Sun Tzu Says

Things, they are a happening

2012-01-28T15:45:00.003-05:00

Various gleanings from the world about.

1) Charles Murray's thesis, as usual for Charles Murray, makes no sense.

I think it is worth noting that "elites" more broadly should be skeptical of imposing their preferences or presuming their preferences exist and should exist within non-elites (ie, those dirty commoners"). I'm not sure that it makes any sense that these elites should be at least partially acquainted with the culture of non-elites in order to do so. It would make more sense instead for elites to be less interested in fiddling with the lives of non-elites than that they could somehow magically discern preferences had they more of the common stuff going on in their lives and histories. The foremost situation where this is a concern is in dealing with the preferences of the poor and especially communities of the poor versus anywhere else in society. And in that instance, I'm skeptical not just of elites not understanding preferences but of the middle class itself not understanding such preferences.

Additionally, there are problems related to the sorts of questions that Murray picks. There are no sports questions for instance (or at least, the only sports-related question involved nascar). Following football instead of tennis or golf, or simply following UFC or boxing, etc, would strike me as relative elite/non-elite divides that could exist. Perhaps elites follow sports in sufficient numbers to make these less relevant divisions, but I doubt it. Asking questions about TV watching habits, both number of hours and types of shows, likewise would strike me as a pretty useful heuristic. Asking about politics, Murray asks if people have "a friend who disagrees with them". I'm pretty sure this is more likely among elites firstly, and in most cases, "that's because I'm the weirdo. If it weren't for me, my friends would have nobody who disagrees with them." Likewise, I'm not sure that filtering for manufacturing work is a useful idea. Most Americans don't work in factories anymore. Their grandparents might have, but even our parents' generation is less likely to have even short-term factory work in their distant past, much less their present. Physical labour is useful to note, but factories are not.

The one essential factor that could be pulled out from this is that we would probably benefit as a society if, instead race being the principle factor, things like poverty or "class" were used instead (with the caveat that naturally poverty afflicts urban areas and thus minorities more readily). Poor urban mostly black schools are roughly as bad off as some poor rural mostly white schools for instance. Home schooled kids from an evangelical background would probably benefit from being intermingled with the general population at a university just as much, and college kids themselves would be "challenged" with the viewpoints and ideas that back such upbringings and would thus become more aware of, and sometimes sympathetic to, the diverse range of intellectual views available to the general population. Even if they remain unsympathetic to some of those views specifically, the range is a difficulty for imposing policy choices through voting and elections. Maybe that's what Murray was trying to do with his work, but he was, apparently, rather sloppy about it.

(and of course, in order to make any of that possible at places like Harvard in the first place, we'd have to massively improve our primary education systems such that poorer kids would have a fighting chance of getting in and sticking around using the skills they have acquired).

2) Immigration is a moral and economic good. To say nothing of the diverse intellectual and cultural boons it can bring. Why we chose the policies we do to restrict it should be a serious question before we arrive at whether we should.

3) I look forward to being able to cloak myself invisibly. But it doesn't sound like it's going to happen very soon. Yet. Bouncing microwaves off a refractive material however is promising.

4) I care a LOT more about a building collapsing in Rio than a boat sinking. First because it sounds like more people died from the former, so on net, that's more disconcerting. Second because building codes and enforcement are likely a much more widespread problem and thus a public source of danger than some idiot captain deciding to sink his cruise ship. One need only compare the difference in catastrophic damage between earthquakes in Haiti and in Chile during the same year to see some evidence here of what this means. Presumably the one is a bigger story because cruise ship passengers are likelier richer and more media connected than are Rio slum dwellers. But losing one's luggage and vacation, while unpleasant and undesirable, is not the same as being in mortal danger and losing one's home.

Reagan is not Voldemort

2012-01-24T13:45:00.004-05:00

So saying his name a bunch of times isn't going to make him appear nor smote your enemies in ruin.

More to the point, Reagan's legacy is very different than his actual record as a political figure. So saying his name does invoke some mythological figure to conservatives, but doesn't actually involve any actual policies. I'm beginning to realize that much of the problem with politics in this country is that it doesn't involve policy. At all. Conservatives do not take seriously the idea of governing to begin with, but they don't appear especially prone to voting in a manner that involves rejecting some of their supposed principles in any way that liberals somehow magically do not.

There's a reason I find symbolic acts among the most repulsive form of governance, and thus why appealing to the symbolism of a movement (where Reagan the man has been ignored and transformed in favor of Reagan a myth) is also deeply annoying to me. Because I actually care about what the policies are and how they affect other people. I take seriously the idea that, in a democracy, one's ability to vote implies a responsibility in understanding what their preferences when voting would actually do to others and impose on them as legal penalties or responsibilities, should those preferences become enacted as law. Most people it seems are comfortable with useless signaling that "the government" cares about a particular problem. So we get rent controls or minimum wage laws from one side and dramatic police SWAT raids on non-violent drug offenders and home poker tournaments from the other. And no actual solutions, no interest in an efficient government that uses its resources in a manner that takes account that they are somewhat limited (hence, "conservatives" pandering on yet more foolish investment into NASA moonbases and Mars missions and freely fight over expressed intentions on starting a foolish war with Iran to boot), and no public engagement on issues of government structure and power or how it uses these.

Most people are totally unaware of what the government spends money on (medicare?), and thus what it actually does (and cannot do), and so the process continues unabated. Most people are unaware of who is actually taxing them or charging them fees, and blame the most visible politicians (Congress, President), rather than their local mayor or city council or maybe the governor of a state, or more likely local and state official positions that they are only vaguely aware exist in the first place, if at all. More people call for "there ought to be a law", and ignore how that law could be mechanically used by others in ways that they did not intend, or that their intentions themselves were inconsistent and useless gestures that certainly inform others of their private preferences but fail to make a logical case for legal actions and sanctioning of others (see: gay marriage laws, counter-terrorism policies, bans on burqas and hajibs, secondhand smoke bans and now there are calls for perfume bans). Symbolism, the idea that you care about an issue enough that it should be a law, is saying something is more important than worrying about implementation, or the law's effect on the actual issue, and that we should DO SOMETHING. Very often, "something" is what you will get, rather than demanding "something that will work".

This flaw even extends to political choices I might be more in agreement with, for example the California law attempting to legalise marijuana that appeared on the ballot was sloppily written and had some strange provisions. People couldn't be fired for failing drug tests with marijuana positives for example. I would agree we need better testing measures to do this accurately when eating poppy seed dressing or bagels can fail a test, to better assess when people are using because of the way THC works to deal with issues of intoxication while driving or working, that we should probably have some method of appealing available or to push people into rehab or treatment programmes for drug abuse as an option beneath dismissal from a company, or understand that some people have medical justifications that might be available (some forms of autism seem to be improved with manageable doses, likewise many opiate based drugs can be useful for pain management), that many companies or employers shouldn't need to bother testing their employees for this or most any other intoxicating substance (for example, we shouldn't bother testing most athletes or academics), or when they do have need, have just as much incentive to test for high levels of alcohol use (truck drivers or factory workers doing potentially hazardous physical labours), but the idea that an employer cannot and could not fire you for drug use is utterly stupid. It's a symbolic inclusion of a policy choice to suggest that drug use is totally normal and safe rather than something that people willingly can do to alter their mental state, ideally in a responsible way (eg, at home or in the mutual company of friends or family without the prospect of assaulting or harming them through such use) but which carries with it some obvious risk effect on "health" through altering one's mental state and in some cases, that of a medical addiction problem, both of which could need to be ameliorated in some way and may even pose unacceptable risks to some people. We can have no grounds for a legal quarrel with the personal choice of some to do such things as private citizens and yet still have legitimate grounds to wish to see them dismissed from our employment should they continue to do them. Focus on the simplest form, getting a narcotic drug legalised, first. That's an actual policy choice with real world impacts that actually matter for everyone (less militarized and invasive police tactics, a modest ability to reduce violence within immigration issue, legal access to a modestly safe mind-altering chemical should they wish it, ability to license to try to constrain access for minors without actual medical reasons, etc).

I want the real world impacts. Not the symbolism from coming your own political movements.

Some words. Excellent they are

2012-01-23T13:48:00.001-05:00

Patriotism, in my eyes, has always been about the strength of seeing those rough spots, of considering your home at its worse, and still loving it. That is how we love our daughters, our husbands, our mothers. That is how we make family.

The overall critique of the Paul-ites relating to the Civil War, Lincoln, etc is usually troubling. It is proper to question why over half a million lives had to be ended through a terrible series of battles and privations within our country's own borders. It is not proper to pose this question as though it was merely a war of choice fought by Unionists or abolitionists. It was a real shooting war started by secessionists, and fought diligently for years with but one overriding principle (that Lincoln hated slavery and thus the South and that his election was a slap to the honor and privileges that the Southern white population enjoyed in the US government, namely that their "peculiar institution" was protected by Constitutional safeguards). However noble the premises of a decentralised government may be as expressed in the quaint political notion of "state's rights", in the particulars, there were no more important or more expressed or more struggled over issues of those rights than the rights given by some states to some peoples among them to own and possess other human beings. An appropriate critique of the "lost cause" of the Confederacy, or of the causes of the Civil War, or over its innate necessity in history vis a vis conflicts of any kind, demands that one would have to honor not merely the bravest and noblest examples of our humanity, through the dignity or courage of soldiers at arms for example, but also to contend with our most vile and disgusting, through the firebrand speeches spreading groundless fears (as we have today still in many forums debating the nature of ordinary Muslims) and expounding on the supposed virtuous nature of the role of the slave holder to the slave himself.

Comfort is easily achieved by believing our heroes to be always marble and heroic, and to sweep over the ugly warts and unpleasant truths in search of a more favoured fiction about their nobility, and there to dwell in perfect security over our nostalgic demands. Reality is not comfortable however.

Some notes on ethics

2012-01-23T11:39:00.000-05:00

1) I'm not sure that the general public's tendency to evaluate the "character" of political figures is always a useful heuristic on which to assess either shared values or especially eventual policy positions. In fact, I'm pretty sure it's practically useless. That said, there is some validity to the notion that someone who is at least slimy and suspicious in their personal lives has some slime and suspicion to their political views. It is just not nearly as useful a notion as is commonly applied.

2) If Gingrich did ask his then wife for an open relationship, a) that's not a new news story (it appeared in an Esquire story over 2 years ago) and b) it's not particularly troubling morally and ethically by itself as some sort of salacious detail.. The troubling part is that he asked AFTER he had been carrying on an affair for several years, and after they were already married. More people approaching this question in the manner of Newt or other routine philandering types should look to either a) not get married in the first place or b) be open about the possibility and likelihood of their philandering ways with potential spouses who could then make something approaching a rational choice to either accept, moderate, control, or reject this behavior.

3) The actual significance of it for Newt is that he is marginally infamous for his public attempts to castigate other political figures for their "moral failings" (ie, affairs and infidelity). There are a number of GOP figures (Mark Sanford, David Vitter, etc) for whom this is a strange position as a result.

4) To me, there are numerous ethical failures relating to an over inflated conception of the offices of government as laid out in the Constitution and a respect for said institutions that are far more troubling than how he ran his private life. For example his pandering on "activist judges" and subsequent calls to reign in the independence of the judicial branch, one of the hallmarks of the American system of governance (which is to say nothing of the meaninglessness of the term "activist judges" in the first place). Or his idiotic conception of freedom of religion that somehow does not or should not apply to Muslims, or should do so only within some constrained version of international reciprocity (which is a perverse way to apply international laws in order to restrict human liberty). And so on (embrace of torture, use of civilian review boards for immigration status with an implied emphasis on their religious affiliation being a litmus test).

This is to say nothing of his egomaniacal attitude toward... other human beings generally, or his ethical violations while in office in Congress, or his gross defense of his lobbying, and subsequent "pious baloney" that he somehow represents the Washingtonian outsider in this race.

The one positive benefit that could be derived from a Gingrich nomination is that he is likelier to be defeated than Romney (presuming economic conditions remain roughly what they are, on a slow growth trendline) and that the politics of ressentiment will have to subside rather than dig in. While this would be beneficial to libertarians and progressives alike, for reactionary conservative politics to receive some form of comeuppance and rejection by being utterly repudiated in the polls, I'm not sure that we want someone like this, this close to the Presidency to receive a major party nomination. Nixon might have been the last such individual, and even Nixon had the sanity to have his (numerous) insane moments in the privacy of his office, as recorded, rather than airing them flagrantly and publicly reveling in his own stew. Also, it didn't work out so well for the country to give Tricky Dick the reigns.

There's some fortune in the amount of disdain the general public has for Newt, but I'm not sure that a) the GOP is that stupid to put him forward as the candidate. The base might be, but I doubt they have no sharp operators at all over there to work to prevent it. Romney's negative ads worked, and the dogpile of Paul or Santorum against him when he has been a front runner is likely to add to the flames that are so easily started around his campaign. Expect if he wins Florida for the fires to start in earnest to prevent his ascension b) his debate performances will likely not work in a general election. The GOP line is that Obama is stupid and would be easily defeated by an "intellectual" like Newt. That is a gross miscalculation of one's opponent. It's also only possible because of Newt's overinflated sense of intelligence and reputation (ill-gotten) as a man of ideas. I'm not sure that any of the GOP field has possessed the intellectual subtleties to win interparty debates consistently, but Newt is hardly distinguished among said field. He hasn't been proposing new and innovative ideas. He's just been playing the "media is evil liberals" card over and over again. The general public doesn't eat that up the way the Faux audience does. It also doesn't want moonbases or overturning child labor laws (no matter what well-intentioned basis is used for doing so, which Newt does not have one). These are not transformative and powerful ideas. They're the stuff of Bond villains or bad Indiana Jones movies. The biggest flaw in the GOP if it were to put this man forward is in the old maxim: "It is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles; if you do not know your enemies but do know yourself, you will win one and lose one; if you do not know your enemies nor yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle." They would not know themselves, nor understand their opponents. Victories in such contests are possible only through extraordinary circumstances (ie, "luck").

Ongoing war of thought

2012-01-19T12:30:00.002-05:00

Recent debates have shown me that many liberal/progressives are utterly hostile to the idea that their well-meaning desire for regulations is backfiring in any way. They are usually in fact hostage to the special interests that use them as anti-market competitive practices, and regulations are often not in fact used to increase public good and safety in any appreciable way, but rather to increase profits, wages, or sales for existing firms at the expense of competitive firms by establishing significant barriers to entry. Usually in the form of legal spaghetti one must cut through to attain access.

For example, while there are professions which we might think require at least modest levels of competence overseen by a state board of some kind, there is plenty of low hanging fruit that is less obvious where the public could even be harmed. On the positive side of the ledger we have doctors. The argument here is not as strong as many perceive it to be; that unlicensed by the state medical doctors are an enormous risk and menace to the public. But largely this is because modern medicine is overrated and the public has developed an abiding faith that doctors have magical healing powers that they do not in fact possess. In other words, the gain of medical training is positive. It tends to minimize people from worrying about what they've diagnosed themselves with on Web MD and allows for technical expertise at many surgical procedures that may or may not improve lives. But on many issues of medical expertise, experts are divided, evidence is slim, medications are minimally effective, if it all, and expensive, and the medical sciences become more of a medical art. Where the impact is placebo and a good rapport with one's caregivers more than anything definitive that was provided in actual care. We have minimal power over most viral infections and many forms of cancer, if any, and all we can usually offer in tangible terms is the alleviation of human suffering while the body attempts to fight off such infections and mutations. It's hard to see what advanced special training is required to offer successful palliative care at this level, much less that a license would be required to apply it (parents with some medical knowledge could do just as well at keeping a sick child armed with drinking fluids and expectorants for a common cold for example).

So. To point out some problems here, one of the most practical issues facing the country economically is rampant use of state licensing. When nearly 30% of the overall workforce requires a form of certification from the state to work, chances are that most industries are rent-seeking and jacking up profits rather than providing a decent benefit to the public by screening out unfit and under-qualified workers, or entire firms, in their fields. I haven't gone through personally every field that is so licensed by the state at some level, but doctors to me are about the only field where a plausible argument of public harm even emerges and where there might be any evidence marshaled to defend it. I'm fairly certain that 30% of our work force is not doctors, or nurses, or even just works generally in the medical field (dentists for example). So what we're left with is the state licensing for people to shampoo or cut hair, to decorate homes, to start moving companies, and so on down the line. There might be arguments for industries to accord themselves with minimal competency tests in fields like accounting, teaching, or the aforementioned cutting hair, but all of these are fields also licensed by the state in some manner. Not a mere certification of competency to advertise one's acquired skills to potential clients or firms, but a state license is required.

Are there substantial public risks involved here? The complexity and onerous nature of the individual tax code already baffles even these competent accountants all too frequently. Still, for most people, a much more simple tax form is sufficient to file an accurate tax return with the IRS. They receive wages which are reported to the government by their employer, and their deductions are plain (have mortgage, have children, have spouse, etc). Do we need licensed CPAs for that? Most people can do it themselves had they the mathematical acumen or a simple computer programme. Where someone has the money and assets to have more complex returns, they're likely to require more knowledge. But they would be free to seek it out and are already at risk even from the supposedly competent. What of teachers? There seem legions of stories of woefully poor or unconcerned teachers in public schools. How did they get there if they were licensed by a state entity? How do they stay there?

What seems clear is that the licensing requirement is tied in with higher levels of education for many of these fields. Completing and attaining such levels of education should be sufficient claim to basic certification for potential employers in these fields than is a state required exam, or should that be insufficient, an industry standard exam could substitute just as easily. The argument for requiring state licensing however requires an argument that there are substantive harms to the general public caused by non-licensed competitors having easier access to the field. In most fields, such evidence of harm is scant or non-existent. Even for fields one would expect some harm to appear such as a difference between lower certified dental assistants and dentists, the evidence does not exist. In most fields in fact, the evidence is that the higher prices charged by state license holders is a greater harm to the public than is putatively prevented through these licensing boards (decreasing access to dental or health care is a bigger public harm than the possibility of malpractice events). Whatever well-meaning intentions are involved here, if there is no evidence of a market failure, and there appears to be evidence of a market capture of the regulation, we are probably better off letting these ships sail than fighting over them.

List of things I don't get

2012-01-18T14:21:00.001-05:00

1) I realize Romney is tone deaf and I can see where a Democratic campaign might make rhetorical hay out of his "vulture capitalism". I don't understand why he can't explain what actual market function that serves. Being able to break up and wind down over extended or even failing corporations is an essential feature of creative destruction, which is an essential feature of a vital and dynamic economy capable of growth and development. The supposition is that he destroyed thousands of jobs. First, the reality is that most of those jobs would have gone away anyway as a company restructured itself repeatedly through its death throes. Second, destroying or breaking up a company implies two other things. A) that there are jobs available to take down any infrastructure or to purchase it and repurpose it for new business ventures or b) that the company probably failed because of new industries or new competitive players. Sears is still around but it's no longer the dominating player in retail it was 40 or 50 years ago. Wal-Mart took that spot. Borders is gone, but Amazon took over. Horse and carriage are gone, but cars and trucks are here. And so on. The implication is that jobs when they are destroyed are not replaced in some other way. They tend to be.They are however not always the same jobs. One of the problems with our present economy seems to be a systemic unemployment situation. America still makes lots of goods and products, but we don't need as many unskilled human laborers to do so, so there are fewer manufacturing jobs available. We have a surplus of houses (and a government insistent on not letting that market price fall enough to begin to clear), so we don't need as many construction workers or electricians and contractors. And so on. Now. This isn't terribly different from in the past. We used to have mostly farmers or plantation "workers" (slaves that is). Then everybody went to work in factories. Now we don't have as many factories or at least as many needed workers for factories. They will need to go do something else. That's the actual economic problem that needs to be addressed is how to preserve human capital in unemployed workers and allow them to repurpose themselves for future employment if their capital is in now useless fields. Horse and buggy manufacturers surely went mostly bankrupt when the automobile became mainstreamed. Nobody cries for them now. We now have lots of health care jobs, of tech jobs, and so on. At some level we should be talking about how to prepare people for even the most basic of these fields. And that's a lot harder than talking about the tax code or about "regulations", as both parties seem content to do. A further related topic with such firms like Bain would be to discuss the tax treatment of capital accumulations or of payouts to hedge fund management and equity management types as individuals. This is happening, but it's kind of in the weeds politically.

2) The dog whistles about food stamps. Uh, hello. The economy, as you are content to tell us every two seconds, is still in a terrible shape. Naturally lots of people are dependent right now on some amount of government subsidies and handouts, or charities if not that. Creating jobs for them is a) not a task the government is particularly good at in the first place (also something Republicans are content to tell us, except when it is convenient not to) and b) will take a while for the labour markets to clear and for most people to find or invent jobs for themselves. That means you still have to deal with the probability of high levels of public suffering in the short term. If you want to whine about unemployment insurance and food stamps as opposed to some more efficient government backstop to create a social safety net (wage insurance as in Germany is one option, as is a negative income tax or general cash transfers instead of food stamps and housing assistance), be my guest. I also think you'll have to overlook that there's an implicit marginal tax rate on people trying to break out of poverty and into marginally better lives for themselves that's extremely high. Food stamps are one of the few government programmes that takes this into account and phases itself out. But most everything else does not, meaning there's a huge hit in actual income and thus a return to an impoverished status even if wages are increased. And meanwhile this is all being brought up so you can score points with the same aggrieved white people who were complaining about welfare queens and now equally mythical hordes of illegal immigrants stealing public services? Kind of cheap if you ask me. Find something better to talk about. You're supposed to be smart Newt. Show me.

3) Ire and glee surrounding Tim Tebow's rises and falls. I don't care that much about football for starters. But what I do know is this
a) Quarterbacks are rarely that important to team success. Tebow for instance could not have done much to prevent the Patriots from scoring 45 points. Hence, his success was generally overrated and the level of attention undeserved. This is not a Tebow-related problem. Few quarterbacks are very good enough to provide a substantial impact on their team's ability to win games (there might be 5 or 6 such players in the league), and even there there are arguments concerning the system of offense being employed to maximize their skills, the level of protection they receive from linemen and so on. Tebow's reputation also benefits from a change in scheme which preferred Denver's strong running game over his mediocre passing skills (and allowed them to rest their defense by running the clock and controlling the ball, especially at altitude at home), a relatively weak schedule and a terrible division, and most of their challenging games being played at home (two of which they lost big, Detroit and New England, and two they barely won, Chicago and Pittsburgh over banged up teams). Point being, don't pay attention to quarterbacks. The media will do that for you.
b) He deserves credit for his actions off the field, though he's hardly alone in being a charitable and giving person in the sports world. Many sports figures do not attract or desire attention for so doing, or they do so in less public ways. Shaq used to go into a Wal-Mart and pay for the next 10-15 people in line, as but one example (he also volunteered as a cop for a while). One may argue this is different than visiting with sick and dying people and showering them with attention, but there are plenty of athletes who do the latter. Or who visit with young children and encourage them to read, etc. Public services undertaken by famous people is nice. But I'm not sure it should be regarded as special or even unusual. They have means, and they use them in a manner they see fit. That should be enough.
c) nobody should care very much about his religious views. Including religious people. The number of football players who will pray or point to the sky or cross themselves in a religious manner after a successful play is enormous. This suggests that there's hardly a dearth of such faithful gestures.The implication is either 1) Christians are being persecuted for the faith in our society. I'd like to know where I can sign up for this war on religion draft board personally. Because I haven't seen any evidence of this. or 2) that there aren't very many such people in athletics, or the country more broadly. I'm fairly confident that Christianity is still the dominant social-cultural more in our society, even if it suffers from infighting and theological division. It also isn't really going away anytime soon. One reason most people, even atheists like me, "don't like" Tebow is that he can't throw a football very well and thus he's received outsized credit for his team's successes (and to some extent, outsized blame for their failures). But the main reason is that he's been adopted or anointed by the same persecution complex and holier than thou people that we despise and find annoying in our society when he doesn't appear to actually want such attention, think of himself as holier than thou or as persecuted. He seems more interested in being a "good" person and a modestly successful person who gives back their own attention and money and time to others in need. These are often associated strongly with being Christian. But they're not exclusive to said community. Leave him the fuck alone I say. Quit trying to put people in your fights that don't belong there. You're the same idiots who didn't read Jefferson and Madison and thus think there's no "separation of church and state" in the Constitution because the literal phrase doesn't appear. I'd hate to think what you would do if you could revise history so fully in every sphere of life as you appear to want to do, but when you're injecting these turf wars over social features into otherwise meaningless things like a football game, it's getting really irritating for everyone. I hate to tell you this, but I can't imagine your god cares who actually wins these football games. Vegas does. And that's it. They are ultimately games. Not some special method of arbitrating political and social issues.

SuperPAC Go!

2012-01-18T13:20:00.001-05:00

As amusing as the Colbert SuperPac (sorry, the definitely not coordinating with Stephen Colbert Super PAC) is, and as ridiculous as some of the lax system of enforcement appears to be, I don't think this really points out a problem.

Or rather, what it points out is that we should just get rid of the pretext and let the candidates spend and coordinate money as it comes in (while external forces can always spend their own money). What the difference needs to be is transparency. We know, more or less, who is giving to these PACs. Same deal with campaigns.

As far as the actual issues, I was not as alarmed as it appears most people were with the Citizens United decision that kicked all this fuss off. There are a number of reasons
1) It increased access to speech, not limited it to corporate money. Unions and non-profit corporations can now run advertisements all they want during elections. Corporations could always run advertising and editorials by purchasing media companies. Personally, freedom of speech generally should always trump freedom of press specifically. Limiting speech to powerful media corporations to determine the range of opinions and topics that are free for public consumption was never a good idea.
2) Money is speech. It is required to have funds to purchase airtime, distribute information, and so on. Occupy Wall Street type protest movements may be fun, but they also just ran out of money and hence, their speech is somewhat limited. Should people agree with their basic message, they could continue donating money to fund it. I would have no problem with that even if they used the money to pay for ads or tv slots agitating against the government or against particular members of it (or against particular corporations). That is their right to exercise said speech. I disagree with their proposed solutions in almost all cases, but they're at least on to something with topics like income inequality and corporate-government capture issues.
3) Corporations are legally speaking people, endowed with a particular set of protected rights by governments that observe their creation and destruction. But that wasn't the basis of SCOTUS's ruling in the first place. The basis was that the government isn't supposed to be in the business of restricting speech. Period. As a counter experiment, suppose we were to decide that the 4th amendment did not apply to corporations (as liberals wish the first amendment not to). This would mean that the private property of a corporate building, be it a factory or office building or warehouse, could be searched and seized without warrant or due process. And this could include, since many corporations have set aside storage and so forth for their employees' private property, that property as well. We are already strangely assenting to letting police search school property and confiscate goods belonging to students (usually illicit goods, but sometimes regular medication, etc). Is it next fine to do the same to employees at a private business? Back to the actual topic. Where is it okay then to restrict the speech of a collection of people? It is perhaps true that not all workers and employees will favor the same set of politics as the corporation and its masters direct. But at the moment, there is also no restriction for them to organise into unions and to use the union to publicize those views, or to give privately to opposing political organisations (Greenpeace or the ACLU for example).
4) Citizens United and Super PACs generally are a topic relating to election funding. Certainly most of the general public pays more attention to politics when there is an election ongoing. But. For example, I have encountered numerous people who knew nothing of the SOPA protests or even the bill itself until google went black on its site today, wikipedia went dark, and lots of people started posting links and strange photos on facebook. And this is with a Presidential election coming up later this year. Most people do not in fact pay much attention to politics as it actually happens. They have little desire to do so and spend little effort to do it. The actual machinery of governance that is troubled is not elections. It is legislating. Huge corporate lobbies are behind all manner of legislation. From SOPA to the health care bill to those stupid anti-Shariah law bills all over the country. I am not horribly troubled by this, in so far as they are involved in the process and air their objections or support for bills that come up. I am troubled when the actual bills are designed and written by said lobbies and rubber stamped by legislatures who don't spend much time actually considering the power they will wield with said bills. Most of Congress has little more of an understanding on how SOPA would work than they did with the PATRIOT act. This should be disturbing, far more so than the influence of corporations on what advertisements we see during an election campaign.

So while the Colbert bump against this sort of speech, and the attending ridiculous hoops we go through to make something at least mostly legal, is certainly amusing. And to many people hopefully enlightening in the manner and influence of money on politics, I'm not sure there's a conclusive end point to it either. It doesn't deal with the methods of regulation and sausage making involved in actually governing a country, which is where influence actually matters. Elections are like changing the drapes (and usually not even that. It's more like thinking about changing the drapes). Legislation is like ripping up the foundation and remodeling, by analogy. The useless focus on elections is overdone I should think as a result.

We get it Rick

2012-01-16T14:53:00.001-05:00

And so now Perry has gone on air and record as saying that peeing on dead people that you've presumably killed, videotaping it with some pride, is a harmless teenage prank that should be penalized with something under "removing this person from the service of the military".

Meanwhile. In other news, CNN's arbitrary rules on polling and fundraising which were used in various turns to try to exclude Gary Johnson from its GOP debates (but to include Jon Huntsman, who often polled similarly poorly, along with Santorum at times too)... are now being bypassed to allow Rick Perry to continue to attend said debates.

I have to wonder what the hell goes on at CNN. Being as I don't watch it. At this point, in order to get news and information from anything resembling a cable news organisation, either from its airtime or its webpages, one must generally go to either the BBC or Al Jazeera to find reliable and informative pieces and coverage. Even for stories in America. What possible basis could there be for continuing to cover Rick Perry other than that the man is clearly a deranged lunatic who will say strange things and generate ratings? Why is that news that there are deranged lunatics in politics who say strange things?

Why not just leave that to Jon Stewart or the Onion?

The world of radicals

2012-01-16T12:01:00.001-05:00

Sometimes I am given to wonder whether I have not embraced too many radical views; atheism, libertarianism (or economics more generally), and foreign policy realism.

And then I see pictures and video clips of American troops pissing on the corpses of their fallen enemies in a war that has clearly outlived its usefulness (going in country to capture or kill international criminals and their co-conspirators), rumblings of another useless war in Iran, the continued persecution of non-violent drug offenders, often accompanied with powerful armed home invasions by the authorities, the embrace of some significant portion of Christian conservatives (however briefly) of the views of Rick Santorum on the legality and morality of birth control , to say nothing of his views on homosexuals (or for that matter, the views of Rick Perry), the possible passage of SOPA and the passage of still more legal circumventions of civil rights protections in the form of indefinite detention regimes in the Defense bill.

And I think to myself. What a wonderful world.

A bright spot

2012-01-10T16:06:00.002-05:00

Maybe a speck. Depending on how it turns out.

But this has been a very interesting Supreme Court session for civil libertarians, among other reasons.

For free speech and TV censorship
Related (though an IP issue), extension of copyright laws into public domain

GPS warrant tracking, the effects of new technology on the 4th amendment

Interpretations of search warrants by field officers conducting the searches, or rather how broad those interpretations should be.

Suing private prison officials for violations of prisoner rights, in federal courts. (this one was already decided, and held that existing torts should have been sufficient claims in lower courts. Kind of a meh solution as the guy was in on federal charges.)
Related to above, strip searching new inmates

The effects of ineffective legal representation on criminal penalties

There's also a cert out on a drug dogsniffing case and establishments of probable cause searches. (Finally).

Something that should never quite be forgotten is how often some rather scummy people (criminals) can help define and even protect or expand the rights and privileges enjoyed by everyone else. We see it working very often in the other direction as the hasty fallout of a criminal actor is often allowed to press politicians and public figures to advocate for more egregious penalties and invasive methods. Every once in a while, it goes the other way.

Thanks criminals.

A political curiosity

2012-01-09T12:19:00.004-05:00

I'm not sure what the big deal has been for the last two decades about "the middle class". Here is a short list of things the middle class already gets from the government as assistance:
Financial aid for college tuitions
Access to decent public schools for preparation for colleges
Mortgage interest deductions to subsidize home values (and make that inflated value available for loans)
Retirement accounts with favorable tax treatment (ROTHs, 401ks I'm less sure about).
Social Security and Medicare mostly flow to people with at least the modest means of the middle class, if not the rich or wealthy outright.
And this all results in:
Relative social mobility, both individuals and generationally, relatively steady incomes in stable jobs or easily transferable jobs skills, in all cases much more substantially so than that available to the poor.

What has changed, and what appears to be the reason it keeps coming up, is that there are now far fewer private unionized workers, particularly in manufacturing. But there are plenty of cops, teachers, nurses, skilled tradesmen, computer programmers, salespeople and so on who can fill in that void. Not to mention professional class incomes like lawyers or doctors or modestly successful salesmen/self-employed businessmen (who are not really "middle class" but all like to think of themselves as such). I personally don't see any particular reason why work in a factory should have been an automatic qualifier for middle class lifestyles and incomes in the first place (most of it is unskilled work requiring training, but not certification). But leaving that aside, the problem isn't really the "middle class" going away. The problem is access to middle class lifestyles is more difficult to acquire, particularly if one is poor.

We have as obstacles:
Poor public school systems with minimal to no training for college preparation. Few, if any, underserved neighbourhoods are putting kids in Harvard or Yale level institutions. Affirmative action seems more like a problem relating to poverty than race as a result (which sounds closer to the MLK ideal for it).
Licensing laws and certification for the most absurd protectionist justifications by existing players in a field or industry. Barbers and interior decorators should not need state sanction to operate. Doctors or teachers even have very tenuous arguments in favor of such sanctions (which I do not find persuasive, but many do).
Criminal penalties and enforcement strategies which lock up many poor people for trivial criminal behaviors (use or distribution of narcotics or other vice crimes like prostitution), further limiting access to development resources like education, damaging an existing family structures, and creating criminal records making it harder to acquire modest occupations.
Limited incomes and scarce resources that must be properly allocated according to a middle class set of values for advancement, without the knowledge of how that must be done, and in a situation of scarcity such that pooling and in-group loyalties must often take precedence over prudent sets of values concerning narrow self-advancement.

All of which creates a cycle of poverty that is difficult to escape.

In other words. I won't vote for politicians who drone on about the "middle class" or even "middle-income Americans", the bizarre Republican circumlocution version of the same thing. Perhaps there are real and tangible threats existing to the middle class' future as an institutional element of society. Most of those threats could be best alleviated however by properly dealing with the threats posed by poverty. The middle class, while not in possession of substantial resources, has enough available to deal with itself in more or less a sustainable way on its own. It is the poor who do not, and more importantly, do not have even enough to advance. Handing out more and more favors to special middle class interests is certainly a favored election tactic, for both parties, not just the expected Democrats.

But it is not a solution to the problems involved with the future of the middle class. So quit talking about it. Thanks.

So there's that awful thing

2012-01-06T09:51:00.001-05:00

Facebook timeline.

So far as I can tell (since I haven't yet played with it, but it appears to be moving forward as a new edition)

1) It makes Facebook look like MySpace. Which is not an improvement. MySpace was hideous and lacked any utilitarian aesthetics. Which I enjoy. This makes me wish Google+ was more popular. (And reminds me of the line of "Windows 7 is much more user-friendly than Windows Vista. I don't like that."). I'll assume they will eventually screw with the wall too, but I plan on mostly continuing to use the wall and ignoring the arduous task of perusing personal profiles.

2) It apparently requires several hours of self-censorship and regression through however many years one used it in order to make a profile as presentable as the present version. Which sounds like giving everyone a "job" rather than a sensible way to update the network. I'm not sure, in my opinion, that my most important posts were the ones that everyone commented on or liked. For example. In my case, since a lot of information is concealed or simply not provided at all, I will have somewhat less work than others. The most pertinent information I've made available are quotations or my preferences of culture. Religious or political views are made obvious from what I post. Any actual personal information is pretty limited in who can see it and who will be able to still see it even after this shift goes mandatory. So at best I'll be filtering photos or posts by other people about me, or something.

3) On my screen, the upper bar doesn't fully display. I'll be generous and assume that this is a glitch that would be fixed or a setting I could adjust. This could be related to the image sizing elements of FB more broadly being whacked by timeline however.

4) It appears to be popular enough that most people will just go along with it and/or like it. So either deal with it or move on.

5) Apparently if you want to keep the old school version, use IE7. Except that I haven't used MSIE in over a decade, I don't see a problem with that scenario...

Fallout, two.

2012-01-04T11:53:00.002-05:00

It looks like the only thing that was settled by Iowa was the dropping out of two long since meaningless candidacies (Perry and Bachmann) (Update: Perry hasn't, yet, suspended his campaign. This will suffice to complicate Romney's delegate totals but will dig mostly into Gingrich or Santorum's possibilities. I'm not sure what possible service his continued candidacy serves really other than to continue to have someone fun to make fun of involved). While I imagine Santorum will get a bump of sorts from doing as well as he did in Iowa, I have no illusions that he can successfully organise a significant and sustainable resistance movement to the irresistible object that is now a Romney nomination. The man (Santorum) has a more vigorous foreign policy agenda with paranoid assertions about Muslims as his main non-social conservative selling point in an election about the economy and against an incumbent President whose main area of perceived success is foreign policy AND lacks the charismatic and practised and polished delivery of his message that a similar candidate in Mike Huckabee had 4 years ago (albeit with less paranoid foreign policy rhetoric and positions as a candidate. Pundit Huckabee has indulged freely in fact-free paranoia). Which means that his google-recognized status as a world-class asshole is in no danger of being violated. He's also, like Huckabee, no stranger to invoking anti-individualism and especially to use statist power in the economy to favor the politically connected, which while popular with many conservatives, is not especially popular with either Romney-ites and particularly the Paul controlled wings of the party (Romney types like this, but prefer to do it more subtly than the Santorum-laced pro-middle class rants)

I submit that media imagination surrounding Santorum is primarily there to do two things:

1) Ignore the difficult and thought-provoking debate questions posed by a possible Ron Paul candidacy and levels of support that he now enjoys. Media types hate debates and asking questions that invite actual answers.

2) Continue the illusion of a horse race scenario worthy of media attention. I suppose it is possible that Santorum or Gingrich wins South Carolina. Gingrich might even be able to make a play for Florida (Santorum cannot, social conservatives tend to do poorly there and New Hampshire. It's a weird southern state apparently). But that's sounding a lot like the Giuliani strategy, and it depends on his being able to not implode himself into becoming the butt of a series of knock knock jokes. But after that, the only plausible non-Romney scenario is a broken convention where he doesn't get enough delegates. He's going to do reasonably well out West now that there's no McCain out there to muck things up, in Michigan and some of the other rust belt states, probably better than Santorum in Pennsylvania even if it came to that, New England, and basically everywhere but the Deep South and a couple of prairie states. That might be a core enough to meddle in the number of delegates, if, and only if, the anti-Romney vote decides to merge behind a Santorum candidacy. And that would be insane. So I don't expect it to happen. Even the paranoid fantasy of a Gingrich fueled primary was bad enough a delusion. The media really needs to give it up and admit that this race is long since over.

I would note that in the person of Eric Erickson BOTH of these delusions were entertained. Which was uproariously funny.

Firstly, Erickson claimed that the GOP record turnout was false because "Ron Paul voters" were not Republicans. It is true that Paul claimed a substantial portion of the non-GOP/independent/Democratic voters who turned out. Something like 40%. But that portion of the vote was somewhere around 25%, which puts Paul's share of it around 10% of the total vote at best/worst. Which means Erickson must account for roughly 10-12% of the usual conservative/Republican electorate that turned out to support Paul (much as they did in 2008), assuming that all of the "independents" are normally either Libertarians or Democrats (which is a huge assumption). He has no desire to do so, because it would require him to grapple with the idea that national security and civil liberties issues relating to the war on terror, war on drugs, or foreign wars/occupations all desired by his preferred candidacies (Perry I believe was his guy), are not simple troupes where the Democrats are weaklings (Obama certainly hasn't been) and Republicans tough-minded and doing the necessary deeds. When it is clearly not that simple (and the Obama apology tour line or the ACLU running the CIA one have been WAY overplayed). Further complicating Erickson's bizarro world, Paul's voters self-identified as among the "most conservative" and as among the most trusted on "deficits" as a basis for their votes. Are these not core elements of GOP rhetorical support? I guess they are not as important in real terms to conservatives as abortion or tax cuts nor of expressing virulent hatred of Obama/Democrats/liberals or of Muslims/Iran/"anti-anything goes in Israel" types.

But that's hardly news.

It would be noteworthy to observe that large numbers of Paul's voters were in the under 30 range. He dominated that portion of the vote. Those voters may not show up at the general election for the GOP without some portions of the Paul agenda on the ballot, as happened last election Paul supporters vote for Paul-supported candidates or Paul himself but not the mainstream Republican. Which is a problem for the GOP in a close race, especially with more Paul supporters out there. But also, and perhaps more significant, writing them off as though they are "not Republicans" ignores the need for the party to generate a youth movement for future levels of support. Eventually all these seniors and retiring businessmen who are apparently terrified of gays and Muslims and Medicare cuts are going to die. And Republicans will have... what exactly as a core voter at the national level? Abortion as sole issue concerned voters (Isn't that almost what they already have)? While I don't particularly care if their party survives as such, I have few illusions that its demise would mean the arrival of a stronger libertarian movement enough to become a major player. Which would leave us with Democrats running things. Which is, clearly, little better on most issues of importance. Reform is needed, and while Paul isn't really my cup of chicken soup for the soul, maybe it is for some conservatives. Paul also did very well with lower incomes. Suggesting Santorum's economic populism message is rendered effectively irrelevant. Part of this is that Paul did very well with younger voters of course, who are naturally, in lower income brackets by effect of their newer working lives. But it would be well for Republicans to consider adding some poor people and some younger voters and Paul seems able to attract them in greater numbers and enthusiasm than other candidates.

In the related humorous front, Erickson, because presumably his horse is run out of the race and he, like many conservatives, now dislikes the entire field, continues to press the possibility of another late entrant into the primary field. There are serious logistical problems with this delusion (getting one's name on ballots has already shown itself to be difficult for everyone but Romney and Paul) and it presumes that there is a GOP candidate on the bench who could raise substantial funding and support in short order to compete. I don't see that there is one such person. Paul Ryan, Chris Christie, Mitch Daniels, Jeb Bush, even Bobby Jindal or Marco Rubio have been floated as names. None of them will run because none of them have expressed interest in running (I can't speak to Jindal's position, but after his strange volcano speech a couple years ago, I doubt it). None of them has a fusionist perspective that resonates with the base of voters. Daniels has a record of it, but not a rhetoric. Christie upsets the libertarians and/or social conservatives. Ryan has legislative baggage in the form of medicare cuts and support for TARP, Bush is a Bush. Rubio is a useless token piece in an election on economics rather than immigration or foreign policy and is basically an empty shell for John McCain fans to be loaded onto as it is, and so on. .

So however amusing it is to speculate, speculations that do not readily conform to reality should be dismissed as ranting and raving by uninformed lunatics, and not proper opinion journalism of the sort Erickson and others are presumably employed to provide.

This is all very amusing to the outside observer. What seems pretty clear from here is that there are at least two factions which control enough of the GOP electorate to dominate a nomination: social conservatives and business conservatives (corporatists). Both of these groups should have long since coalesced around Huntsman, who has an actual record as governor backing both groups on most issues (not all, but most). Apparently a temperament of "reasonable dialogue" in politics is so off-putting that that didn't happen. Which is pretty sad. Huntsman was probably the single most dangerous opponent for an Obama candidacy (if not the most interesting debates, Paul wins that by a mile) and I would have preferred a more competitive election cycle. There's no particular reason I should favor a GOP candidate over Obama (I see both parties as greater evils than throwing my vote away on a third party in most years already), but I also don't see any particular reason that Obama should deserve re-election. Surely in such an environment, it would have been possible to find and fund better candidates than this if one is the GOP?

If they were really that committed to disliking both Obama and Romney, then I'd have to say they're not demonstrating it.

The world of 2012

2012-01-03T12:34:00.001-05:00

January first week edition.

I don't have much to say on the rise of Santorum in Iowa. As in, like the rise of the others before him, it will amount to nothing. And indeed, in Santorum's case, appears to be much more limited to the cocoon-like isolated commune of Iowan Republican caucus goers, a more socially conservative bunch than most, and no where else. I still say good luck with Mitt Romney to any conservatives I encounter. I'd be impressed if they pick Paul, because it would finally cause some people on both sides of the political aisles to have head exploding thoughts about their team affiliations and could create some interesting Presidential debates for a change, but it won't happen. The sooner Iowa and New Hampshire are over, and the sooner one or more of the zeitgeist bots (Perry-Gingrich-Bachmann) is eliminated by doing poorly in South Carolina, the sooner I can ignore them all. The only things I will say on Santorum in particular is that he's a big government type, and that he has a paranoid and absurd vision of how foreign policy (and history in general) operates. Sadly, that foreign policy vision isn't too much distinct from other conservatives (or for that matter, Obama).

If there is anything cogent to say about his rise in Iowa, it would suggest, as I've long maintained, that Tea Party types on the ground are not libertarians. They are social conservatives in costumes who have no real interest in limited government and zero interest in individualism or protected rights of individual autonomy. No serious libertarian-based movement could have taken a look at Gingrich or Santorum or Bachmann and said, "hey, that's alright". Much less given Gingrich a second look. So they need to back the fuck off with that because that's bullshit that I'm tired of hearing about.

Basic tenet for this election cycle. I don't see any reason to start a war with Iran, but all the rhetoric and bluster is not surprising. From both sides. It's a little scarier coming from our side than when they conduct a naval exercise and blow things up in a public way. Nobody comments when we do this. I suppose also their "don't bring that carrier in here" quip is annoying. But it's not like they could actually prevent it without starting a war. Which they do not want. What they want is the trade restrictions to be eased or removed. Considering there is now some back channel pressure from China and other trade partners, I'd say that we will see some sort of quid pro quo here without a war but with plenty of polluted rhetoric from both sides to say "see, those people are crazy!" I'm not sure that anything else in the political debate circles will actually matter or change substantially based on who wins other than rhetoric on Iran and possible courses of action pursued once in office toward Iran and their (at present) mythical nuclear programme.

This was a fascinating topic. Essentially what we are concerned with therein is whether the "freedom of press" applies to the particular industry of media versus the printed word. I view this as unlikely, newspapers were common in parts of colonial America, but distribution of pamphlet literature was a much more common effort. It would seem that the printed word enjoyed its own legal protections separated from the spoken word (where speeches used to be a form of social gathering sometimes lasting several hours). The particular industry of press media was a novel innovation, which certainly enjoyed much proliferation in colonial America, but I don't see why the Constitution would see fit to provide it alone with a significant protection over and above the writings and publications of other citizens. Control by states over printing presses (and now the Internet as a new "printed word" medium) has a long and ugly history. It was a tool employed by Catholic dominated regions of Germany to try to suppress Luther's Reformation texts (unsuccessfully because Luther's pamphlets sold so well that printers often went to great lengths to acquire the rights to print them). Totalitarian regimes throughout the world have destroyed or suppressed books written by "subversives". It is not enough to provide a justification that the state shall give this freedom to a particular industry (the "press"), but not equate the means of distribution of ideas to others. I would imagine this means that "the press" should enjoy somewhat less privileged status than it does, or conversely, that the public has a greater role in asking and demanding questions of their leaders or public figures. A role that it typically ignores.

So trembled the Austrians

2011-12-30T14:00:00.000-05:00

"In 2009, the Riksbank -- Sweden’s central bank -- was the first bank to experiment with a negative interest rate. And it had assets on its balance sheet equal to a stunning 25 percent of GDP, a sign of how much cash it was injecting into the economy, compared with just 15 percent for the Federal Reserve. The bold moves worked: Sweden has been growing at a decent clip."

But of course, Sweden is just a bunch of "socialists"*! We certainly shouldn't be doing what they're doing! Much less encouraging a vigorous, but less interventionist, monetary policy choice that actually discourages banks from hording money instead of the policy choices we currently have that encourages big banks and big banks to horde at that.

*Sweden is not just a bunch of "socialists". The existence in Sweden or Norway or Denmark or Finland or the Netherlands of generous welfare states and relatively high tax burdens is balanced by access to better quality school systems, often competitive schools, very high GDP per capita rates on a rough par with the US if not higher, LESS progressive tax systems, and relatively little business regulation. Particularly concerning small businesses. But nevermind that it is easier to start a business or attain middle class human capital ratios, they're Europeans and Europe is run by socialists. Or something. If that's the price of socialism, I might take that over our own rampant use of corporatism any day of the week. I'd rather have Singapore style market capitalism with less social tinkering (something like the Dutch or Australians) personally, but this would still be an improvement over the current structure.

Rick Perry keeps on giving

2011-12-29T13:17:00.004-05:00

I have more or less written him off, so I tend to ignore his statements. But this was hilarious.

“Every barrel of oil that comes out of those sands in Canada is a barrel of oil that we don’t have to buy from a foreign source,” Mr. Perry said in Clarinda, earning a loud round of enthusiastic applause.

Yes. Because, since we get so much oil from Canada and Mexico already, clearly they must not be "foreign sources". I look forward to receiving the future Congress members from Ontario and Chihuahua.Wait, we didn't annex Mexico and Canada? Hmm. I think one of us must be confused about the meaning of "foreign" and the sources of American oil generally.

And I'm guessing it's those people cheering. Rick Perry is just their zeitgeist made manifest. Stupidity about common factual elements. Check. Blind assessments of things going on with no idea what is actually going on, check. And so on.

Speaking of which, on the other topics.
A balanced budget amendment. 1) won't pass the Congress and will never happen in our lifetimes. Even with a major GOP takeover of both houses it's still incredibly unlikely to ever occur. 2) won't be useful without some notion of what will be cut/gutted in spending to get us there. If a candidate of any political stripe advocates a balanced budget amendment, I know this is code for "I don't want to pick any item that should or could be cut from the budget and am pretending that you are all morons who assume that there are lots of things that could be cut without affecting your entitlements and government tax handouts". In other words, I view such advocacy as cowardice, not the sort of straight talk bravery that Perry claims that it is. There's a reason it draws cheers. If it draws cheers from the people, it very likely isn't bravery or bravado to say it. It is pandering. Actual political courage might be to say and do things that are necessary but are unpopular. You know, like advocating the substantial cuts and reforms to entitlements and defence spending in order to achieve a balanced budget in the first place.

Immigration. I'm still confused as to what "they" think is possible. I get what they think is necessary (walls and moats and soldiers on patrol). I don't think they understand what will be actually done in their name (checkpoints, illegal detentions, abuse of civil liberties for anyone non-white). Or more importantly, I don't think they care. This anti-immigrant stance, among other features, is a big reason I break with Ron Paul for that matter.

Cutting Congress down to half time. This will mean that a lot of bills don't get passed, and hooray for that. However it also means that Congress cannot reduce the size and influence of the government (or the political lobbying class). It primarily means that it consolidates further power in the executive regulatory arms of the government where many laws are actually created and enacted today. Kudos to Rick Perry for identifying a way he can pander to voters AND establish and consolidate greater kingly powers over the country. Too bad for him a President doesn't actually have much power over whether Congress is in session or how much they are paid. They can call for a session to occur, but cannot mandate what happens in it, nor dismiss a session in progress and certainly cannot establish their pay rates. The Constitution doesn't establish this power for him. Too bad also that many Congressmen are already "part time". They spend much of their time fund-raising instead of legislating. Legislating they leave to lobbyists.

Israel. I am usually unsurprised this gets lots of cheers. I'm disturbed by it. But I'm not surprised.

Essentially what I note is that on the supposed issues of importance to Tea Party Republican types, most Republicans fail miserably to actually DO or say any of it. They make platitudes and panders but no serious moves to trim the size and scope of government ever occur. This is counter-balanced by enthusiastic reactions to social conservative issues like abortion, defiant rejection of the country's generally shifting values on gays and drugs, and an absolutist level of support for Israel (a foreign country by the way), none of which is characterized by a reduced scope of government roles or size. As I've generally observed, the Tea Party isn't about libertarianism. It is about re-branding radical social conservativism. This is fun for social conservatives apparently (complete with costumes and chants!), and fun for media types who like to wail about people who want to radically cut liberal programmes, but it's not very much use to someone like me.

Where are all the bright interested people of conscience

2011-12-29T11:58:00.004-05:00

We don't have people like that in this country.

I found listening to these callers-in that none of them were raising really interesting and coherent questions. One would think that watchers of CSPAN, and worse, people calling into a CSPAN show, might possibly be modestly astute political observers. Instead I heard several calls that amounted to "I don't think I like the direction of the country", with no concept of a) what direction the country should be going in, and b) no idea what direction the country is going in. If this was a representative sampling of the sorts of people watching CSPAN, then it's possible that informed rational voters are going somewhere else for such things as information on politics. In which case, what's the point of CSPAN again?

I appreciate being reminded of the zeitgeist. I get it. You people don't like things. I have a pretty good idea that much of this is because many of you have no jobs or were fired, have trouble paying mortgages or health care. I'd like you to phrase this discontent in a way that says "this is what I want from x", x presumably being the state or some other entity to which you are aggrieved. But you're not capable of doing that and instead we get things like Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party.

Gillespie did duck one astute question about public choice problems relating to regulatory capture or rent seeking behaviors. But it was phrased more as something akin to "why don't we just abolish private property so we can have a functioning democracy". I'm not sure I can think of many places where that has worked either as a democracy or as an economic model. In fact I can think of none, particularly at a massive nation-state level like the US. So ducking that question made sense because that part is absurd. I'm also not convinced necessarily that "democracy" is a better model for sorting out most public choice problems than is "markets" or "social pressure in the absence of legal penalties and state involvement". So arguing for "democracy" instead of one of the bulwarks of a free society, private property, seems a little overdone. But so does the idea that these two things must be in conflict and that one must chose between democracy and private property. One reason they might end up that way is that the state often presumes to take private property by force and coercion and the public forms methods of fighting back against these takings. Very effectively I might add. When the state has less cause and method to seize property for whatever ends it views appropriate, generally people will have less desire to resist it (this is one reason why lowering taxes allows governments to increase spending as they often do, because the public has less concern what happens to fewer tax dollars).

Besides, based on these sorts of callers and their comments, I should think encouraging more "democracy" isn't a very encouraging thought anyway.

A cultural note

2011-12-28T13:11:00.002-05:00

Given that it's about the end of the year.

I have seen exactly two movies from this year that I liked at all, and only one of them was even approaching a good-to-great level.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. That's it. Largely because Rooney was playing a compelling character. Daniel Craig often disappeared in the film because of her. The score was excellent and feel of the film was pretty cold, which was, I assume, what they were going for. I approve the intro with the Zeppelin cover also.

Adjustment Bureau was interesting, but not particularly great as a film or deep as a thought experiment. I think it made far too much of the "fate written by some one else" and not enough of the "fate written by genetics" argument. Binding the "I want to determine my own fate" and "my genetics will limit some of my choices" is a much harsher line to cross than "god/fate/some external power attempts to limit my choices". Maybe it's not as interesting a movie, but I find the whole "god/fate" metaphysical construct to give us purpose and meaning from some external source incredibly tedious and so this sitting through an entire movie just to get the to the punchline that those things ultimately don't matter.

The X-Men prequel was noteworthy for being a prequel that was not terrible. But it doesn't stand up very well on re-watching it as well as, say, the second X-Men movie might. I think it lacks some of the humor of the former version. Or it was too obviously trying to be funny when it was "funny" and maybe too obviously about gay rights when it could have been otherwise. A comic book about a bunch of mutants, to be fair, has obvious useful parallels, and I am sympathetic to a vision of tolerance and acceptance for all kinds of people that are currently rejected by societies around the globe. But setting it in the 60s and completely ignoring things like Jim Crow?, seemed a bit too much of a stretch there. The second and first movies could get away with this because tolerance, while not extensive and expanded as much as it could be, is vastly better off than in the 60s. And so when setting the film in the modern era, gay rights are the primary civil rights issue, or if not "the", then certainly among the most pressing. Not so throughout human history. It comes off a bit off putting and sloppy as a result, too callous or unconcerned.

I found the Apes decent, and certainly our treatment of animals is a topic worth examining. But I don't think it stepped out enough from humanity to do so. All it did was anthropomorphize an ape so it might as well have been a kids movie with talking insects or fish.

Otherwise, this was a year of disappointing popcorn fare. To be fair, last year wasn't that impressive either. But I at least really liked Black Swan and Inception. And parts of Social Network or Kings Speech were interesting.

PS. I'm not bothering to note the Transformers movie or Captain America/Thor. All were typical summer blockbuster fare and raised no great philosophical or social questions. But were fun to watch things exploding in and/or for killing Nazis. The favored American pastime of nostalgia for both, with a little god worship thrown in. Note also, I'd say both Captain America and Thor were the same movie plot (guy meets girl, becomes superman, has to sacrifice his love life to save planet) and thus didn't have as good a tie in with any social or political issues as the first Iron Man film did (as tenuous as that one was to begin with). That makes them entertaining films, but kind of absurd if any thought goes into it beyond the comic book mentality necessary to want to go see them in the first place.

PPS. I haven't seen Tree of Life (though I might skip it, it sounds like every other Malick movie and probably not as good as Thin Red Line), Melancholia, or Moneyball yet. I expect these to be more interesting but none of them are/were big screen material.

Trouble in Paul-ville

2011-12-27T18:50:00.000-05:00

I find that the furor kicked up over Paul is probably not worth the effort. It is unlikely that a neo-isolationist, anti-drug war, pro civil liberties Congressman can win either party's primary in the first place. But I would guess that one reason this has become a major issue is that he's running for the Republican nomination. Where a debate over any one of those topics would constitute a minor earthquake in the rhetorical and actual positions of the party as a whole. Foreign policy in particular would constitute a huge revolt, given that neo-cons have been a hard plank in the party for a couple decades now and Paul comes from the paleo-con wing that has always had a strong undertow, but no policy influence since the Reagan era consensus. So more or less why this comes up is to justify a hasty campaign by conservatives to discredit paleoconservatives and a dogpile move by liberals to discredit libertarians.

Personally, I would have preferred if Paul didn't have the baggage he does from the paleo-con days hanging out with Rothbard and Rockwell, or if Huntsman actually had some realist IR spine to him, or if Gary Johnson had been more popular. As is, Johnson will probably run Libertarian. So I get to vote. That's always fun. Maybe it would be more amusing, or rather frightening, if things like this were on the ballot. (I would vote no, by the way. That should be up to studios and performers and "certifications" should concern things like the spread of disease in a largely isolated community, the use or non-use of condoms is hardly the only means available to do so and carries its own set of risks and dangers within that community).

What particularly annoys me is the liberal attempt to discredit libertarians. Yes, the Rothbard wing is/was nuts for associating with the dredges of middle class society (racists and white supremacists and anti-Semites, and so on). And so yes, there's a certain level of popular support for a Paul-like candidacy that is radical to the point of being unsavory. This does not mean that all libertarians are in thrall with such opinions and behaviors, that they overlook them, or that they genuinely don't care at all about social issues like race relations and racism. As it is, it was libertarian publications which first reported on Paul's newsletters and associations, and numerous libertarian publications, libertarian leaning writers and bloggers have opposed or been squeamish about Paul for precisely this reason. Myself included (though I have other policy disagreements with Paul that I generally don't have with Gary). And it is libertarians (including people like Ron Paul) who have a long history of pointing out racial disparities with things like immigration and drug enforcement laws, along with many other civil liberties issues (stop and frisks for example). So I find myself annoyed at the public reception we get when we do get national attention. I can't say I'm surprised. But when the official character of the Libertarian party platform and various libertarian publications (like Cato or Reason) is classical liberalism, one would think that the liberalism part would get a fairer hearing from professed liberals. Apparently not.

It is easy to blame the Rothbard wing for flirting with paranoid and radical assertions about race and religion for that. (Note also, this isn't the Rand wing, nor the Hayek one). I suspect however that some blame belongs with libertarian/Libertarian thinkers for not pushing forward their more progressive dispositions more publicly and, more importantly, with libertarian type voters for adhering to some of these illiberal ideas, for ignoring them, and for continuing to vote, somewhat impressively, for people like McCain even after a near decade of disastrous behavior by his compatriots in office. The critique and assertion of racism is disgusting. The critique of being modestly illiberal or unconcerned about the advance of a liberal political philosophy centered on the individual (and not the state) is not because there appears to be a wide swath of the libertarian landscape that is in fact these things.

Paulite roundup

2011-12-22T11:38:00.001-05:00

I must admit I had a passing familiarity with the Ron Paul newsletter controversy prior to all this renewed fuss over it. It has, indeed, given me some reservations about him. Some qualifiers.

1) I do not think he is an avowed racist. I think it likely he is personally uncomfortable with homosexuals, but this too hasn't coloured his recent political stances. Which is to his credit. I am pretty sure he's not anti-Semitic too for the record. Given the history of Rothbard and Mises, it's extremely unlikely anyway. The reason this comes up is that anyone in politics who isn't "pro-Israel" to the hilt of anything goes is labeled as "anti-Semitic" by Christian Zionists. Ranting about bankers doesn't help much here, but I'm sure this is from his Austrian economics roots and not a bias against Jews. I wish he would give up some of the Austrian-Randian tendencies personally, but that's hardly his biggest problem in the Republican field. I also think his opposition to the Civil Rights Act (at least a portion of it) can be shown in a strict libertarian objection to be a principled rather than racist sentiment. It can be explained away in some sense because Paul often has adopted a perfect over the good sentiment in his voting. I look at CRA and say that it completely ended a lot of bad government policies and replaced them with a few much less bad government policies, rendered somewhat necessary by cultural and societal issues that are still strained, but improved somewhat. So I see a win. Paul doesn't. That makes it a fishy element for people looking for racist sentiments. He should be aware of the tone as a politician.

2) I am pretty sure Lew Rockwell wrote most of the offending materials. This was what was reported on back in 2008 at least.

3) I'm not sure if Lew is racist or not, and I really don't care if he is (I haven't read more of his material, nor do I care to. Rothbard and Mises are the go-to sources for that wing of the libertarian thought, and lack most of the distinguishing features that are disturbing here). In general I'd say that race-baiting is a time-honored tradition in some portions of the conservative (and yes, liberal) political circles for purposes of elections. A radical newsletter circulating even tenuously racist generalisations is likely to have been generating some additional income that wasn't likely to be the case without them, as sick as that is. I am not sure it would today, given that it would and has pissed off a solid number of Paul-ish types like me who would take their business elsewhere, but in the late 80s and early 90s, when hip-hop was in its infancy to the public and race riots were still at the forefront of American possibility (Rodney King wasn't so long ago keep in mind), maybe it would have. Whether or not these attitudes were thus true, they are repugnant and draw far too easy comparisons to Governor Wallace of Alabama during the Civil Rights Era itself, who traded NAACP support for KKK support in the pursuit of power. The also racy tie-in to Stormfront and other racist supporters of a Paul candidacy, however misguided they are in their perceptions of what a freer state under Paul might allow for themselves, hasn't come up yet, but I'd expect it to do so. Especially if he wins Iowa.

4) Paul's adamant stance against the drug war is probably one of the most un-racist things we could do in this country. In the sense that it would allow some restorative balance to the way we police and punish minority communities of blacks and Latinos (and immigrants) in this country. Also helpful would be not unilaterally bombing or engaging in wars in places with Arabs and Africans (without some core national interest, none of which was demonstrated in any location save possibly Afghanistan). A better Paul might have sought to demonstrate actively how a libertarian world might benefit people of a non-Caucasian appearance and disposition.

What seems to me to be the issue is that, while it is true that Paul addressed this history recently, during the 2008 campaign, he wasn't perceived as even a longshot to win a Presidential election or nomination and the amount of attention and scrutiny he received was modest and low. He is now a frontrunner or at least top tier candidate for a major political party. This issue will come up again and again until he deals with it assertively and decisively (and it will continue even then among his most fervent objectors) because a) this is politics and b) most people don't know very much about Ron Paul. Ron Paul's bubble of supporters certainly do, as evidenced from watching comment threads climb steadily and rapidly upward whenever this issue is raised is certainly interesting to note the level of internet fandom he has received. Political observers like me also know about it. But the average voter does not. And the average voter deserves to know what political opinions and behaviors a Ron Paul candidacy could or would involve, just as Herman Cain or Newt Gingrich's despicable anti-Muslim rants deserve to be properly aired, and in their cases serve as much keener examples of bias and prejudice coming from their own mouths, repeatedly and in the very recent past in pursuit of power and attention.

Now, of course, it would have been useful if a Ron Paul objector like Borger on CNN had also introduced some of Paul's more radical political positions he has espoused in the most recent and immediate past. Things like opposition to the Federal Reserve and actually abolishing numerous government bureaucracies (though I support the latter in some cases too, I admit this is a non-popular and radical position outside of GOP talking points, but not actual GOP behavior, and many economics departments), ending US participation in the UN and global trade organisations (radical and stupid, but popular), or even less radical or even mainstream (but ignored) positions like legalisation of marijuana or internet gambling or ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and abolishing most war on terror footings and government invasions of privacy and property. Voters do deserve to know things about the temperament and disposition of their candidates. They also need to know potential stances.

I'm not sure that I would vote for a Ron Paul candidacy. I would definitely vote for a Gary Johnson candidacy because there are fewer of these skeletons for me to worry about and fewer crankish issues come up as often like Paul's goldbug fascination and polished anti-Fed stance. But I'm not every voter. Every potential voter should decide how to weigh Paul's past misdeeds and missteps in his choice of associates and political association, along with his potential for positive development. If they assess that they do not care for his politics, that is their choice (and in such a case, it doesn't matter what his skeletons are). If they assess that they might be pleased with his politics, but are uncomfortable with his skeletons, that also is their choice. And if they assess that they might enjoy his politics and decide that whatever discomfort they have of his skeletons, that the world is better off even with a possible racist who would end many more pressing considerations and injustices, including some which offer some balm to the fires of racism stirred up over human history, then that too is their choice. It would be the duty of a media to inform, as broadly and capably as possible, the facts of these cases. It certainly has not done so to date on a mainstream level. Reason and the New Republic certainly covered this particular issue 4 years ago. He has made frequent mostly genial appearances on the Daily Show (Stewart indeed plugs for him where the media has constantly overlooked and pointedly ignored him). Libertarians or libertarian leaners are generally quite full up on Ron Paul coverage from some outlet or another (Mises, Reason, Cato, Atlantic, etc). And there are plenty of Paul-related blogs, both pro and con, to consult. Particularly now after he has been in the national eye for several years running for President and campaigning actively with grassroots support. So it's not like he's been ignored entirely. But until today nothing in a major newspaper or TV news outlet has really scrutinized him and/or his ideas. That is an abject failure to consider the likelihood that the other "mainstream" Republican candidates, sans Mitt Romney, would sputter and flounder for their much more prominent instabilities and failings and that we would be left with Ron Paul and Mitt, and maybe Jon Huntsman if more Republicans were smarter than they currently are. And this was obvious months ago before Rick Perry or Herman Cain even entered the race and left it (wait, Perry is still out there? Oh right, my mistake...). The media could have vetted this months ago.

That said. It is also the duty of a candidate like Ron Paul to assuage, as capably as he can do so, concerns about his temperament and attitudes expressed and espoused with his name attached to them in the semi-recent past by an adult. He has so far failed to do so on a mainstream level. Obama had to come up with a defusing speech about his faith and his pastor because of far overblown concerns about his attachment to a radical church. Paul should have less incentive given the distance in time involved, but no less of a political duty to do the same to broadly explain to as many people as possible, what his views, sentiments, and influences are on the matter of race. It would not require a speech. A polished answer would suffice. Even an answer about free speech could be helpful.

A man in his 40s (Obama) or 50s (Paul when his newsletter circulated these repugnant opinions) is not someone who can be excused a youthful indiscretion in the manner of a masters thesis or a teenage experimentation. Particularly when that man seeks considerable power at our behest.

We must ask. And they must answer.

Busy week

2011-12-19T11:26:00.000-05:00

Apparently Hitchens' death was just the appetizer for a grisly weekend of world famous people dying. Personally, of the trio I know of so far, Vaclev Havel is by far the favorite. Hitchens certainly had a knack for pointing out the foibles and follies of many other revered people at the time of their deaths (Mother Teresa and Jerry Falwell most famously, among many others), and I appreciated his brutal rudeness for things that concerned others (interrupting the "Darwin inspired Hitler!" trope that keeps popping up is a good sign, as is responding to police with indifferent rudeness rather than polite deference), but on a key point in assessing his standing; whether he supported and/or attempted to suppress and impose extreme suffering on other human beings, he's in the wrong camp here (with Kim Jung Il). Havel isn't. Supporting, and indeed insistently supporting even after the mistakes were obvious and the propaganda false or unnecessary, the Iraq War made no sense to me. Certainly there's a strain of "I hate religions, including Islam" involved, and a strain of "I hate tyrants". But "I hate tyrants" is not a sufficient justification for a) demanding action deposing them with maximum force (to be undertaken by others), b) supporting other forms of tyranny and oppression. Gleefully at that. No person that we undertake to build monuments to, even if the statues are in our minds and hearts rather than in marble, is ever devoid of vices and contradictions that confound our ability to fully celebrate their achievements and virtues. Jefferson is a prominent example. As is Lee or Washington or Lincoln or King. And it is pretty easy to find people who have a passionate disdain for Andrew Jackson (me), Woodrow Wilson (me), and FDR (modern conservatives). So I am not saying that we cannot ever recognize some element, some filament of greatness in achievement and accomplishment in a person. But we should never blind ourselves in our haste to do this that we forget the person behind such brilliance was ultimately a person and not a monument or a symbol.

As far as the death of Kim Jung Il, a recently active tyrant rather than an active critic or former leader and revolutionary, I would say whatever opportunities are claimed there are small and that we are best suited to play a waiting game and see what leverage and compromise we can reach with the Chinese (not the North Koreans) surrounding regional security and stability. Assessments that this represents a possible uprising for freedom are as absurd as assessments that it now endangers the Republic of Korea to the south. A power struggle over the reigns left behind will happen and will be ugly, but I don't see how it results in a war, without Chinese support which won't happen, or a modestly less tyrannical state in the near term. Since I haven't written about it, the series of diplomatic arrangements in the Pacific Rim were impressive. I'm not sure that basing troops in more countries (Australia) really serves a core national interest, but combined with the rest, it doesn't look half bad at constraining China's ability to play as a more global-regional hegemon with a modest set of alliances and new friendships in the region.

Anyway. In better news. Rick Perry has managed to embroil himself in further controversy by double dipping in the state pension funds while on salary, so good riddance (even though that is perfectly legal under Texas' laws, it is absurd and likely infuriating to some conservative types). And Newt Gingrich has dropped like a rock in the polls over the last week thanks to some aggressive campaigning by his opponents (Paul's ads have been devastating and Michelle Bachmann of all people has made some rather lethal jabs at his insider-y history) and a refusal of the majority of the Republican establishment to accept him as a legitimate candidate, much less as someone they would support if he were the nominee, again, thanks for playing. I still haven't gotten a good response as to why he jumped up and became popular to begin with, but that we're back on track to have a campaign that largely ignores Ron Paul and some other yahoo wins the primary that isn't widely perceived to be crazy (ie, not Perry, Gingrich, Bachmann or Cain, but that other guy they've all been associated with as the "anti-" vote, Romney). Maybe there will be a Huntsman bounce now, but I doubt it.

While I am on the subject

2011-12-16T10:45:00.001-05:00

The famous atheist and writer Christopher Hitchens died last night from complications with a particularly lethal form of cancer (esophageal). Among the debates leading up to his demise was the related premises of whether a) one should pray for an atheist or b) whether such prayers would matter.
I think an atheist would conclude that b is clearly false. There is no evidence that your prayers matter to other people's health and well-being. Where they would matter is to the prayee. Not the subject of their prayers. It makes them feel like they are involved and concerned about the fate of another human being. Perhaps that is a good thing in and of itself, but it does nothing to actually help. It is a symbolic act. Given my stances on symbolic actions (particularly in politics where such symbolic actions cost taxpayers real money), I find it bordering on repulsive selfishness to do this. I would much rather people instead of praying would donate money or goods to an appropriate cause or volunteer their time to a cause they feel they could contribute to. You know, things that might actually help others instead of demonstrate their concern without actually helping anyone. It costs the prayee nothing to pray really. Presumably they would do that anyway. But it benefits only themselves.

I suppose therefore the answer to a) is something more like, go ahead but don't bother bringing it up. I'm not sure it actually harms anything to do this in either direction really. There's a possible positive benefit in that it shows the dying person that you are at least modestly concerned with their suffering and present plight, though there are far better ways to express this. If you are expending your time praying for something other than their health and well-being, it most certainly does not help anyone but you. I would find people praying for my soul or some other metaphysical invention of their religion, or worse for my deathbed conversion to their chosen religious team, to be completely offensive under such circumstances. And so ultimately my preference would be that you do something else for the dying atheist in your world. Send flowers or a book, or a card. Bring ice cream or pie. Bring vodka or other stiff drinks if they are medically able to imbibe them. Bring laughter. Bring comfort and friendship, and be supportive for their friends and family through a difficult time (both before and after the actual death). For my part, bring discomforting events so that I would know the world continues to be troubled and that suffering is not limited to my own plight. Bring interesting discussions from which we could each learn something. Don't bother bringing your piety and presenting it as a gift. It's kind of like buying other people (whom you hardly know) clothing; it's not even worth the trouble of attempting to return the gift for the gift is so thoughtless and worthless to the receiver of it. I'm not that generous to extend a good deal of courtesy to fake politeness and custom that has no actual real world benefit attached to it. Keep that to yourself along with your "god bless you" when I sneeze. I'm not about to be very moved to thank such expressions and what acknowledgements you would get would likely be unpleasant. Thanks in advance.

(Just to clarify, I find I have few points of political rhetorical agreement with Hitchens. I do not share a need to militantly oppose Islam for instance. At least not over and above any other belief structure centered on metaphysical inventions. Where I do have agreements is that the man seems a hedonist and shares a concern for the value of freedom of the individual. But how these seem to have informed his views on things like economics often baffles me.)

Good news and bad news

2011-12-16T09:56:00.003-05:00

First the good. Sheriff Joe is finally in some hotter water than he has been over the last 20 years.

The highlights
1) Cost $5 Million in lawsuits, with hundreds of millions more still in progress. Including the infamous Steven Seagal tank/cockfighting incident.
2) Misappropriated almost $100 million in funds for prison funding for use paying officers and staff.
3) Ignoring rising crime rate in his jurisdiction (even as it declines in the rest of the state and most of the country) by not even investigating various crimes; sexual assault being among the foremost ignored. Thanks for being a misogynist on top of a racist?
4) Over 2/5s of detained persons on immigration charges turn out to be legal citizens. I'd say that's a pretty poor track record suggesting that he's not doing the sort of investigative work needed to properly identify illegal immigrants in a community. A supposition which is borne out by a) the treatment of immigrants once detained, often bordering on torture if not outright, and b) the incredible frequency with which immigrant-looking folks (ie, Latinos) are stopped for no apparent reason at all in violation of the requirements that immigration status can be checked when an actual offense has been committed. 20% of all stops have no overriding violation?

I'll be happy when this guy joins Patrick Sullivan Jr in a jail named after himself (Sullivan was arrested on drug trafficking and trading drugs for sex, after a lifetime spent railing against drug dealers). No person should be so brazenly permitted to violate the rights of human beings, much less citizens and taxpayers of the region of a state entrusted to their care to oversee the rule of law. If this were a Monopoly game, I'd just keep playing the "go directly to jail, do not pass go" card on him. All that said, the man was, last I checked, potentially a US SENATE candidate in his state. That's frightening.

The bad. SOPA is still kicking around. I'm on the Wyden list in case of a filibuster in the Senate and I've written all 3 Ohio Reps available in order to remonstrate my concerns here. But really the problems are legion, starting with the one highlighted there; that the internet uses a sort of spontaneous ordering in order to address problems like internet security protocols. And that sort of spontaneous order needs to be carefully approached, if at all, with legal strictures. It would seem to me that a) we already possess a device for copyrights violations (DCMA) and b) that the most available studies I have seen on internet piracy suggest that whatever threat it poses to these industries is minimal and c) there are already available distribution methods on the web for these industries to attempt to co-opt or to participate in through licensing deals that would allow them to continue to exist. Personally, I'm not sure why any musician would attempt to sign with a record label anymore and at some point in the future, it might be possible to produce higher quality films privately as well to avoid that as a distribution node as well. Perhaps this is what such industries are really worried about, but it seems like they worry about something that isn't actually costing them very much by attempting to impose MASSIVE costs on everyone else. Usually industries, and unions for that matter, can get away with this by imposing very small marginal costs on everyone else in the pursuit of rent-seeking behaviors with legislative support and embrace. In this case, the costs are potentially very large. I suspect this will play into whether any bill actually passes.

Some weird. I'm kind of fascinated watching what the GOP does with Ron Paul's modest surge in polls. He's basically had a cap of around 10-12% of the GOP electorate (plus some moderates and independents outside that electorate). But he's now polling at rates approaching 20%. The consequence has been a hasty campaign to declare the actual winner of the Iowa caucuses as someone else if Paul should win, as insulation against the idea that somehow, someone, somewhere has decided that being anti-war, anti-government spending, pro-free market/anti-crony capitalism is a platform that Republicans should embrace instead of their usual pro-war, pro-government spending, anti-free market/pro-crony capitalism platform that mostly resembles the Democratic campaigns as well. My best guess is that Republicans are unlikely to win the 2012 Presidency anyway, and so it would be most useful for them to nominate someone interesting and where there are actual debates to be had between the two parties. Gary Johnson has long been favored by me over Paul because he has much more favorable social liberal views (pro-choice, pro-immigration, nominally more pro-gay marriage than Paul, though not by much, and both are anti-drug war), and doesn't openly douse his views in that novel religion known as Austrian economics (I say this because it constructs itself in a non-falsifiable way, the same way religions do). That said, a Paul-Obama debate where Paul can credibly run to LEFT of Obama on immigration (Obama is heavy on deportations), the drug war (Obama DOJ is heavy on arresting legal pot producers and dispensers), foreign policy (see Libya, assassinations of American citizens by robotic drones), and civil liberties (war on terror policies and drug war policies to boot), would be amusing. Of course, Paul's history and general perception as a crank would guarantee that he wouldn't be elected, but so far as I can tell, only the ill-fated Mitt Romney is widely perceived as a plausible upset for the incumbent. At least give me a reason to watch the debates?

I liked the other Paul trade better

2011-12-15T13:35:00.001-05:00

The one that New Orleans got back Lamar Odom, Luis Scola, Kevin Martin, and a combo guard backup, plus a 1st round draft pick.

Now they get Eric Gordon, Chris Kaman, a second year backup forward out of Wake Forest (Aminu is solid but I can't see him being David West or Odom/Scola level player) and a couple of second round picks.

I'm not sure what message the league wanted to send other than "we won't send Chris Paul to the Lakers" (even if it meant the Lakers were giving up Odom AND Gasol to get him).

Other moves. I like the Clippers pick up of Butler. Didn't like the pickup of Billups (and Paul). Little weird. I guess they can move Billups to shooting to replace some of Gordon's lost production.
Bulls needed a shooter, got Hamilton. I'm not sure he's what they needed per se, but it'll help.
Denver has been really busy. Getting back Andre Miller and picking up Corey Brewer were both smart moves. Though I'd rather have had Felton than Miller over the next couple years. I'm guessing they really wanted Hamilton. Rudy Fernandez was also a good pickup.
Dallas getting Odom doesn't quite make sense since they lost Tyson Chandler. But I guess they can go unconventional and try to score more again. Speaking of which I would like the Tyson to New York move except that they still have D'Antoni as their coach.
Indiana picking up West is smart. I like their front line (West, Hibbert, and Granger)
Miami picking up Battier, smart. Picking up Curry raises some eyebrows though.

Not sure the Celtics did much. I do like getting rid of Big Baby and Shaq retired. But they didn't get back much for Davis and they kept Jeff Green. And Pavlovic is pretty weak. I should think they need the two Purdue kids to be pretty good. About the only good news there is that I'm not sure that the Knicks, now having no point guard at all (Bibby was washed up 3 years ago), will be any good. I'd be more concerned about the 76ers within the division. The Heat/Bulls though are both scary looking teams.

So far, I expect Toronto, Cleveland, and Detroit to all be very bad teams in the East. And Orlando once they trade Howard. Also I have no idea what to make of Washington. John Wall is worth at least 10 wins right? And then... the next best players are JaVale McGee and Jordan Crawford? Really I only expect Miami, Chicago, Boston, and Indiana to be any good at all in the East, with Atlanta, New York, New Jersey (I expect another couple weird free agent moves there) maybe Orlando (if they don't trade Howard), and Milwaukee all hovering around 30-35 wins.

Out West, I'd expect New Orleans to be pretty bad. Wolves and Kings to be bad, Jazz to be bad, and other than the Clippers and Thunder, nobody to really stand out. Maybe Memphis will be pretty good. I think the Lakers, Spurs, Suns, and Mavs are all older and not much better, if not worse (Leonard to the Spurs was however a great pickup). I'm not sure yet what to make of the Blazers and Nuggets. Probably both will be solid 40 win range, more for the Blazers if they give up on trying to play Roy. Rockets and maybe even the Warriors should be decent (it would help if the Warriors would trade Ellis).

This is Newt

2011-12-14T09:56:00.001-05:00

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Blofeld! Sounds about right for the guy who wants to build a moon base, a system of mirror lights in space, worries about EMPs (when no national security experts do), wants to execute pot dealers.

I also liked the "grappling baby", the logical conclusion to the stupidity of the anchor baby mythology. On average, the babies involved are the illegal immigrant mother's SECOND child born here and they've already lived here for several years. If that's supposed to be the anchor, then I don't understand nautical engineering.