Bill Maher's Noble Attempt to 'Corrupt' Democracy

According to the New York Times, longtime comedian, talk show host, and Citizens United critic Bill Maher has decided he wants to enter “into the exciting world of outright meddling with the political process.” His plan, apparently, is to pick a ridiculous member of Congress who faces a competitive race in the coming November election…and make him or her lose.

Personally, I think this may be the noblest pursuit ever undertaken by a talking head—unseating incumbent politicians is something to which all Americans can and should aspire. Mr. Maher has the cachet, financial resources, and—it’s been said—humor to literally ridicule someone out of office. Ain’t democracy grand?

The project — which the show is calling the “flip the district” campaign — is intended to get real results, said Scott Carter, the show’s executive producer. Among the criteria for selecting a representative, other than some degree of outrageousness in statements or voting record, is that the member be in a truly competitive race. Those running unopposed will not be selected, no matter how egregious the show’s fans may claim them to be.

There is one small problem, however. Mr. Maher wants to unseat this unlucky representative of the people by using his television show and stand-up act as a platform to run his anti-whomever campaign. Even though he has pledged no money or direct coordination with the challenger-beneficiary of his actions, his independent expenditures—implicitly linked to the corporation he works for, Time Warner’s HBO, by the explicit participation of his show’s executive producer and the presumed use of the show’s budget—necessarily implicate corruption.

David Brooks's Flaccid Defense of Drug Prohibition

Most talking heads who are willing to go on record against drug legalization are deeply invested in preserving it--either to maintain their antiquated view of 'law and order,' or because they hold the singular belief that drugs are evil and invariably rot the human soul. Neither of these can possibly justify the punitive structure of our drug laws, let alone the United States' criminal justice leviathan, but such arguments, while misguided, at least approach the issue from principle.

Today, however, the New York Times's David Brooks finds a third way--a stunningly flaccid defense of the status quo. In my years of arguing against drug prohibition, I cannot recall a less-inspired, more ineffectual, and heartless piece of writing against my position. To say this column was phoned in insults the effort it takes to pick up a phone, find stored contact information, and press send.

Missing among the 803 words used to defend impotently mutter his position were: "criminal," "arrest," "incarceration," "jail," "prison," "misdemeanor," or "felony." (Note also that the piece is utterly devoid of conviction in any sense of the word.) To completely ignore the criminal implications of our current laws is even more dishonest than the mealy mouthed nonsense that usually comes from the ONDCP. The state of American criminal justice has even forced them, the federal government's anti-drug mouthpiece, to acknowledge that criminalization has had devastating unintended consequences and that, as a result, their tactics must change (if only rhetorically). Brooks, apparently, could not muster even that much honesty.

For shame.

bellum medicamenti delenda est

Some Thoughts on Fear and Gun Control

NB: my opinions alone, yadda yadda yadda.

As the New York Times noted this morning, most gun deaths in the United States are actually suicides—by a 2 to 1 margin. Thus, only about a third of Americans who die from guns are doing so by the will of another. Using 2012 data (courtesy of MoJo), there were 9,960 gun homicides in 2012, and roughly rounding the U.S. population using 2010 census data (~308,745,000), there were about 3.2 gun homicides per 100,000 people in America. That is, removing all risk factors, an American's chance of being shot to death in the last year was approximately .0032%. There is indeed a problem of gun violence in this country, but murder and other violent crime rates have been declining steadily over the past two decades. It's getting better, and we can find ways to make these numbers even smaller, but it's unlikely many of the newly proposed gun control measures will be effective in doing it. So why are they being pushed?

Earlier this week, a man was fatally struck by a train at DC's Gallery Place/Chinatown Metro Station during morning rush hour. I was running a little late that morning and that incident made me a lot later. At the time, we had no idea whether the person who was struck jumped, slipped, or was pushed, but everyone thinks getting hit by a train is tragic and awful. Yet, when the announcement came over my train's public address speaker, no one freaked out or even reacted at all, other than a couple eye rolls of frustration that their commute just got lengthened. No “Oh, that's a shame!” or “Oh my god, that's terrible!” Just a train of normal commuters reading their Kindles and filling out sudokus and crosswords like any other Tuesday train delay. A man's (presumed) death did not emotionally register with anyone on the train that I could tell.

While I was sitting there, I thought about the nonchalance with which the entire train took the person's probable death. I could be wrong, but I think that if he had gone to the platform at Chinatown at the exact same time for the exact same purpose, but pulled out a gun and immediately shot himself in the head, the reaction on the train at my station in Virginia would have been much different. Why?

Guns scare people. 

Despite the fact we stand on platforms waiting for zooming trains or get in automobiles unquestionably capable of killing us just as dead every day as part of our get-to-work ritual, people fear guns more even when used by someone on themselves alone. Sure, in theory, someone could pick up the gun after the man shot himself and harm others, but I would imagine most of the people on the platform would be too shocked to think “Oh, here's my chance to go on a rampage/rob a group of people at gunpoint!,” as if lack of opportunity is what prevents most people from doing it. Yes, guns are designed to be lethal whereas trains and cars serve other functions, but in this situation, the use of a gun would produce a much more shocking effect on the public—rather than just the witnesses on the platform and the poor train operator—despite being functionally indistinguishable to anyone but the emergency responders.

For comparison, 32,885 people were killed in fatal automobile incidents in 2010.* Roughly, then, any given American is more than three times as likely to die in a car accident than be shot to death if you ignore risk factors on both sides. That is, if you're not involved in the drug trade or in an abusive relationship, your odds of dying as a result of gun violence is even lower than the numbers above suggest.

There are numerous tragic exceptions, of course, but while firearms make violence easier, they are not the causes of violence. Policymakers should be addressing the causes of violence if the public safety were actually their primary goal. Instead, most of the gun debate operates on this emotional level detached from the actual harm to the general public because the people want to feel safe, despite the considerable safety most Americans already have.

This isn't to say we must preserve the status quo or that any new controls are an affront to the Constitution, because they may not be, but policies that are pushed by irrational fear of guns are unlikely to hinder gun violence because the root causes of most gun violence remain. Meanwhile, domestic violence and the Drug War rage on, and only so few in the gun debate are actually addressing them. 

bellum medicamenti delenda est 

*PS: Of course I understand that automobile deaths have decreased as cars have gotten safer and various other factors. But you're not going to make lethal weapons that much "safer" and simultaneously preserve their effectiveness. The point is not that cars are bad, but that the fears surrounding gun control are not generally borne out by statistics.

Little Guy Beats Ivy League Land Grab

For once, we have good news on eminent domain from the Empire State:

A state court ruled on Thursday that the state could not use eminent domain on behalf of Columbia University to obtain parts of a 17-acre site in West Harlem, dealing a major blow to the university’s plans to build a $6.3 billion satellite campus.

Nicholas Sprayregen, owner of a self-storage company who fought the taking, knew the odds were against him as he took on the prestigious university and the state of New York. He is understandably pleased with the decision:

“I feel unbelievable,” Mr. Sprayregen said following Thursday’s decision. “I was always cautiously optimistic. But I was aware we were going against 50 years of unfair cases against property owners.”He and the gas station owners challenged the state’s finding that the neighborhood was blighted and its decision to condemn property in the project area on behalf of the university.

One wonders how successful businesses magically become “blighted” when high profile people or entities utter the words “new development.” So what now?

The court’s decision is not fatal to its expansion plan. It already owns or controls 91 percent of the 17-acres–61 of 67 buildings–in the project area. It can simply build around the other property owners, or come to some sort of agreement. But the state and the university had always sought the entire site. 

It bought most of the land between 125th Street and 133rd Street, between Broadway and Riverside Drive. But the university failed to work out a deal with Nicholas Sprayregen, who owned four Tuck-it-Away Self Storage buildings in the area, and the owners of two gas stations. At one point, Mr. Sprayregan offered to swap his properties for other land owned by Columbia nearby, but Columbia refused to do a deal. He said the state never came to him asking to work out a solution. (Emphasis added)

While the blogpost is unquestionably fair to Mr. Sprayregan and his fight, I couldn’t help but notice the language in the headline of the story: “Court Deals Blow to Columbia University.” Maybe it’s just my partiality to underdogs, but I think the hook of the story is that the little guy won against heavy odds fighting a privileged and powerful bully and the State of New York, not the misfortune of the poor little rich school with the seven billion dollar endowment.

Perhaps the Most Preposterous Thought Ever Printed in the New York Times

And that is saying something.

But, without further ado, I present to you the unfathomable Thomas Friedman:

There is only one thing worse than one-party autocracy, and that is one-party democracy, which is what we have in America today.

One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages.That one party can just impose the politically difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward in the 21st century. It is not an accident that China is committed to overtaking us in electric cars, solar power, energy efficiency, batteries, nuclear power and wind power. China's leaders understand that in a world of exploding populations and rising emerging-market middle classes, demand for clean power and energy efficiency is going to soar. Beijing wants to make sure that it owns that industry and is ordering the policies to do that, including boosting gasoline prices, from the top down...Our one-party democracy is worse.

For some reason, when I think of China and green automobiles, I think of this:


'Benevolent' dictatorship/autocracy beats the deliberative process of democratic republics because, dammit, those people can get things done!

Just don't look at the man behind the curtain jailing, censoring, beating, and executing untold numbers of dissenters, choking-off less desirable political content on the internet, forcing abortions on families, and only allowing markets to flourish in certain geographic locations while so many people still live in the countryside without basic amenities those contemptible and inefficient free nations have had for, oh, about 100 years.

There aren't words in our language strong enough to describe the abject imbecility of this column.

H/T: John Tabin and Matt Welch

more on this by Will Wilkinson and Kenneth Anderson.

Euphememism, Schmeuphemism

The blurb from the New York Times email update this morning linking to this story:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s centrism in California appeals less to the Republican Party’s base than the resistance push of Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.

I'm no McConnell Republican, but if Schwarzenegger Republicanism means "centrist," "centrist" must mean "ideologically bankrupt."

How Far Can the Grey Lady Fall?

I mean, damn.

via @MikeRiggs

Why I'm Hard on Obama

Recently, my facebook wall became a bit of an ideological battleground. I have spats with one of my liberal friends from Indiana who is wholly in the tank for Obama. Then, a girl I had a fleeting crush on (Yes, you Amy) in my last few weeks at IU (my first time around) has been giving her two cents, along with an old friend from grade school, among others. The topics of contention varied, from school choice to spending and waste. The topic, however, that garnered the most comments was Obama's bow to the King of Saudi Arabia.

Without rehashing all the mess that went along with it, the general consensus of the liberal faction was that a) it wasn't a big deal, b) we should be worrying about other things and c) we should give Obama some space and time to see how his policies play out. I grant "a" to a certain extent, fully agree with "b," and "c" I couldn't disagree with more strongly because I think it flies fully in the face of "b." There was also mention that I was detracting from Obama just to be contrarian, or perhaps out of some partisan agenda. Neither is true, but probably would have been 10 years ago or so, so I'll forgive the assumption.

As I've noted here before, I hoped Obama would do well and have, most definitely, gushed pride for his accomplishments. But almost all good will toward him has been erased, not for some petty reason or any fealty to the GOP--I think they'd be screwing up pretty bad too, at the moment, because only about five of them really buy the limited government argument they've been spouting since the election--but because he is what I feared he'd be: just another opportunistic Democratic politician who will pander to the typical lefty constituencies (the American Bar Association, the Big Labor, and--most disappointingly--the teachers' unions). While one would expect some deference to his party's supporters, he's going out of his way to make himself a liar and bend to the whim of Reid, Pelosi, et al. who represent anything but "change." Furthermore, he's maintained or strengthened some of the Bush administrations most awful policies: indefinite detention and state's secret privilege, which even the left is starting to howl about.

Even though he has as much political capital as W. did post-9/11 and more than Bill Clinton ever enjoyed while in office, Obama can't bring himself to use it against his own party--effectively the only group keeping him from implementing his own policy.

Between his capitulations and outright reneges, the Obama presidency has already demonstrated itself to be more of the same, instead of the change that so many--and on some levels, I must count myself here--hoped for. Below, you will find a list of his more egregious actions, none of which involve royalty, diplomacy, or foreign policy--and the majority of which come from either major news sources or respected but unabashedly liberal sites (not that there's anything wrong with that):

Farm subsidies (New York Times):

The White House plan would have prohibited so-called direct payments to farms whose annual gross receipts exceeded $500,000 — a large sum on the surface, but one that did not take account of whether those receipts yielded any real profits.

Within days, the National Farmers Union, which represents roughly 250,000 farm families, forcefully denounced the president’s plan and urged Congress to oppose it. The group’s board also raised the issue at a meeting with officials at the White House

While Mr. Obama’s Democratic allies on Capitol Hill adopted much of his budget template, the farm subsidy limits never got off the ground.

State Secrets (Washington Post):

There are two things you really need to know about the "state secrets" privilege.

The first is that the government lied in the 1953 Supreme Court case that established the government's right not to disclose to the judicial branch information that would compromise national security. The widows of three civilian engineers who died in a military airplane crash sued the government for negligence. The government refused to turn over records, citing national security. But some 50 years later, when the records in question were made public, there were no national security secrets in them, just embarrassing information establishing the government's negligence. (More about the case here.)

The second thing is that the way the state secrets privilege has typically worked since then is that the government can refuse to publicly disclose a specific item of information if it explains why to the judge. The idea is not that government officials get to tell a judge to dismiss an entire case because they don't want to answer any questions at all.

But it is precisely such a sweeping assertion that the Justice Department -- the Obama Justice Department -- is making in three cases that relate to torture and warrantless wiretapping. (emphasis in original)

State Secrets, cont'd (Salon.com/Glenn Greenwald):

Every defining attribute of Bush's radical secrecy powers -- every one -- is found [in Obama's DOJ briefs], and in exactly the same tone and with the exact same mindset. Thus: how the U.S. government eavesdrops on its citizens is too secret to allow a court to determine its legality. We must just blindly accept the claims from the President's DNI that we will all be endangered if we allow courts to determine the legality of the President's actions. Even confirming or denying already publicly known facts -- such as the involvement of the telecoms and the massive data-mining programs -- would be too damaging to national security. Why? Because the DNI says so. It is not merely specific documents, but entire lawsuits, that must be dismissed in advance as soon as the privilege is asserted because "its very subject matter would inherently risk or require the disclosure of state secrets." (emphasis in original)

Education (Former DC Mayor Williams in Washington Post)

The reality of our children's deficits demands much more than we have given them. Platitudes, well-crafted speeches and the latest three-to-five-year reform plan aren't good enough. We must find ways to educate every child now, by any means necessary.

It was that spirit that led us, as elected officials of the District in 2003, to promote the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program. The program, which provides scholarships for low-income children to attend private schools, is part of the three-sector initiative that annually provides $50 million in federal funding to the District for education purposes. That money has been equally divided among D.C. Public Schools, D.C. Public Charter Schools and the scholarship program.

...

Despite...obvious signs of success, though, some in Congress want to end the program. Its funding is set to expire after the next school year ends, but some have even suggested curtailing it immediately so that these students can be placed in D.C. public schools as soon as possible. Already, no more students are being enrolled. These naysayers -- many of whom are fellow Democrats -- see vouchers as a tool to destroy the public education system. Their rhetoric and ire are largely fueled by those special-interest groups that are more dedicated to the adults working in the education system than to making certain every child is properly educated.

To us, that narrow perspective is wrongheaded and impractical, especially during these perilous economic times. Rather than talking about ending this scholarship program, federal lawmakers should allow more children to benefit from it.

Obama's Dept of Ed killed the program

AIG/punitive taxation due to misinformed populist outcry (New York Times)

It is with deep regret that I submit my notice of resignation from A.I.G. Financial Products. I hope you take the time to read this entire letter. Before describing the details of my decision, I want to offer some context:

I am proud of everything I have done for the commodity and equity divisions of A.I.G.-F.P. I was in no way involved in — or responsible for — the credit default swap transactions that have hamstrung A.I.G. Nor were more than a handful of the 400 current employees of A.I.G.-F.P. Most of those responsible have left the company and have conspicuously escaped the public outrage.

After 12 months of hard work dismantling the company — during which A.I.G. reassured us many times we would be rewarded in March 2009 — we in the financial products unit have been betrayed by A.I.G. and are being unfairly persecuted by elected officials. In response to this, I will now leave the company and donate my entire post-tax retention payment to those suffering from the global economic downturn. My intent is to keep none of the money myself.

I take this action after 11 years of dedicated, honorable service to A.I.G. I can no longer effectively perform my duties in this dysfunctional environment, nor am I being paid to do so. Like you, I was asked to work for an annual salary of $1, and I agreed out of a sense of duty to the company and to the public officials who have come to its aid. Having now been let down by both, I can no longer justify spending 10, 12, 14 hours a day away from my family for the benefit of those who have let me down.

Medical Marijuana (reason.com):

Federal agents raided a medical marijuana dispensary in San Francisco Wednesday, a week after U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder signaled that the Obama administration would not prosecute distributors of pot used for medicinal purposes that operate under sanction of state law.

Transparency (Cato@Liberty/Jim Harper)

On the campaign trail, President Obama promised to post bills online for five days before signing them.

Last week, President Obama signed three new bills into law. None of them received the promised “Sunlight Before Signing” treatment - at least, not as far as our research reveals. (The White House has yet to establish a uniform place on its Web site where the public can look for bills that the President has received from Congress.)

The new bills put today’s podcast on Obama’s five-day pledge slightly out of date. He is not batting .091 on his transparency pledge. He’s batting .071. The substance of the podcast remains true, however: This is still a worse record than the Nationals.

Domestic Surveillance (ACLU):

A series of leaked "intelligence" reports have caused quite a dust-up over the last several weeks. A Texas fusion center warned about a terrorist threat from "the international far Left," the Department of Homeland Security and a Missouri fusion center warned of threats posed by right-wing ideologues, and a Virginia fusion center saw threats from across the political spectrum and called certain colleges and religious groups "nodes of radicalization." These are all examples of domestic security gone wrong. The way for local police to secure their communities against real threats is to focus on criminal activities and the individuals involved in criminal activities.

Trade (reason.com):

Just because it was totally predictable, doesn't make it any less outrageous: The man who campaigned daily against trade agreements and outsourcing has sparked an utterly pointless trade war with Mexico.

In addition to these, there has been double-talk on pork and earmarks while Democrats spread their spoils of electoral victory across their favorite constituencies, half-hearted gestures on fiscal responsibility (and I'm probably being generous about half of a heart), rushing to pass stimulus "right now" and then waiting two days to sign it in spite of few if any in Congress having the time to read it before voting, holding a proverbial gun to the head of the Senate (think "nuclear option" woo, bipartisanship!) and other tactics employed by politicians against politicians for political advantage against the better interests of the people.

The sooner America realizes that he's just another smooth-talking politician (we've seen one or two of them before, haven't we?), the better off everyone will be. But right now, so many people just think the man can do no wrong, in spite of his miserable track record of broken promises, outright lies, and self-serving political moves that only help the Democrats at the expense of the people.

I've got more change in my pocket than we've seen in 100 days.

The Torture Party?

At what point did Republicans become the party of torture? I wish this were simple hyperbole, but judging by my Twitter feed and no less than the pages of the Grey Lady herself, Republicans are voluntarily lining-up to defend one of the most reprehensible policies of the previous administration.

Ross Douthat in his NYT debut today laments that Dick Cheney didn’t run for President:

We tried running the maverick reformer, the argument goes, and look what it got us. What Americans want is real conservatism, not some crypto-liberal imitation.

“Real conservatism,” in this narrative, means a particular strain of right-wingery: a conservatism of supply-side economics and stress positions, uninterested in social policy and dismissive of libertarian qualms about the national-security state. (emphasis and unimaginable nightmare scenario in original)

Since when do economics have anything to do with torture? Only hacks like Naomi Klein think free markets are synonymous with torture, right…RIGHT?!?!?! (I'm not assigning this thought to Ross, but it must be prevalent enough among GOPers if he's writing about it. I'm guessing he and I have similar people in our Twitter feeds)

While I understand that the Bushies were awful by nearly every metric, the violation of human rights is not the extant Bush policy banner under which to rally the troops. Even if you believe, conveniently disregarding the numerous intelligence and military experts who have practiced and suffered through them, that these “techniques” do not constitute torture per se, I fail to see the correlation that they represent anything resembling conservative principles, nor in exaggerating their negligible intelligence value. But what, pray tell, is gained by placing the Republican standard firmly into the ground upon which one must abide by a particular definition of torture? Have we, as conservatives, fallen so far that this is what we’ve left to offer the American people: a tenuous (and I would argue, unworkable) definition of interrogation that errs on the side of barbarity?

The ban on cruel and unusual punishment was placed into the Constitution not solely to protect the innocent, but to protect the rule of law and our institutions as instruments of justice, insulated from the vengeful blood-thirst of the mob. Punishments meted out for vengeance corrupt the participants as well as our image as Americans. Furthermore, and more dangerously, allowance of these tactics opens the door to torturing Americans. For while we can agree that the full text of the Constitution doesn’t apply to foreign nationals, the arguments set forth in the OLC memos authorizing these methods allow for their application against Americans by Americans if you take them to their logical conclusion. To do so, all that would be required would be Executive diktat to the effect that it’s needed for “national security.”

Former State Department lawyer Philip Zelikow:

The underlying absurdity of the administration's position can be summarized this way. Once you get to a substantive compliance analysis for "cruel, inhuman, and degrading" you get the position that the substantive standard is the same as it is in analogous U.S. constitutional law. So the OLC must argue, in effect, that the methods and the conditions of confinement in the CIA program could constitutionally be inflicted on American citizens in a county jail.

In other words, Americans in any town of this country could constitutionally be hung from the ceiling naked, sleep deprived, water-boarded, and all the rest -- if the alleged national security justification was compelling. I did not believe our federal courts could reasonably be expected to agree with such a reading of the Constitution.

Some may argue that these methods weren’t used for retribution. Well, unless they wanted a heaping pile of crap to go along with good intel, the methods compelled Khalid Sheik Mohammed to provide “less than satisfactory” explanations to some of their questioning—even after being water-boarded nearly 200 times—according to the 9/11 Commission Report (cf. p. 514; Chap 7, fn. 4) and the still-classified memo on which their finding was based. Regardless of your take, their effectiveness is far from conclusive and with interrogation professionals undoubtedly aware of this, I find it unlikely that the powers that be would choose such unreliable methods so quickly for any other reason.

As Julian Sanchez noted earlier today, “Khalid Sheik Mohammed [probably] deserves to be water-boarded and worse. We do not deserve to become the country that does it to him.” Nor, might I add, should the Republican Party and its so-called conservatives be the people advocating it as national policy.

Hat tip to David Rittgers for the 9/11 Commission cite.

Hey Joe! Where You Goin with That Pen in Your Hand?

As I noted in my last post, I hadn't published in awhile. Sure, I've been writing on this blog for over a year now and in a couple other places under assumed names or ghostwriting, but I'd been having difficulty finding my voice when I immerse myself in the writing of so many brilliant, talented, and entertaining journos and authors that I am lucky enough to count among my friends. It's pretty intimidating, to be honest.

Anyway, I enjoyed reading this today in the NYT, describing why "Joe the Plumber" shouldn't be published:

Most of the writers I know work every day, in obscurity and close to poverty, trying to say one thing well and true. Day in, day out, they labor to find their voice, to learn their trade, to understand nuance and pace. And then, facing a sea of rejections, they hear about something like Barbara Bush’s dog getting a book deal.

Writing is hard, even for the best wordsmiths. Ernest Hemingway said the most frightening thing he ever encountered was “a blank sheet of paper.” And Winston Churchill called the act of writing a book “a horrible, exhaustive struggle, like a long bout of painful illness.”

When I heard J.T.P. had a book, I thought of that Chris Farley skit from “Saturday Night Live.” He’s a motivational counselor, trying to keep some slacker youths from living in a van down by the river, just like him. One kid tells him he wants to write.

“La-di-frickin’-da!” Farley says. “We got ourselves a writer here!”

If Joe really wants to write, he should keep his day job and spend his evenings reading Rick Reilly’s sports columns, Peggy Noonan’s speeches, or Jess Walter’s fiction. He should open Dostoevsky or Norman Maclean — for osmosis, if nothing else. He should study Frank McCourt on teaching or Annie Dillard on writing.

The idea that someone who stumbled into a sound bite can be published, and charge $24.95 for said words, makes so many real writers think the world is unfair.

In fact the world is unfair, but his point is well-taken.

However, I think my favorite part of the piece was the last line: Maureen Dowd is off today.

Headline reference:

Quote of the Day

On writing after winning the Nobel Prize: “I haven’t noticed [Nobel laureate Joe Stiglitz] getting an easy time. People just say, ‘Sure, he’s a great Nobel laureate and he’s very smart, but he still doesn’t know what he’s talking about in this situation.’ I’m sure I’ll get the same thing.”

-Newly awarded Nobel laureate Paul Krugman

Indeed you will, Mr. Krugman. Indeed you will.

It's the Liberty, Stupid!

As is the norm amongst the neo-con right, David Brooks' newest column puts politics above principle:

The British conservative renovation begins with this insight: The central political debate of the 20th century was over the role of government. The right stood for individual freedom while the left stood for extending the role of the state. But the central debate of the 21st century is over quality of life. In this new debate, it is necessary but insufficient to talk about individual freedom. Political leaders have to also talk about, as one Tory politician put it, “the whole way we live our lives.”

That means, first, moving beyond the Thatcherite tendency to put economics first. As Oliver Letwin, one of the leading Tory strategists put it: “Politics, once econo-centric, must now become socio-centric.” David Cameron, the Conservative Party leader, makes it clear that his primary focus is sociological. Last year he declared: “The great challenge of the 1970s and 1980s was economic revival. The great challenge in this decade and the next is social revival.” In another speech, he argued: “We used to stand for the individual. We still do. But individual freedoms count for little if society is disintegrating. Now we stand for the family, for the neighborhood — in a word, for society.”

...

As such, the Conservative Party has spent a lot of time thinking about how government should connect with citizens. Basically, everything should be smaller, decentralized and interactive.

While--unlike many of my libertarian colleagues and friends--I do actually have reservations relying solely on economics to guide our lives, I find that a dedication to the free market principles of Hayekian economics is the best thing politicians can do for the economy. (i.e., stay out of it!) Government "connect[ing] with citizens" is antithetical to that end and what Brooks proposes is to revert to failed policies in order to win over the electorate. I think we tried that already -- it was called "compassionate conservatism"-- and it's made an unholy mess of the country while undercutting the economic principles of the Republican party.

Way to go, Rove.

But beyond economics, I am foremost a civil libertarian. Benevolent government exists only in the minds of its proponents-- lest we forget that communism wasn't created as a tool of oppression. Its entire purpose was to help the poor and address the needs of the whole. In the course of moving toward that goal, individual freedoms and liberties were curbed and stripped.

Without a fundamental respect for the independence and freedom of the individual, the government--as an entity of concentrated power--will seek only to increase its role in the lives of its citizens: demanding more money, more liberty, and thus, more power from them.

The United States was not founded on the ideal of 'helping people'; it was founded on the ideal that gives the people (read individuals) the freedom to shape their own destiny. Brooks' 'what your politicians can do for you' notion flies squarely in the face of the guiding principles on which this nation was established.

Individual liberty--the concept which guided Thatcher, Reagan, and the Founders--should never take a back seat to political pandering. Otherwise, the debate between the American 'right' and 'left' will no longer be between individual liberty and the 'common good,' but simply how quickly we lose our liberties and which poisoned party will be most responsible.

UPDATE: Over at reason, Michael Moynihan takes a more intelligent and ideologically consistent approach to how the GOP could adopt the Conservative Party's more socially tolerant views here.

Take My Job...PLEASE!

In an extraordinarily disgusting op-ed in the NYT today, (entitled 'Help Me Spy on Al-Qaeda') DNI director Mike McConnell extols the virtues of throwing out the 4th Amendment for the purposes of making his job easier:

Before the Protect America Act was enacted, to monitor the communications of foreign intelligence targets outside the United States, in some cases we had to operate under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, known as FISA, a law that had not kept pace with changes in technology. In a significant number of these cases, FISA required us to obtain a court order. This requirement slowed — and sometimes prevented — our ability to collect timely foreign intelligence.

For the record, the FISA court acts like a secret grand jury of judges...if you want to spy on a ham sandwich, just say the word. But when the government's case is especially specious, they have been known to turn down a ridiculously low number of applications. But I digress...

Any new law should begin by being true to the principles that make the Protect America Act successful. First, the intelligence community needs a law that does not require a court order for surveillance directed at a foreign intelligence target reasonably believed to be outside the United States, regardless of where the communications are found. The intelligence community should spend its time protecting our nation, not providing privacy protections to foreign terrorists and other diffuse international threats. (Emphasis added.)

So, if I read this correctly, the government has to show (up to four months post facto) that it "reasonably believes" that the information it taps is of foreign origin, but can still be considered "regardless" of where it is actually collected.

No warrant. No judge. Our safeguards are reduced to the 'reasonableness' of our government.

Pardon me if I don't feel any safer.

On Nation-Building...

Max Boot makes a strange comment in an op-ed in the NYT today:

No wonder our capacities in nation-building and strategic communications have withered — their practitioners are second-class citizens behind traditional foreign service officers.

Have we ever had ANY capacity (let alone business) in nation-building??? But wait! There's more:

If we expand [USAID's] ranks, it could become our lead nation-building agency, sort of a global FEMA, marshaling the kind of resources that have been lacking in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Exporting FEMA? Doesn't the world hate us enough already?

Friedman: Tax The Poor

In his column in the NYT today, DNC lackey Thomas Friedman uses a hypothetical Democratic candidate to extol the virtues of putting a $1/gallon tax on gasoline immediately following 9/11:

I do favor a gasoline tax phased in over 12 months. But let’s get one thing straight: My opponent and I are both for a tax. I just prefer that my taxes go to the U.S. Treasury, and he’s ready to see his go to the Russian, Venezuelan, Saudi and Iranian treasuries. His tax finances people who hate us. Mine would offset some of our payroll taxes, pay down our deficit, strengthen our dollar, stimulate energy efficiency and shore up Social Security.

There are some serious problems with this rationale.

First, he assumes that this tax would offset the payroll taxes Americans pay. Since when does Congress lower one tax when raising another? While the "starve the beast" (cut revenues, expect lower spending) hypothesis seems to have fallen flat, I would bet that increasing the coffers of Congress would not inspire fiscal responsibility either.

Second, while rightfully blaming collusion in the oil markets on the OPEC cartel, he infers that they are using the post-9/11 world as an excuse. Hmm. I happened to take a tour of New Orleans last summer and saw an abandoned gas station with its gas prices from that fateful week in 2005 still posted. The price? $1.89/gallon. Friedman is apparently borrowing from Giuliani's play book by channeling 9/11 every time he decides he wants to make a point, whether it applies or not.

Finally, he neglects to mention that most of the income taxes are drawn from the highest incomes, not the lower classes. Thus, his argument is that we should punish poorer Americans so that the Treasury can benevolently redistribute their money to pay for Charlie Rangel's ego.

UPDATE: I shouldn't have said "DNC lackey." I had recently seen a pandering interview with fellow columnist Paul Krugman that attributed America's wealth to the central planning of FDR. Frankly, I confused the two in my mind. The rest of the piece still stands. mea culpa

The Most Ridiculous Op-Ed in the History of Journalism

Yesterday, the once-venerable New York Times printed this drivel:

THE house in which I grew up was haunted by a cloud of cold mist, a mysterious woman in white, and an entity we called “the conductor,” since he walked around wearing a mourning coat and carrying a baton in one hand.

...

The house, in Devon, Pa., was creepy, to be certain. Still, it wasn’t exactly the Amityville Horror. As a teenager in the 1970s, I found my house’s ghosts mostly a social embarrassment. It was humiliating to have to explain to my friends spending the night in the Haunted Room: “Now don’t worry if you see a blob come out of that closet. Usually it will go away if you whistle Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. If that doesn’t work, try the Ninth.”

The 'newspaper of record' has apparently lowered its standards on what qualifies as "fit to print."

The most discouraging of our specters was the woman I called Mrs. Freeze. She appeared, occasionally, in the mirror of a third-floor lavatory. This was known as the Monkey Bathroom because the family who’d lived in the Coffin House before us, the Hunts, had kept a monkey in there.

The monkey’s name was Jesus.

One night, coming home late from a friend’s house, I looked into the mirror and saw her standing behind me. Mrs. Freeze was a middle-aged woman in a white nightgown. Her eyes were small red stars. Cold mist rose from her hair and shoulders.

I turned around, but of course there was no one there.

...

I went back to the Coffin House last year with someone whom I can only haplessly describe as a paranormal investigator. The woman, a cheerful, round Philadelphian named Shelly, was associated with an organization called Batty About Ghosts. When I asked her to check out the house, she’d said she’d be glad to. “Actually,” said Shelly, without a hint of sarcasm, “this is my dead season.”

Oh, it gets worse. MUCH WORSE:

Shelly raised a pair of copper divining rods, which immediately began to spin around wildly, like the blades of a helicopter. “Is there anybody there?” she asked, but I could already sense my father’s shy, gentle presence.

“It’s my father,” I told Shelly.

“Talk to him,” she said. “Talk to him just like you used to.”

This was more difficult than it sounded, since I’m transgendered, and had morphed, since my father’s death, from the entity known as James to the current one, known as Jennifer.

Perhaps the fact that the man is DEAD is the most troublesome hurdle? Just a thought.

I'm all for doing what you want with your own name, body, sexuality, and identity. That is your right. But I don't think this op-ed is any service to transgendered people -- in fact, if one were to take this as any kind of indication on the mental health of transgendered people it could be exactly the opposite:

Last summer, late one night while I was visiting [my mother], I went into the Monkey Bathroom to get ready for bed. It had been a long day, and I was filled with the usual rush of melancholy and nostalgia that always accompanies a visit to my boyhood home.

And then, as I looked into the mirror, I saw Mrs. Freeze, just as in days of old, a middle-aged woman in a white nightgown. For a moment I felt my skin crawl, wondering what disaster was now imminent.

But then it occurred to me that I was seeing my own reflection. After all this time, I was only haunting myself.

I realized then the thing that the stranger might have been trying to tell me, for all these years. Don’t worry, Jenny. It’s only me.

If this is some sort of allegory, then it missed the mark. Furthermore, since when has this sort of nonsense been op-ed material? The New York Times has a reputation of being one of the hardest newspapers to get an op-ed published in -- particularly if your opinion isn't in total congruence with the editorial staff -- and yet they publish this aimless hallucinatory rant to get some (clearly lost) point across about transgender identity?

I know they are having some problems there, but some standards should be maintained.