes on the way home just to hear how the other half thought, but I just couldn’t believe that’s what the other half really thought. Way too much conspiracy theory. So I didn’t listen to her with any regularity. A year or so later, the station is sold (most likely due to coming in last in the market with a 0.0 rating), changes format to an Eclectic Arts station and Air America was off the air in Atlanta. Didn’t matter who the owner was. It was unprofitable in the extreme. (And the new owner went from owning 1 to 2 radio stations; definitely an “independent local owner”.)

And that’s why Air America and “progressive” radio in general isn’t out there on the airwaves as much as conservative talk. Hardly anyone listens to them. It’s a simple business calculus. But instead of making their product better, the Left seeks to get the government to force the issue.

Are you now waiting for the Left to propose the same thing for the newspaper or broadcast TV media as well? Hold not thy breath. A “Fairness Doctrine” that covers more than just radio? That’ll never happen, because those other outlets generally lean left. Which goes to show that when the Left whines about fairness, it’s all one-sided. Nothing fair about it.

Technorati Tags: liberal, media, Center for American Progress, talk radio, Think Progress, free market, Air America, Randi Rhodes, Atlanta, Georgia, Fairness Doctrine

As if we needed them to tell us this.

The BBC has failed to promote proper debate on major political issues because of the inherent liberal culture of its staff, a report commissioned by the corporation has concluded.

The report claims that coverage of single-issue political causes, such as climate change and poverty, can be biased – and is particularly critical of Live 8 coverage, which it says amounted to endorsement.

OK, first off, major kudos to the BBC for looking into this and admitting it. However, this is long, long overdue. The Biased BBC blog could have told them this, for a lot less money, I’m sure.

Continuing on in the Telegraph story comes another “shocking” revelation.

The report concludes BBC staff must be more willing to challenge their own beliefs.

It reads: “There is a tendency to ‘group think’ with too many staff inhabiting a shared space and comfort zone.”

Indeed when it’s pointed out that 80+% of American journalists voted for Clinton, the retort is that it doesn’t matter since they can still be impartial. However, the lesson from this is that the herd mentality is stronger than the Left gives it credit for, and that real diversity in the newsroom should consist more of diversity of opinion than just skin color. After all, the news businesses’ product is information, and “group think” (or perhaps “myopic zeal”) is more likely to slant news coverage than ethnic makeup is.

And this is just rich.

A staff impartiality seminar held last year is also documented in the report, at which executives admitted they would broadcast images of the Bible being thrown away but not the Koran, in case Muslims were offended.

No real need to expound on that; the bias (and fear) speaks for itself.

So now what? The Times of London’s editorial on this nails it.

That the BBC should investigate itself is perhaps admirable, but only if it acts on the conclusions. The likelihood is that it will lament its shortcomings, pledge to do something and carry on much as before. Changing its cosy culture will take more than a report; some who have worked there say it would require a small neutron bomb. The BBC is a self-perpetuating liberal arts club. Recruitment is the key. It needs to employ more nonconformist journalists whose paper of choice is not The Guardian.

Indeed, diversity of opinion is what’s required. Will it happen? Well, another arena that supposedly encourages full debate on subjects is academia, and the Left is heavily entrenched there as well, and they show no signs of wanting their orthodoxy and stranglehold challenged. A prediction that the Left in the media will do so is equally slim.

Technorati Tags: media bias, liberal, BBC

An Kenyan expert in economics, James Shikwati, was interviewed by the German magazine Der Spiegel. The interview got off to a quick start as Shikwati surprised the journalist.

SPIEGEL:Mr. Shikwati, the G8 summit at Gleneagles is about to beef up the development aid for Africa…

Shikwati: … for God’s sake, please just stop.

SPIEGEL: Stop? The industrialized nations of the West want to eliminate hunger and poverty.

Shikwati: Such intentions have been damaging our continent for the past 40 years. If the industrial nations really want to help the Africans, they should finally terminate this awful aid. The countries that have collected the most development aid are also the ones that are in the worst shape. Despite the billions that have poured in to Africa, the continent remains poor.

Massive injections of money, good intentions, and virtually nothing to show for it. Sounds just like the welfare state here. The journalist is confused, bewildered.

SPIEGEL: Do you have an explanation for this paradox?

Why is it a paradox if it simply a case of doing what doesn’t work on a much larger scale? This exposes the incredibly simplistic assumption on the part of liberal ideology that throwing money a a problem really should work…in theory. As conservatives have been arguing for decades, however, an understanding of economics helps explain this “paradox”. In answer to the question, Shikwati explains.

Shikwati: Huge bureaucracies are financed (with the aid money), corruption and complacency are promoted, Africans are taught to be beggars and not to be independent. In addition, development aid weakens the local markets everywhere and dampens the spirit of entrepreneurship that we so desperately need. As absurd as it may sound: Development aid is one of the reasons for Africa’s problems. If the West were to cancel these payments, normal Africans wouldn’t even notice. Only the functionaries would be hard hit. Which is why they maintain that the world would stop turning without this development aid.

Being taught to be beggars, dependence on government, dampening entrepreneurship, and government corruption involved in the cash transfer. Sounds just like the welfare…well, you get the idea.

Well, now our journalist is flummoxed. Doesn’t someone have to help them? Shikwati slaps down this dependency thinking, and explains how food shipments both prop up corrupt governments and at the same time destroy the local economy’s incentive.

SPIEGEL: Even in a country like Kenya, people are starving to death each year. Someone has got to help them.

Shikwati: But it has to be the Kenyans themselves who help these people. When there’s a drought in a region of Kenya, our corrupt politicians reflexively cry out for more help. This call then reaches the United Nations World Food Program — which is a massive agency of apparatchiks who are in the absurd situation of, on the one hand, being dedicated to the fight against hunger while, on the other hand, being faced with unemployment were hunger actually eliminated. It’s only natural that they willingly accept the plea for more help. And it’s not uncommon that they demand a little more money than the respective African government originally requested. They then forward that request to their headquarters, and before long, several thousands tons of corn are shipped to Africa …

SPIEGEL: … corn that predominantly comes from highly-subsidized European and American farmers …

Shikwati: … and at some point, this corn ends up in the harbor of Mombasa. A portion of the corn often goes directly into the hands of unsrupulous politicians who then pass it on to their own tribe to boost their next election campaign. Another portion of the shipment ends up on the black market where the corn is dumped at extremely low prices. Local farmers may as well put down their hoes right away; no one can compete with the UN’s World Food Program. And because the farmers go under in the face of this pressure, Kenya would have no reserves to draw on if there actually were a famine next year. It’s a simple but fatal cycle.

And it just gets better after that. It included an admission from a tyrant that they indeed waste the aid, a exposure of exaggerated AIDS numbers for profit, and an African biochemist stuck being a chauffeur to aid workers. You simply must read the whole thing. It really turns on its head the idea that huge amounts of aid helps a nation, or even a continent. Giving to the poor is one thing. Destroying the individual spirit by destroying their livelihood is entirely another. The interview concludes with the journalist, playing the part of the liberal to the hilt (and, based on the full interview, not really play-acting) asking in desperation…

SPIEGEL: What are the Germans supposed to do?

Shikwati: If they really want to fight poverty, they should completely halt development aid and give Africa the opportunity to ensure its own survival. Currently, Africa is like a child that immediately cries for its babysitter when something goes wrong. Africa should stand on its own two feet.

Rugged individualism, combined with personal, not massive, charitable giving. That is the responsible position.

Technorati Tags: Africa, James Shikwati, foreign aid, United Nations, World Food Program, Kenya, AIDS, poverty

The economic growth in Q1 of this year was paltry.

The economy nearly stalled in the first quarter with growth slowing to a pace of just 0.6 percent. That was the worst three-month showing in over four years.

Chris at AMERICABlog quickly blames it on “GOP policies”. Fair enough, only if you credited GOP policies for this:

The economy’s 0.6 percent growth rate in the opening quarter of this year marked a big loss of momentum from the 2.5 percent pace logged in the final quarter of last year.

If not, blaming Republicans now is just disingenuous.

Chris, still cherry-picking, notes, “As a side note to the GOP, France was twice this number.” But let’s not forget that the 2.5% growth in Q4 beat France’s annual growth of 2%. And if you prefer France’s unemployment rate of 8.7%, feel free to move there. Or vote Democrat.

Technorati Tags: economy, AMERICABlog, France, unemployment

With a hat tip to Clayton Cramer, a not-so-hypothetical question. If 3 retired generals (out of several thousand) come out against the war, and if almost 3,000 active-duty military come out asking for full support and full funding and don’t want to retreat, are both these items newsworthy?

If you said Yes to the first part and No to the second part, you too could work for CNN or just about any other mainstream media outlet. (Except Fox News, of course. They covered both news items.) As of this posting, two days after the presentation to Congress, CNN has no mention at all of the “Appeal for Courage”. Were it not for blog coverage, this might well have been swept under the rug by a media for whom this doesn’t fit the narrative.

As John Hinderaker notes at Power Line, this is sort of a lab experiment. And the media failed, as is their habit.

Click here for more details on this petition.

Technorati Tags: Appeal for Courage, CNN, media bias, Fox News, Clayton Cramer, John Hinderaker

In no uncertain terms.

Pope Benedict on Wednesday warned Catholic politicians they risked excommunication from the Church and should not receive communion if they support abortion.

It was the first time that the Pope, speaking to reporters aboard the plane taking him on a trip to Brazil, dealt in depth with a controversial topic that has come up in many countries, including the United States, Mexico, and Italy.

The Pope was asked whether he supported Mexican Church leaders threatening to excommunicate leftist parliamentarians who last month voted to legalize abortion in Mexico City.

“Yes, this excommunication was not an arbitrary one but is allowed by Canon (church) law which says that the killing of an innocent child is incompatible with receiving communion, which is receiving the body of Christ,” he said.

“They (Mexican Church leaders) did nothing new, surprising or arbitrary. They simply announced publicly what is contained in the law of the Church… which expresses our appreciation for life and that human individuality, human personality is present from the first moment (of life)”.

And he took on the motivations of those who pass pro-abortion legislation.

“Selfishness and fear are at the root of (pro-abortion) legislation,” he said. “We in the Church have a great struggle to defend life…life is a gift not a threat.”

Well said.

Technorati Tags: Catholicism, Pope Benedict, abortion, communion, excommunicate

Time magazine reminds us of a little history.

When the Supreme Court struck down Texas’s law against sodomy in the summer of 2003, in the landmark gay rights case of Lawrence v. Texas, critics warned that its sweeping support of a powerful doctrine of privacy could lead to challenges of state laws that forbade such things as gay marriage and bigamy. “State laws against bigamy, same-sex marriage, adult incest, prostitution, masturbation, adultery, fornication, bestiality, and obscenity are … called into question by today’s decision,” wrote Justice Antonin Scalia, in a withering dissent he read aloud page by page from the bench.

Rick Santorum was one of those critics.

“If the Supreme Court says you have the right to consensual sex within your home,” Santorum said at the time, “then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything.”

As [Boston Globe columnist Jeff] Jacoby noted, Santorum was given “holy hell” and handed “nail-spitting” by some critics.

Where are the folks now who gave conservatives such a hard time? Given what Time is reporting, they’re probably being very, very quiet.

It turns out the critics were right. Plaintiffs have made the decision the centerpiece of attempts to defeat state bans on the sale of sex toys in Alabama, polygamy in Utah and adoptions by gay couples in Florida. So far the challenges have been unsuccessful. But plaintiffs are still trying, even using Lawrence to challenge laws against incest.

The key phrase is “so far”. I’m glad to hear that lower courts are now expanding the Lawrence decision, but these attempts at overturning state laws (joined by the ACLU, unsurprisingly) are unprecedented, and the outcome is by no means assured.

The issue does not appear to have been challenged in federal court previously, though the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in 2005 that a Wisconsin law forbidding incest among blood relations (but not including step-relations) did not conflict with Lawrence’s ruling. But in upholding prison sentences for a brother-sister couple in that case, the court acknowledged that the language in Lawrence is all but certain to prompt more challenges to prosecutions for sex-related crimes on privacy grounds.

Hey there, liberals. Pandora left this box for you. Enjoy.

Technorati Tags: Rick Santorum, Jeff Jacoby, Supreme Court, Lawrence v Texas