Category: politics

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culture politics

The mess in Gaza

Wow, the Israel/Palistine conflict never ceases to amaze me. I like to think that most Americans think the say way I do about this, namely that both sides are a bit crazy. The Palestinian authority, Hamas, Arabs, and Muslims in general seem to react with shock and dismay when Israel attacks Gaza after rockets launched from Gaza had been raining down on Israel. Israelis and their supporters don’t understand what all of the anger is about after they kill far more civilians than combatants… The cycle never seems to end, part of me wonders if they want it to end…

I was reading through some of the reactions from official spokesperson types and feeling even more angst about the situation. Predictably, there was a lot of empty talk about how Hamas needs to stop attacking Israel and how Israel needs to stop being so heavy handed. Of course, there was also the blanket condemnation of Israel (without acknowledging any of the mitigating circumstances) from the usual suspects.

The best reaction, IMO, was from the Vatican. “Hamas is a prisoner to a logic of hate, Israel to a logic of faith in force as the best response to hate.
“One must continue to search for a different way out, even if that may seem impossible.”

It does indeed seem impossible…

Categories
politics

Most interesting sentence I read about Obama today.

“I believe the Obama years will cause a crisis for progressivism roughly comparable to what the Bush years have brought upon libertarianism.”

That’s Tyler Cowan over at Marginal Revolution. Tyler is pretty influential in the blogosphere, and he’s an astute commentator on economic issues. I think he has a decent chance of being right.

There could be a couple of reasons his thought might come to pass. None of them involve Obama not wanting to help people. Good intentions and governments do not usually make for a good combo. The most likely problem will be the typical political/bureaucratic one. The program will be founded on all the best intentions but the political process in getting it passed and the actual running of it make a mess out of it.

Even if by some miracle a program is not plagued by those problems, you can bet our old friend “unintended consequences” will rear its ugly head. See the Ethanol program for an example of that…

So as usual, I anticipate whatever government programs that come out of the next administration will be, at best, too expensive. At worst, they will inflict significant damage to the economy or to the people that the program is aimed towards. It won’t be because Obama is a democrat, because he is stupid, or because they will be pursuing something evil, it will be because they used the wrong tool to get the job done. It will be because they tried to make the government responsible for things that it can’t be responsible for. I can only hope that this crisis in progressivism comes soon…

Categories
culture politics religion

Funny, but not 100% correct… (Daily Show)

Here’s the Daily show’s take on the Mumbai mess (at the end, don’t know why there’s so much space…)I think that’s hilarious, I really do. John basically summed up my feelings when I was watching that on the news, I was yelling along too. There’s only one little problem, this violence was not about establishing a world wide caliphate. This was about Kashmir.

Usually, when something big like this happens, there are political motives rather than religious ones at play. The Kashmir issue is a political one although the parties involved are split along religious lines. The same could be true of the day to day demands and goals of Al-Queda. They want foreigners to leave the Saudi peninsula, they want the US to get out of Iraq and Afghanistan, etc. Those are all political issues. They use religion to attract and recruit people for political ends. We shouldn’t fall into the same trap.

There is indeed religious violence in the world. Men killing woman because they aren’t wearing hijab, wackos blowing up abortion clinics, etc. are all examples. Perhaps the attackers in Mumbai were indeed personally motivated by religious extremism, but the aim of the operation was to try to cause a conflict in Kashmir.

Here’s my bet. I bet that if these people were referred to as Kashmiri separatists instead of Islamic extremists, we in the US would not have heard nearly as much about it. We’re more willing to stomach political violence than religious violence. That’s why Hitler is so universally reviled while Stalin, Pol Pot, Kim Jong-il and Mao are not thought about in the slightest.

Whenever we hear the media trumpet religious violence, we should take a step back and ask ourselves if the aim of that violence is actually political in nature. Violence should always be decried of course, but let’s blame the right problems, shall we?

Categories
politics

Another crazy dream. Or maybe not that crazy…

Last night, several of my friends and I were being greeted as the newest foreign members of parliament in England. Te dream was mostly about the pomp and newness of being in that sort of position.

Well, that’s stupid, right? You’re right, my high school and college friends would never be elected… Oh, you mean the bit about foreigners being in a legislative body? I dunno, that doesn’t seem too outlandish to me. If you think about it, the reason we don’t want to have foreigners in our congress is because they might pursue actions that would be detrimental to the US. How is that different than what our congressmen and senators do every day?

Let’s ignore the really big things for a sec. Let’s just consider the typical, run of the mill appropriations bills. How often does a senator sponsor a bill that uses federal funds to pay for things in his state? How often do our elected representatives pursue federal policy that would benefit certain businesses? You can be sure that if something is good for a particular business, it’s bad for another. And any time federal funds are used for something in one state, all of the others are paying far more than that particular state.

In short, I don’t see how foreigners in congress would be any more damaging than the people we already have. As a matter of fact, I can imagine that having a representative of any country that we are about to do something with (invade, trade issues, etc.) could actually help. It’ll never happen of course, but trying to see the difference between “them” and our current people we’ve elected isn’t as obvious as you might think…

Categories
culture politics

Prop 8, Detroit Bailout, and other things…

Sorry I haven’t been posting for a while, just haven’t been up to it. I have been systematically worn down with all of the crazy economic talk, I just can’t deal with it anymore… Imagine my surprise when senators and congressmen didn’t rush through bailout legislation for Detroit. I am pleasantly surprised that there is some scrutiny. I’m also amazed that people are now finally realizing that the status quo up there is not sustainable. We don’t have to worry about what will happen if they fail, they have already failed. I recently saw a report that essentially said that the amount of money that has been thrown away up there in capital expenditures over the past 15 years could have bought all of the shares of Honda, Hyndai, and several other big automakers. Unbelievable… Anyway, they will have to go through bankruptcy and with any luck they will be able to reorganize enough to make those businesses viable again.

I see that the supreme court of California is going to weigh in on prop 8. I have already written about what I think of that law, that’s not what this is about. There are plenty of people that are getting indignant over the court even looking at this. After all, “the people” have spoken, this is a democracy, right? We will hear more about “activist judges” and how they can usurp the will of the people…

It’s important to remember that the courts are at their best when they overturn popular laws. One of the basic functions of the court is to avoid the tyranny of the majority. Just because people like a law does not mean that it should be in effect. This is, IMO, one of the basic functions of a government, protecting individual rights.

The classic examples of this in American history were slavery and then later the Jim Crow laws. Slavery was popular across the south, and I’m sure there were fans of it in the north as well. The Jim Crow laws had wide support through the south. In the courts, Brown vs. Board of Education is a prime example of “activist judges.” They usurped the law that had been voted into effect by the population. Who’s complaining about that now?

I think the prop 8 issue is more complicated from a legal perspective, and I know nothing about the California constitution so I’m not going to guess on the outcome. I do know this; if the courts say that the law is constitutional, it will be on technical legalities buried in the constitution. If they overturn it, it will because they felt that rights that are defined in the constitution are being withheld. If that happens, it will be an example of the courts doing what they are supposed to do, no matter what people think of them…

Categories
freedom politics

"Tear down this wall!" and freedom in the middle east

I heard a clip of this speech the other day on the radio and I realized that I had never heard the entire thing. I made the effort and I’m glad I did. It’s quite the history lesson. It’s also good to hear the man himself instead of relying on fuzzy memories and modern critics. Listen to it here:

The first 30 seconds or so is a blurb about who is hosting the file, the speech begins after that. This wasn’t that long ago, a little over 20 years, but my how things have changed! Some of the more interesting bits IMO:

1) “The Soviet Union is pointing nuclear weapons at all of the capitals of Europe…” Wow, doesn’t that take you back? We were worried about nuclear war, and for good reason. Reagan has the reputation of being a war monger, but listen and you’ll hear a man that felt that he was doing what had to be done. he certainly didn’t seem to relish the arms race…

2) SDI. Yes, I can hear all of you groan from here. The “Star Wars” project was an infamous government waste of money. It was a waste insofar as it didn’t actually produce any sort of defense anything and cost an amazing amount of money. Believe it or not, there are more than a few historians that credit the SDI with the beginning of the end of the arms race. How? As early as 1968, Reagan had written that the best way to make the Soviet Union collapse was to make them spend a lot of money. His reading of Hayek made him realize that the Soviet system was inherently inefficient (despite all sorts of people, including a fair number of economists thinking otherwise). The American system could absorb many more losses and still function fairly well. History has born out both Hayek’s and Regan’s visions. SDI didn’t have to work, in fact I’m sure that Regan knew it wouldn’t work. All he had to do was convince the Soviets that there was a way to make it work given enough money. The Soviets couldn’t start that kind of research and keep up the ongoing arms race. It was the first crack in their armor, SDI is what made it clear that the US could afford much more than the Soviets, and they started to change…

3) Freedom. I know that use of “freedom” in a political speech is out of favor these days due to dub-ya’s mistakes in the name of it. But really, what Reagan said and what W has promised isn’t all that different, so why is Reagn’s speech moving and W sounds like a buffoon? I think that it was primarily what was causing the lack of freedom. Socialism was an organized, powerful, directed movement against liberty. The USSR was an easy target, and they were genuinely repressing people that wanted things to be different. Today is much different. Except for a few sad holdouts (N. Korea, Cuba), socialism is dead. There are still governments that repress their citizens of course, but none of them are large enough to pose a world-wide threat. They are also not large enough, or powerful enough to consistently fire up Americans… The freedom that W talked about was freedom at the point of a gun. Yes, Saddam was a monster, but that entire area seems to be disposed to autocratic rulers. My time in Yemen made it clear to me that they were not convinced a democracy like the US’s was in their best interests. Most of them would rather have a king…

In other words, the lack of freedom in the middle east was not so much dependent on governments (although there are more than a few repressive ones over there) as it was ingrained in their culture. If you ask them, they will of course claim to desire freedom, but that word has very different connotations to them than to people in the US usually. So the thing that limits freedom is not a monolithic, militarily powerful entity in that part of the world. It is instead diffuse, ingrained, and largely beneath the surface. How do you fight that? Trick question, you can’t “fight” that, you have to cultivate freedom.

So in short, I think that a lot of what caused W problems was the fact that there wasn’t a single thing that he could fight and “win” against. Today’s problems with freedom are quite a bit more complex than in years past. This last administration has been an absolute disaster in that regard. I really hope that Obama can get a feel for the real obstacles to freedom and act accordingly.

Categories
economics politics

Freddie and Fannie healthcare and moral hazard

Obama had some proposals for improving the healthcare situation. Some of them sounded pretty good, like trying to get rid of “anti-competitive activity” in the insurance arena. The way it has been worded, it sounded like they wanted to target anti-competitive practices by the companies, that’ll help but they need to take on the big anti-competitive problems that are imposed by governments. Here’s a radical idea, allow companies to compete across state lines. Wild, I know. To me, this would be a good use of the commerce clause in the constitution. Right now, every state has it’s own insurance board and it’s own insurance laws. Get rid of that with a single, nation-wide set of rules and we should see much greater competition. In addition, with all of those people being able to be pooled, the risk sharing arrangements should also help to lower premiums.

So I like that bit of potential reform. What I worry about is the vague exhortations to “protect” businesses from catastrophic health care costs and the push to require the business to offer insurance. He has also talked about a public health care insurance plan that is similar to what the congress has access to. Making businesses take on additional costs is not going to be good for their bottom line. Ultimately, that will make them less able to hire people. SImple enough…

The other two things worry me quite a bit. I have zero confidence in the government’s ability to manage an insurance system that works. I also have a feeling I know how he intends to “protect” businesses from high medical costs. There is going to be some sort of government guarantee that will pick up the tab over x amount of dollars. That sound suspiciously like how Fannie May and Freddie Mac were set up. Lenders were encouraged to lend to people with less than stellar credit by telling them that Fannie and Freddie would take care of any mortgages that go into default. We have all seen the results of that policy. Economists have a two word phrase to describe the problem with insurance like that. It’s moral hazard. If lenders aren’t worried about the loan going into default, they will lend to many more people. The same thing is possible with any sort of government backing of medical costs. If insurers are backed by the government, they will indeed take on anyone and the costs will get out of control quickly. If the government backs businesses to “protect” them, costs will again go through the roof. Clearly, someone has to be the no man, it will either be an insurance company or a government bureaucrat.

My main point is that we should learn out lessons with Fannie May and Freddie Mac. It’s a lovely idea that everyone should own their own home, but we can’t have a total meltdown in order to insure that. In the same way, it is nice to think that everyone should have access to any medical procedure, but we can’t get into the same situation we did with housing. Whatever is proposed for healthcare reform, be on the lookout for moral hazard problems.

Categories
culture freedom of choice politics

Being proud…

I was reading some of the comments about the election on my facebook page from my contacts, and I saw a few things that I had to say something about.

There were a few people expressing pride in the US. I share that feeling. Not only have we loudly proclaimed that the government of the past 8 years was wrong, a black man was elected. What can be more American than that?

I also read some comments that amounted to being proud of the US for the first time. That’s a whole different thing… For the first time? Really? This election is what made you proud? I hate to say this, but one day someone else that you don’t like will be elected president, what then? Will you be ashamed?

I have been, from an early age, very proud of this country. It wasn’t due to any particular thing my parents taught me. I wonder how much of my father’s outward expressions of patriotism were dampened by his being drafted? I can think of two things that made me quite proud of this country in my youth.

The first thing has to be my family’s history. It’s no different than most of the other families here. My ancestors came here on boats. They had left behind everything and started with nothing here. They really did achieve the American dream and were made much better off than they had been through their hard work and the opportunities they took advantage of here. There wasn’t any other place in the world where that could have happened, nowhere… To this day, I still get choked up seeing pictures of Ellis Island and Lady Liberty, and as a kid I was deeply impressed by my ancestors and this country.

The second thing that I remember being proud of the US was the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union. The US was instrumental in that collapse. The Soviet Union was the epitome of evil, of power run amok. They killed their own people for having the temerity to want to leave the worker’s paradise. The fall of the wall and the later collapse of the Soviet Union made me feel that my country had indeed triumphed over evil.

More recently, my pride has been reinforced. Many people I knew talked about moving to a different country when Bush was reelected. I actually did move, I have an entire blog dedicated to that experience. I went to a place that had every reason to hate the US. I think that I can safely say that every single person I met in Yemen held the US government in utter contempt. And I have every reason to believe that they felt it more deeply than democrats in the US did. Wherever I went, people asked me about Abu Gharib, the invasion of Iraq, Gitmo, bombings, the support of Israel, etc. Nobody over there liked those things. Despite that, almost every person told me that they wanted to live in the US. Think about that.

Many people here were talking about moving to Canada, Europe, Australia, etc. Over there, I heard the occasional desire to move to Europe, but the vast majority wanted to go to the US. Many people called it “The Land of Dreams.” Nothing will make you more proud of your country than people that hate our president with every fiber of their beings wanting to move here. What could be more American?

Categories
politics

Prop 8

It looks as though prop 8 has passed and will (barring last minute legal wrangling) outlaw same sex marriages in California. This is a law that is clearly about a certain part of the population just not liking another part. In my mind, any law that can be translated to, “Even though it has no effect on anyone else, I do not think that those people should be able to do that,” is on very shaky ground. No one has been able to show me any effect on heterosexual couples from a married homosexual one.

Of course all of this is missing the big point. Why is government involved in marriages at all? In point of fact, the government can’t stop anyone from being married, they can only deny privileges to the ones that it doesn’t approve of. This is a classic case of the government causing problems in something that should really be a private matter. All of the issues involving taxation, visiting rights, insurance, parental rights, etc. do not have to resort to the government giving a blessing on a partnership. This is the real problem. Laws are written that assume that the government must be involved, and no one seems to see the alternative. Instead of forcing your beliefs on others (and that could go either way I suppose), live and let live. Do your own thing and mind your own business. There would be far fewer problems if we allowed people to do their own things that do not involve other people and kept the government out of it, or at least kept the government neutral on it…

BTW, I can’t figure out Obama on this. He is clearly not in favor of gay marriages. His opposition to prop. 8 seems an awful lot like partisan posturing. The irony of people voting against prop.8 and voting for Obama was not lost on me. The people in California need to discover the Libertarian party…

Categories
politics

More on Obama

It seems to me that most of my friends and family are totally swept away by the symbolism of Obama being elected. Who can blame them really? A black man as president? A switch from neocon philosophy? Big suff indeed. I, along with many other people are a little worried about what happens once the power of that symbolism wears of. What kind of Democrat have we elected? Are going to get another Bill Clinton or Jimmy Carter? Are we going to get the guy that helped ink trade agreements (however flawed) and reformed welfare or are we going to get price controls and ill conceived foreign policy?

A commentator on NBC remarked that there seems to be a pendulum swing going on right now in politics. He also brought up the legacy of LBJ as the model of “government as solution” politics. That cuts both ways. LBJ really did help with civil rights issues, but he also helped to create an enormous amount of welfare dependancy and let’s not forget Vietnam. Those latter things are part and parcel of a philosophy that government is the solution to all things. Government spending also ballooned, it has been the high water mark for government spending until the current president. That’s not accidental, W also believed that government was the solution, but to different problems. The result? All of our money gets flushed away…

The thing to remember is that government is a very blunt instrument. When you use it to correct something, you will also affect a lot of other things and it’s impossible to see what the exact effects will be. This effect of government action is one of my primary reasons for wanting government to do as little as possible. The bluntness of government action is also one of the reasons that there seems to be a pendulum swing in political thoughts. One group will do something with all of the resultant effects. There is then a backlash and people like the opposite thing. Of course, that entails that groups blunt force trauma as well.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’m not unaffected by the symbolism of this election, but I have some serious worries about this upcoming presidency since his party has control of both house and senate. We all feel good about W’s philosophy and his party being rebuked, but don’t forget that using government power for a lot of complicated things (like the economy, health care, etc.) always has collateral damage. We’ll see if Obama will be any better at limiting the damage…