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Why cash for clunkers makes sense


PLUS: Would the head of a body such as the International Monetary Fund really sexually assault a maid in a swanky New York hotel?

Thu, 07 Jul 2011

Why cash for clunkers makes sense
Motorways and highways today are the equivalent of jet aircraft and single propellor planes flying in the same air space without the benefits of traffic controllers.

This is my experience after comparing a new high-tech BMW that is chockful with safety and driver-assist features with my own that dates back to the final year of New Zealand assembly.

Next week, BMW will unveil a prototype in Auckland that is probably the most advanced vehicle ever seen here.

While it is standard for modern cars to be environmentally efficient, have low emissions and be a hybrid of some sort, it is in the area of safety that the biggest gains have been made.

BMW and other manufacturers now have cars that are virtually impossible to crash, run into other cars or barriers and otherwise look as complex as the flight deck of the latest Boeing or Airbus.

Such features as rear, side and night-vision cameras, distance-control, electronic brake assist; anti-locking brakes and stability control are just some that are available to ensure safe driving.

The disparity between these cars and those still used by many people means many advances are being wasted when they could be used to improve road safety and reduce crime.

The cost of both runs into the hundreds of millions of dollars annually and could be better put to use in upgrading the country’s vehicle fleet. By contrast, AA says the age of cars on the roads is actually getting older, making it harder to reduce injury and death statistics.

UK criminology professor Graham Farrell has made the point that making cars harder to steal and the spread of security devices on streets, homes and other properties have resulted in a long-term fall in violent and property crimes.

If cars are the biggest enablers of crime, and they can all be centrally locked or otherwise immobilised against theft (even tracked through GPS devices), it would make sense for them to be compulsory features. A “cash for clunkers scheme” would pay off many times over if offset against lower hospital costs.

And not just cars; such moves could spread to the compulsory tagging of goods and other valuable items, further making such crimes easily detectable and therefore much less attractive.

Morals and manipulation
The American media and law enforcement authorities have been thoroughly embarrassed by the DSK affair.

Put it this way: would the head of a body such as the International Monetary Fund really sexually assault a maid in a swanky New York hotel?

The question should been asked, as Wall Street Journal opinion writer Bret Stephens has: really?

That everyone fell for the story – including Stephens himself – and then rapidly had to retract when the accuser’s real character was revealed exposes the desire for news to be like a parable.

“,,, the temptation of a tidy moral [mighty falling from grace] tends to overwhelm whatever doubts might be cast upon it by a countervailing point of data.”

The dangers of the media, and their audience, following pre-existing storylines are shown up every day. As Stephens says,

“… sloppy moral categories like the powerful and the powerless, or the selfish and the altruistic, are often misleading and susceptible to manipulation.”

Meanwhile, Dominique Strauss-Kahn is likely to be exonerated any time soon. But his job has already been taken, leaving him open to again pursue his political ambitions back in France.

I suspect President Sarkozy’s momentary feeling of schadenfreude will be the most regretted.

Flotilla founders on wrong intentions
While the failure of the Gaza flotilla is being blamed on Israeli “dirty tricks,” the truth is more mundane – it was all done by strictly legal means.

Some resourceful Israeli lawyers, using international and Greek law, have tied up the boats with red tape, making it impossible to leave port and quickly deflating any media interest as they and celebrity hangers-on decided their time was more valuable elsewhere. Read more at Melanie Phillips’ blog.

Meanwhile, as suggested here a few weeks ago, the diplomatic channels between Israel and Turkey are working overtime for a resolution ahead of the release tonight (NZ time) of Sir Geoffrey Palmer’s UN report on the first flotilla incident (here is a sneak preview from Ha'aretz).

The Turkish newspaper Hurriyet explains that because of the Arab uprisings, Turkey has realigned its Middle East policy more toward the West.

Turkey has dropped its Islamic look-east notions because of Iran’s backing of the repression in Syria as well as the actions of Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

According to Hurriyet, Iran has been badmouthing Turkey for speaking out against Syria's Assad as well as threatening to hit Nato bases, backed up by ballistic missile tests.


China from one who knows
Henry Kissinger’s huge tome on China has arrived just as its communist party celebrates its 90th birthday and just two years before he was born.

The book, Kissinger on China, is one of those doorstoppers that will have to be compelling if it is to compete with the many others vying for attention.

A quick glance shows Kissinger is mainly affected by China’s sheer scale – its population of more than a billion – and a continuous civilisation that goes back at least 200 years.

For all but 18 of those centuries, China was the world’s largest economy and this alone dictates a strategy of “co-evolution” rather than confrontation.

Kissing, in an interview with Spiegel Online, makes some interesting points when questioned on topic issues. He thinks the communist party’s monopoly on power will develop along the pragmatic path of Mexico’s PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party), which has only recently lost power.

He describes the financial relationship between the US and China as one of “mutual suicide” if either decided to pull the plug and that the Chinese see foreign policy as an inter-related series of events, rather than a serious of problems to be solved.

“We talk about the narrow issue if the Chinese currency has to appreciate. Chinese look at it in terms of the overall economic relationship with the US.”

And he sums up the essential difference as:

“Americans believe that you can alter people by conversion and that everybody in the world is a potential American. The Chinese also believe that their values are universal but they do not believe you can convert to becoming a Chinese unless you are born into it.” 

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Why cash for clunkers makes sense
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