Discovery Blog

Cross-posted at RussiaBlog.org

Bruce Chapman in Bloomberg's Moscow studio on May 15, 2007

MOSCOW - Two weeks ago, during Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's meetings at the Kremlin, Discovery Institute President Bruce Chapman was interviewed by Bloomberg's television news bureau in Russia for his reactions to the talks.

Chapman said that there are no substantive reasons for the two nations to be so negative towards each other and therefore Russia and the U.S. should "lower the temperature" of their rhetoric. Alone among commentators, Chapman also predicted that presidents Putin and Bush would meet face to face in the near future.

Former Ambassador Chapman apparently has influence in high places: the resulting communiqué from the Rice-Putin (and Foreign Minister Lavrov) talks emphasized the need to lower the rhetoric, and two weeks later a Putin-Bush summit due to take place in Kennebunkport, Maine was announced for early July.

Cross-Posted at RussiaBlog.org

“White Russians” in ice glasses on an ice table in an ice-bar in St. Petersburg
(photo essay at the end of the post)

I was in Russia in 1965 and just returned. "I like to visit every 40 years or so," I told folks in Moscow. The place has changed, I explained deadpan to some young Russians of my acquaintance. Where an Intourist restaurant of yore served bad food with a sour attitude and left you free thereafter to wander vacant streets after dinner, utterly bored, intimidated and depressed, Moscow today fairly shouts its attractions, some of which are embarrassing, and all of which are costly. The formerly deserted, fourteen lane-wide streets are now so full of traffic at midnight that one has to dodge frustrated drivers who decide to pass on the "sidewalk lane." Police in their sad little Ladas are the ones who seem intimidated now.

Everyone seems to stay out late and arrive late to work in the morning. Heavy traffic is both a real excuse for it and just an excuse. These early summer dates, when the night is still light at midnight, remain hot until late, so it takes a long time for the typical apartment to cool down and make sleep possible.

Bruce Chapman frustrated at a traffic jam on the embankment of the Moscow-River

I come back to the States with a few tips for tourists and visiting businessmen.

A recent Discovery Institute-sponsored speech by Arthur Brooks, author of “Who Really Cares”, revealed that conservatives tend to give more to charity than do liberals. The latter, of course, are more in favor of the government (also known as “other people”) giving funds. Since the compassion chorus almost always emphasizes what government ought to be doing, the media reputation for generosity has usually—and wrongly—attached more to liberals than conservatives.

The same seems to go to the reputation for international charity. The U.S. routinely is chastised for giving less per capita to international development than do certain European countries or Japan.

Now there is a study that shows that U.S. private charity far eclipses U.S. government charity in overseas aid, and, as a result, also eclipses the highly touted aid given by other developed countries. This reality should be obvious to anyone who has traveled widely. At every corner in some developing countries one stumbles over an American-financed aid organization. It actually is one of this nation’s proudest attributes and should be encouraged at every opportunity. I believe it goes back to our religious roots and the values of service that were instilled by our ancestors. Regardless, it is real and is a tradition that either is non-existent or weak in many other developed lands.

Hats off to Hudson Institute for this interesting study.

The following appears in the Summer 2007 Discovery Institute Views, our semi-annual newsletter for members.

You have been reading about Discovery Institute fellows on the front pages in recent weeks, as well as in op-ed articles, interviews and Internet blogs. In a few cases we have struck a chord across ideological lines, as with our Cascadia Center’s promotion of plug-in hybrid autos. As a way to substantially lower dependence on foreign oil (or any oil), reduce air pollution and improve our economy, it has bi-partisan appeal. Whether you believe that human beings are primarily responsible for global warming, or not, you can agree on win-win strategies for energy conservation.

Interestingly, in happy cases like the plug-in hybrid car, the follow-on questions that have to do with process — how do we achieve this policy we all support? — are less contentious than they are for other public issues. Perhaps that is because the search for practical answers is one that simply doesn’t raise peoples' temperatures. Rather, it's the clash of values that excites passions.

The Discovery mission has always been to “Make a positive vision of the future practical.” The difficulties come these days with the vision, not with the practical solutions.

Patrick Bell of Discovery Institute just won third place in the NASPAA You Tube one minute public policy challenge for his video on modern sex slavery.

The topic happens to be a special interest of Discovery Sr. Fellow John Miller (former U.S. ambassador for human trafficking issues). Music was written and performed by Yuri Mamchur, also of Discovery.

In his spare time--so to speak--Patrick Bell is a graduate student in public administration at Seattle University.

The mullah-ridden government of Iran, after promising relief for the poor, has been running down the nation's economy so badly in the past two years that the poor--and the students and now the middle class--may be close to revolt. Gas rationing--in a supposedly oil-rich land--is the latest element in the accumulating economic crisis, and this one is sparking active as well as vocal anger on the street. (see International Herald Tribune story below.)

Rationing of oil is probably more unpopular than a simple price increase would have been. This terrible economic idea recalls the proposals for rationing in the USA during the OPEC-induced gas shortages of 1973. I remember thinking at the time that the opponents to the idea should have insisted on "honoring" the politicians who proposed rationing by having ration stamps printed with their pictures on it. That way every driver
sitting and stewing in long gas lines could be reminded right in front of his eyes who brought them this swell policy innovation.

In Iran, "Ahmadinejad stamps" should be printed now. Since the government won't do it, and even is trying to prohibit any media criticism of the new policy, perhaps as an alternative the angry citizenry should print up big posters "thanking" Ahmadinejad and his mullah backers for this new rationing scheme. After all, just as communists in Russia were able to create a shortage of bread in the continent's richest grain producing
region, so now Islamic radicals in power are showing how to create an oil shortage in Iran! That takes talent and should be properly saluted! "Thank You, Dear Leader, For Allowing Us to Enjoy Rationing!"

Meanwhile, I suspect that there are many sober-minded Iranians who are thinking to themselves, "My goodness, if our brave President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, had not been breaking the country's budget, as well as our international treaties, by building nuclear weapons and supporting terrorists all over the Middle East, maybe he could have built the refineries we need--and now lack--to refine our own oil so we wouldn't have to import it!"