The Hammer of Judgement

Back in the Saddle

2006-09-19T19:11:00.000+02:00

Okay, I know it's been a while (19 days, in fact), but I've finally established the new site. www.hammerofjudgement.net The new and improved hammer! I migrated the archives, so it's only as if I took a three-week vacation. Bookmark the new address, because we won't be coming here anymore.

End of the Hammer?

2006-08-30T19:20:00.000+02:00

It was inevitable, only a matter of time. Really, I'm surprised it lasted as long as it did. My office has placed a block on accessing blogs, both for viewing and updating. I guess that my employers want me to actually get some work done while I am being paid by them and using their equipment. I am a little suprised by the suddenness of it, though. Happened between one post and the next. Unfortunately, blogging from home is a logistical impossibility, ditto internet cafes. So, I have one option, and that is to migrate from a hosted blog to one a a site that I own. This way I can circumvent any filters. This is probably something I should have done a while ago. (Is this ethical? Should I even be contemplating this?) So bear with me as I suss this option out. Luckily, I have some good resources at my disposal. Meanwhile, keep checking in.

Science and Religion

2006-08-30T18:50:00.000+02:00

Thomas Brewton offers a pair of interesting pieces on the antagonism between science and religion, a false antagonism to his way of thinking. These articles are here and here. The first article notes that "The truth is that all of the greatest groundbreaking scientific work of the seminal period of modern physical science, the 17th and early 18th centuries, was done by devout Christians." I think that saying "all" of the groundbreaking work is probably an exaggeration, and I think that saying all of the scientists were devout is also an exaggeration, but the overall point holds. (However, one should be very careful in interpreting the meaning of this. It certainly doesn't mean that Christians had the monopoly on scientific acumen. Indeed, I suspect that the reason that some much science was done by clergy in those early years was because the clergy were the only ones with time and money on their hands to do science). So, yes, much science was done by Christians in those years. (Of course, much science was done by Muslims in the previous centuries, and by Jews in later centuries.) Science and religion CAN coexist, we're told, because, "Religion looks at the big picture, science at particular natural instances." I support this way of looking at the two. Religion answers the questions, why are we here, what is my purpose, what happens when we die? Science answers the questions, why is a volcano here, what is the purpose of this enzyme, what happens to my body when I die? Two distinct fields. The problem happens when one field intrudes on the other. Of course, readers of this site are familiar with the most obvious of the religious intrusions: intelligent design and the fight against teaching evolution. But there are others. Stressing abstinence education when the data show that it doesn't work and is actually counterproductive, or failing to fund stem cell research, are two examples that come quickly to mind. Does science intrude on religion? I guess you could say it does every time science explains away another of life's mysteries.

Bush's fault

2006-08-29T07:59:00.000+02:00

Another unhappy legacy of the Bush Administration: "U.S. Rep. Katherine Harris told a religious journal that separation of church and state is "a lie" and God and the nation's founding fathers did not intend the country be "a nation of secular laws." The Republican candidate for U.S. Senate also said that if Christians are not elected, politicians will "legislate sin," including abortion and gay marriage. Separation of church and state is "a lie we have been told," Harris said in the interview, published Thursday, saying separating religion and politics is "wrong because God is the one who chooses our rulers." Hadn't Harris already done enough damage?

People, Not Liquid

2006-08-28T12:57:00.000+02:00

Here's a good article on improving airline security from Robert Poole. I normally don't agree with Poole, but his thinking makes sense here. In sum: "We don't need to ban water from planes; we need to keep terrorists off them. To most effectively do so, we need to get over our obsession with "bad" things (laptops, lighters, bottled water) and start looking for bad people. "

Wal-Mart Values

2006-08-25T15:12:00.000+02:00

Boy, you can't win for losing. Wal-Mart is under fire again, but this time from the far right, its traditional allies. What did they do now? They "further capitulat[ed] to the powerful homosexual lobby by recently partnering with the 'National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce.'" Americans for Truth, "the only National pro-family organization solely dedicated to exposing and opposing the anti-Christian homosexual, bisexual and transgendered agenda," says: "It’s a real shame, and I think people who value traditional marriage and the Biblical model of human sexuality should sit up and take notice of Wal-Mart’s recent support of radical pro-homosexual/anti-Christian groups and policies that seek to destroy the time-honored institutions of marriage and family, and further aim to silence proponents of traditional family values.” But the truth is, Wal-Mart is one of the biggest proponents of the most American of family values, which is to say, the value of "show me the money." I'm not making fun. Wal-Mart only makes decisions that help the bottom line, and that is ultimately what matters in our society. So when Wal-Mart teams up with a homosexual group, people who value traditional marriage and the Biblical model of human sexuality should definitely sit up and take notice, but take notice of the fact that they aren't the powerful economic bloc they once were.

Status Quo

2006-08-23T07:25:00.000+02:00

The Center for the American Dream published an article talking about the evils of transit-oriented development, or TOD, today. TOD is the name for urban development that supports the use of mass transit. How does it do that? Well, it focuses on walking and walkability and it minimizes the amount of required parking. To focus on walking, TOD is relatively high density and it has mixed land uses (thus minimizing the total distance that must be walked). I support TOD, but I understand that it has its criticisms. But I'm always suspicious when a group called something like the Center for the American Dream critiques something like TOD. And as it turns out, I am right to be. The center's true name is The Center for the American Dream of Mobility and Home Ownership. What they should call it is the Center for the American Dream of Automobile-Dependence and Single Family Home Sprawl. Nothing in TOD prevents mobility or home ownership and indeed some studies show that TOD increases mobility and home ownership for low-income groups for whom owning a car is a huge burden (owning a car can cost over $10,000 a year when you consider insurance, maintenance, gas, licencing, and taxes). So the Center is really talking about auto-based mobility and single-family detached house ownership. But my real beef isn't really with this particular analysis of TOD. It's with the Center's whole attitude of the retrenched status quo. For instance, we've already learned that TOD is bad and our current model of auto-based, high-land-consumption housing is better. Okay. However, no one will argue that our current model is very energy-intensive. All that driving, of course, uses energy, but single-family housing can use almost twice as much energy as, say, an apartment per square foot because it has so many exposed surfaces, much more interior volume to heat or cool, less protection from the sun or the cold wind, etc. Okay, well, we'll accept that. But let's work for energy efficiency and using renewable energy sources. Nope, sorry, because now the Center tells us that renewable energy sources are bad, too. So I guess we're just stuck with the present situation. We'll just keep importing oil and burning fossil fuels and penalizing the poor. I'm not saying that TOD or renewable energy is the solution to our problems. But I am saying that at least they are attempts to solve them. The Center for the American Dream is contrarian, needlessly so.

Flat tax Smlat tax

2006-08-21T13:21:00.000+02:00

To respond to the comments from my recent flat tax post: I agree that spending reform is more important than tax reform, if for no other reason than spending reform would likely engender tax reform. The truth is, the federal government wastes money. But worse than that, the federal government spends too much money, by which I mean the federal government has its fingers in too many pies. Education is a good example. Education has been the responsibility of the state government since, well, since the passage of the Constitution. Gradually, the federal government absorbed authority, notably with the creation of the Department of Education (1980) and more importantly with the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act. Many of us may agree with the provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act, but with the authority the law gives Uncle Sam comes budgetary and spending requirements. Boom, bigger federal budget. Now couple that with a legislative system such as the one we have, one that creates budgets in the way it does (which is to say, one that, for instance, incentivizes pork barrel projects), and you have a recipe for abuse. I recently read an article that unfortunately I can’t get my hands on now in which the author suggested that the best way to argue for federal fiscal reform is to adopt the platform of states’ rights. This platform returns power to the states; state governments are more accountable and have smaller budgets, so the potential for fiscal abuse and misuse is smaller. Meanwhile Anonymous 2 deploys the rhetorical device of hyperbole to drive his point home. I guess it would have been effective if his point had been on target. But he took my anti-flat tax stance as a pro-high tax stance. Regardless of what one thinks of taxes, one must agree with the statements I made: that the flat tax doesn’t actually reform what needs to be reformed (unless what needs to be reformed in the progressiveness of the tax rates), and that the flat tax will increase taxes on the poor. Those two facts are always left out of the discussion of the flat tax and its purported benefits. Furthermore, if you believe, as I do, in the theory of the declining marginal utility of the dollar, then you support, as I do, a progressive tax rate structure. Nowhere did I talk about raising taxes or about the creation of a utopia or even about the evils of capitalism. Indeed, I love the free market. But the sad fact is that we do not live in the free market that Anonymous 2 thinks that we do. Or how can he explain the massive subsidies that farmers and ranchers and steel companies and airlines and the auto industry receive?

Flat tax won't die

2006-08-18T07:32:00.000+02:00

I hate to sound like a broken record (how much longer before the roots of that expression are unknown to those who use it?) but I'm merely responding to flat-tax supporters' own repetitive mantras. Today, Ed Fuelner at the Heritage Foundation once again trumpets the ease and simplicity of the flat tax. We're told once again that with a flat tax, "We could file our returns on the back of a postcard." We're told once again that with a flat tax, we "could collect all the revenue the government needs and save Americans time and worry." But as I've said here and here and here, the problem with our tax code is not calculating the amount of tax owed, which is all that a flat tax reforms. Currently, once one determines one's taxable income, one consults a chart to find one's tax burden. Under a flat tax, once one determines one's taxable income, one multiplies it by the flat tax rate to find the tax burden. Not much of reform, is it? No, because the real problem with our tax code is the first step, the determination of taxable income. Real tax reform can only come when we simplify this step, which, strictly speaking, a flat tax won't do. Therefore, when people speak of the flat tax as tax reform, they are implicitly including a host of other things that have nothing to do with the actual tax rate's flatness. These other things are probably needed. So what's the big deal? Well, think about it. Under our current tax system, called a progressive system, the rich pay a higher percentage of tax than the poor do. So if we introduce a flat tax, that means that rich people will end up paying less tax and poor people will end up paying more tax. And if we make the flat tax revenue-neutral, which is to say that it will raise the same amount of revenue as the current system, the poor will have to pay much, much more to make up for the taxes that the rich are no longer paying. So, my point, again, is that the flat tax is a double-whammy. It doesn't actually reform anything, but it will harm low-income people and probably result in less government revenue to boot.

AIDS and dying

2006-08-16T07:45:00.000+02:00

Here's an interesting recap of the AIDS epidemic after 25 years. "In the United States, an estimated 1.1 million people are infected with HIV and more than half a million Americans have died of AIDS. The bad news is that the rate of HIV infection remains steady at about 40,000 per year and the good news is that number Americans dying from AIDS has dropped for 52,000 in 1995 to 15,800 in 2004." How does this compare with other "epidemics"? According to the Centers for Disease Control statistics, AIDS would be probably be 20th or so as a leading cause of death in the US. (see the top ten causes of death in the United States here). Even at its height, it would have been about 8th or 9th. That's bad, but diabetes kills 74,000 people a year (#6 on the chart), and 1.4 million new cases are diagnosed a year, adding to the estimated 21 million people who already have it. You never hear about the diabetes epidemic. Why is that? Where is the diabetes quilt? Is it because AIDS is much more politically loaded (the "gay disease")? AIDS seems more random? Is uncurable? Or is it that AIDS has a larger and more active advocacy group?

Gay marriage

2006-08-15T07:48:00.000+02:00

We haven't talked about gay marriage in a while, so I was glad to see Thomas Sowell write something today. He's against it, of course. I'm not sure about his reasoning, though. He first says that the current marriage laws discriminate against actions, not people, and that's okay because that's what laws are supposed to do. Some actions are good and some actions are bad. By this logic, gay people are perfectly free to do whatever they want with their personal lives. The law doesn't care. But the law does care about certain actions. He likens it to the bicyclist that wants to use the highway. Bikes aren't allowed on the highway. What's the cyclist to do? Well, according to Sowell, he can just give up his bike and get in a car. But what if the cyclist is not allowed in cars? Is that discriminatory? I think so, and I think that it is the better analogy. The GAO has famously identified 1138 ways in which the federal government treats [legally] married people differently from single people. Now obviously not every of the 1138 ways will benefit every married couple, but clearly some sort of discrimination against people rather than actions is at work here. Sowell then goes to argue that gay marriage should be illegal because, well, it's always been illegal. His facts are right, I suppose, but so what? Finally, he pulls out the old standby. Gay marriage should be banned because marriage is about procreation, and same-sex couples can't procreate. This argument has been thoroughly fisked by others so I won't address it here. But it certainly dies a hard death. I think same-sex marriage should be legal, and I predict that in 20 or 30 years, we will look back on today's debates the same way today we look back on previous debates of abolition, women's franchise, Prohibition, and civil rights, which is to say with wonder and sympathy.

Remove your shoes

2006-08-14T08:31:00.000+02:00

In the spirit of Friday's post about the risk of terrorism, I offer today's article about the Transportation Security Administration's (which, by the way, is a needless bureaucracy) new, "tweaked" list of items allowed in carry-ons. "Due to enhanced security measures most liquids, gels, lotions and other items of similar consistency will not be permitted in carry-on baggage." We are entering a new kind of arms race. The bad guys will come up with ever-more creative ways of packaging explosives, and the TSA will implement ever-more stringent restrictions on allowable items. First it was tweezers, then shoes, now it's jellos and puddings. I rue the day when the terrorists figure out how to make cotton or polyester explosive.

Risk

2006-08-11T07:52:00.000+02:00

The thwarted terrorist plot in Britian is going to fan the flames of hysteria: how much more intrusive and painful can airport security become? We'll soon find out. But this article in Reason tells us that terrorism, as awful as it is, is actually a very remote danger, at least for us as individuals. The article calculates the odds of dying from such quotidian things as driving a car, crossing the street, or being struck by lightning, and then compares them to the odds of dying in a terrorist event. "What about your chances of dying in an airplane crash? A one-year risk of one in 400,000 and one in 5,000 lifetime risk. What about walking across the street? A one-year risk of one in 48,500 and a lifetime risk of one in 625. Drowning? A one-year risk of one in 88,000 and a one in 1100 lifetime risk. In a fire? About the same risk as drowning. Murder? A one-year risk of one in 16,500 and a lifetime risk of one in 210. What about falling? Essentially the same as being murdered. And the proverbial being struck by lightning? A one-year risk of one in 6.2 million and a lifetime risk of one in 80,000. And what is the risk that you will die of a catastrophic asteroid strike? In 1994, astronomers calculated that the chance was one in 20,000. However, as they've gathered more data on the orbits of near earth objects, the lifetime risk has been reduced to one in 200,000 or more." Meanwhile, "if terrorists hijacked and crashed one of America's 18,000 commercial flights per week that your chance of being on the crashed plane would be one in 135,000." This reminds me of a aspect of human decision-making called the conjunctive fallacy. When human beings evaluate risk, if the risk scenario is more vivid to them, they instinctively consider it more likely. So, for instance, if you tell someone that they have a chance of dying in a car accident, he will mentally assign it some [low] probability. But if you tell someone that he has a chance of dying because his left front tire will blow out on the freeway and the car will roll three times before bursting into flames, he will assign it a much higher probability. Clearly the first situation (dying in a car accident in general) is more likely than the second (dying in a very specific accident), but the average person will consider the second more likely simply because it is more vivid in his mind. This is one reason that people fear terrorism so much. They have a very clear picture of being on a highjacked plane or being trapped in the London Subway. They don't have a clear picture of slipping in the shower and breaking their neck.

New job, less blog

2006-08-11T07:50:00.000+02:00

I've just assumed a new position that means, unfortunately, more scrutiny of computer activity and less time for things like this blog. (Yes, I know you are aghast to learn that I've been posting on my employer's time). I will try to continue to have one post a day, but indulge me if that doesn't always occur.

Inner city decline

2006-08-09T08:00:00.000+02:00

Policy makers, city planners, and poverty fighters have been trying to address the problem of the declining inner city for at least 50 years. (Though some people, such as Robert Bruegmann, would say that the declining inner city is not actually a problem at all.) Things like redevelopment districts, urban renewal, infrastructure investment, special tax treatments have all been tried, and I think most would say only marginally successfully. But here's a new idea. According to Pat Fagan, head of a group called BOND (Brotherhood for a New Destiny): "America must create a "Culture of Belonging,” he says. And the formula for that is "work, wedlock and worship." According to the social science data, if these three fundamentals are in place, government social policy is virtually unnecessary." I dislike the moralizing overtones of the delivery, but the message, which is that inner city residents have to take some responsibility for their condition, is spot-on. This is the sort of message the city planners may not like to hear, because it suggests that their remedies may not be needed after all.

BioLogos

2006-08-08T10:42:00.000+02:00

Here's a new twist on the intelligent design/evolution theme. Dr. Francis S. Collins, the scientist who led the Human Genome Project, has a theory called BioLogos that he calls a theistic view of evolution. According to BioLogos, evolutionary theory as we understand it is correct. Good. But here's the twist: God designed it! Collins says: "If God decided to create the universe and his purpose was to populate it with creatures in his image, with whom he could have fellowship and to whom he would give the knowledge of right and wrong, an ability to make decisions on their own free will and an immortal soul, and if he chose to use evolution to accomplish that goal, who are we to say that's not how he would have done it? It's an incredibly elegant means of creation. And because God is outside of time and space -- at least, I think that would make sense, given that he's not part of the natural world -- he could, at the very moment of creation, at the instant of the Big Bang, have this entire plan completely designed right down to our having this conversation. And it would seem perhaps a bit random and long and drawn out to us, but not to him." Isn't that a neat trick? BioLogos bridges the science-religion gap by saying that however random or materialistic or, dare I say, atheistic current theory appears, it doesn't matter, because God MADE it appear random or materialistic or atheistic. His purpose in doing so? Well, humans just aren't qualified to know. Yawn. Another false start. My problem with BioLogos is the same one I have with intelligent design. It has no explanatory power. It just adds an extraneous layer, a needless complication, to our thinking.

Conspiracy

2006-08-07T07:46:00.000+02:00

Here's an entertaining article on some 9/11 conspiracy theorists. The movement claims to be drawing fresh energy and credibility from a recently formed group called Scholars for 9/11 Truth, which is comprised of college professors. Some of the group's ideas are that the Twin Towers were brought down with controlled explosions, that the hijackers are still alive, that the US government knew in advance, or that the US government was responsible. This is from their website: the "World Trade Center was almost certainly brought down by controlled demolitions" and "the government not only permitted 9/11 to occur but may even have orchestrated these events to facilitate its political agenda." These professors, it should be noted, are not necessarily experts in the fields of structural engineering or explosives. For instance, David Gabbard, an East Carolina education professor, acknowledges this isn't his field, but says "I'm smart enough to know ... that fire from airplanes can't melt steel." I'll leave the chuckles to you. But a quote by a state official, who was concerned about these professors teaching--"It's not a matter of unpopular ideas; it's a matter of quality education and giving students their money's worth in the classroom"--reminded me of another conspiracy theory, which is playing out again in Kansas. That is the theory that the teaching of evolution is a conspiracy to indoctrinate our children against...Jesus, if I remember correctly. Chuck Colson, felon-turned-Christian, contributes this on the latest in the evolution debate. Unfortunately, he forgets that there really is not debate about evolution except among those who don't understand it.

Media Bias

2006-08-04T07:52:00.000+02:00

Take a look at this headline from a conservative news source "Lesbians Charged with Starving 9 Year Old Girl" Take about media bias! The article goes on to describe how the adoptive parents of the girl abused her. And then at the end, just to titillate us, we are told, "Police originally thought LaFountain was Samoraj's boyfriend. But a strip search revealed she was a female." The women's actions are deplorable. But I bet you a million bucks that the same conservative news source did NOT run headlines that said "Married heterosexual couple abused adopted children" in the following cases: Twelve Russian cases Madison, Wisconsin case North Carolina case Or any of the other such cases that more than 5 minutes on Google would have revealed.

Religious Intolerance

2006-08-03T07:55:00.000+02:00

Mona Dobrich, who is Jewish, sued her daughter's high school because during the graduation ceremony, an evangelical pastor delivered a sermon in which he said among other things, "I also pray for one specific student, that You be with her and guide her in the path that You have for her. And we ask all these things in Jesus' name." Since the daughter was the only non-Christian student, it's no mystery who the pastor was talking about. Anyway, the story is a long and interesting one, and it infuriates me. For a primer in intolerance, read the comment sections for this article that also describes the Dobrich story. We are told, for instance, that "those in the minority who don’t like having the one true faith rubbed in their faces and rammed down their throats [should] sit down and keep quiet." Or read this piece from the group Stop the ACLU, which is, as you can imagine, dedicated to liberty and justice for all. As you may expect, I totally oppose groups like Stop the ACLU or idiots like David Limbaugh, who produced the sentiment I quoted above. But I think I understand where their fear comes from. Here's another quote from the comment section: "However it seems to me that Mrs. Dobrich over-reacted. America is (was) overwhelmingly Christian. To ask the vast majority to curtail their beliefs and actions for the feelings of a few is perhaps unreasonable." This commenter thinks that asking the school board to tone down the religious rhetoric at school functions is the same as asking Christians to "curtail their beliefs." This with-us-or-against-us mentality is akin to the belief that not saying merry christmas at Macy's is the same as actively suppressing the celebration of Christmas. In fact, we are told, again by David Limbaugh, that Dobrich is actually "part of a liberal conspiracy to remove Christ from our national culture." (As with most conspiracy theorists, Limbaugh fails to explain what the motive behind this conspiracy is. My guess is that liberals hate America and hate Jesus). Thomas Brewton agrees: "Their [liberals] goal is no less than to destroy spiritual religion and to impose socialism as the secular state religion." You can all see the fallacy in this thinking. How can we get them to see it?

To dope or not to dope

2006-08-02T07:35:00.000+02:00

The FLoyd Landis scandal has once again aimed the spotlight on doping in professional sports. (For the record, I believe Landis when he says he is innocent, for several reasons. One, with the high-profile expulsion for doping of Ivan Basso, Jan Ullrich, and several others from competition before the Tour de France began, you'd have to be pretty clueless to try to get away with something during this year's event. Two, testosterone is taken for building muscle and helping recovery, a long-term proposition, not for a one-day boost in endurance and strength. Three, I read an interview with a cyclist in an Italian paper yesterday, and he said that no one's seriously doped with testosterone for years, that it's old-fashioned (though I suppose that that could be in keeping with Landis' Mennonite background). Four, the test that Landis failed, the so-called T/E test, is notoriously blunt and inaccurate and, indeed, arbitrary.) It also brings up once again the argument that we should legalize doping. Today, another columnist, Jacob Sullum, chimed in with this idea. He claims that the natural/artificial distinction, upon which the doping ban rests, is untenable. If Landis weren't cheating, then he has exceptionally high levels of testosterone. Is that an unfair advantage, Sullum asks. And what about other performance-improving techniques, like high-altitutude tents? Sullum concludes: "Athletes use all sorts of technology to improve their fitness and performance, ranging from multivitamins to weight machines, and they are properly judged by how well they use them. Instead of arbitrarily prohibiting certain techniques, why not level the playing field by repealing the prohibitions?" There is another argument against doping that Sullum didn't mention, and that is the health and safety of the competitors. There have been many athlete deaths and hospitalizations that have been attributed to these drugs. In this way, the doping rules protect athletes from themselves. Is that a valid reason? I believe that when so much money is riding (no pun intended) on the performance of these cyclists, some sort of new position toward doping is inevitable. The anti-doping authorities are fighting a rearguard action, and the athletes have huge support systems, hidden or otherwise, in their doping habits. And, as a friend said, doping or not, the athletic performances are sure amazing to watch. But on the other hand, if we allow doping, that would unleash an arms race of performance-enhancing substances. I'm not sure we want to go that way, either. Finally, one thing that is missing from the discussion is the role of technology in this issue. In a sport like cycling that is heavily dependent on the equipment, how important is it to control, say, the weight of a bike. I'm no pro, but I bet that if my bike were a pound lighter than my adversary's in a tough mountain stage, I'd have a distinct advantage. Since with doping we are worried about unfair advantages, should we also worry about this?

There's a war on

2006-08-01T07:49:00.000+02:00

There is a myth common on the Right that the military, in these days of judicial activism, permissive parents, failing schools, and pandering politicians, is the last bastion of patriotism, duty, and honor in our sinking Republic. Thomas Sowell perpetuates that myth today: "There was a time when most members of Congress had served in the military, as had many people in the media. Today that is no longer true -- and it shows in many ways." Before we go into the speciousness of the sentiment, let's look at the truth of that opening statement. According to the US Civil War Center, the military participation ratio, the ratio of total population to those enrolled in the military, breaks out like this: Revolutionary War 5.7% War of 1812 3.8% Mexican War 0.4% Civil War: Union 10.7% Confederate 13.1% Combined 11.1% Spanish-American War 0.4% World War I 4.6% World War II 12.2% Korean War 3.8% Vietnam War 4.3% Gulf War 1.1% If we discount the Confederacy during the Civil War, then the highest ratio was 12.2% during World War II. So even among the "greatest generation," the "generation of sacrifice," only 1 person in 8 actually served in the military. I couldn't find figures on how many of those went to Congress, but I would be surprised if Congress were ever more than 50% veterans. And even if it were, note that in today's Congress, 153 out of 535 members are veterans, a ratio of 28%. Meanwhile, today's military participation rate is about 1% right now. Adding in the number of veterans that aren't in uniform (about 10 million according the VA), that means that Congress is 7 times "more military" than society at large is. So surely we can trust Congress to make military decisions. On to the rest of Sowell's argument. He says that one symptom of our societal lack of military experience is that "On the home front, life goes on today as if there were no war. Consumer goods are as abundant as ever and no real sacrifices are demanded of the civilian population, who are spectators rather than even tangential participants." Give me a break. Ignoring the fact that Sowell is oddly nostalgic for ration cards, food shortages, and privation, we see that Sowell thinks like so many others that World War II was the only war we ever fought and should therefore be the benchmark for the rest of our history. But look at the numbers. World War II cost over $3 trillion in today's dollars in direct costs. So far the Iraq war has cost $300 billion. World War II was 10 times more expensive in a time when the GDP was 15 times smaller ($1 trillion in 1945, $15 trillion today in 2006 dollars). Obviously the Iraq war is not taxing the US economy like WWII did. So I guess Sowell wants to introduce artificial shortages just to remind us lazybones over here that there's a war on. And is it our responsibility to introduce these shortages ourselves? Or should we rely on our national leadership, who, by the way, told us the way to fight the terrorists was to shop even more? He thinks that the solution to today's problems (though he doesn't tell us what today's problems are. No wait, it is that we have "degenerated into irresponsible self-indulgence.") is a draft. I think the solution to our problems is to get rid of old dinosaurs like Sowell.

Airport security

2006-07-31T11:51:00.000+02:00

A report at today's Heritage Foundation site concluded something that I have been saying for years: It's time to rethink airport security. The current model of airport security, created in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, is based on at least two assumptions: 1. All passengers are equally suspicious and should receive the same scrutiny, and; 2. The principal purpose of airport security is to keep dangerous objects (e.g., knives, guns, and bombs) off of airplanes. This model is wrong, and has resulted in security system that is incredibly wasteful, both in resources and in traveler convenience, while actually doing nothing to make flying safer. The article goes on to describe numerous options for reform. I don't necessarily agree or disagree with them. I am simply glad that someone is actually examining the system with a critical and disinterested eye. The current system was designed in haste in a flush of emotion. It's time to change.

Breastfeeding

2006-07-28T07:52:00.000+02:00

This image, the most recent cover of the magazine Babytalk, sparked a barrage of negative feedback.

When a magazine about raising a baby gets in trouble for featuring breastfeeding on its cover, then you know that we in the US are seriously conflicted about the issue.

I can see why some people would be uncomfortable with it. As one woman said, "A breast is a breast -- it's a sexual thing." Another woman said her husband is uncomfortable with other men seeing her breast. Finally, a third woman said, "Ugh, gross."

No one denies the benefits of breastfeeding. The debate is how publicly it can or should be done. But I think the puritanicalism is silly. One mother said, "I don't want my son or husband to accidentally see a breast they didn't want to see." Well, so what if they did? That mother should be more worried about them accidentally seeing some obese woman's protruding belly than about seeing a nursing woman using her breast for what it was designed for (designed by the Designer, of course).

I personally think that the today's puritanicalism will one day pass. It used to be forbidden for a woman to show her ankle, and then later the knee and the bare shoulder, and then the midriff, and now we can see what kind of underwear they're wearing.

Cohabitation again

2006-07-27T16:32:00.000+02:00

The other day, I asked what social conservatives would say about a recent ruling in North Carolina that overturned laws banning cohabitation. Well, the question was rhetorical, because we all knew what they would say. They would say things like "the most egregious effect of the judge's ruling was that it lowered a great moral standard." They would say things like "The Seventh Commandment, 'Thou shalt not commit adultery,' which could also be correctly translated, 'Thou shalt not commit sexual immorality,' is the Creator's law -- an eternal verity that guards the great institution of marriage, the sanctity of the family, and the preservation of society."

Living Wage

2006-07-27T16:12:00.000+02:00

Chicago requires big-box stores to pay 'living wage' Pro: "It's trying to get the largest companies in America to pay decent wages," said council member Toni Preckwinkle. Con: Mayor Richard M. Daley and others warned the living wage proposal would drive jobs and desperately needed development from some of the city's poorest neighborhoods and lead giants like Wal-Mart to abandon the city. What do you think?

Betting on the Nanny State

2006-07-26T08:29:00.000+02:00

Here's another installment in our long quasi-thread about the Nanny State. A British entrepreneur who operates an online betting service based in Costa Rica is arrested at a layover at Dallas/Fort Worth airport for violating the 1961 Wire Act, which prohibits using "a wire-communication facility" to accept bets on "any sporting event or contest." This story brings up all sorts of juicy subjects: 1. Jurisdictional. Is a non-US citizen who operates a business outside the US (legal in the host nation) subject to US law simply because US citizens avail themselves of the business? 2. Legal. Can we expect the borderless Internet to conform to individual nations' laws, and if so, how do we enforce those laws? 3. Technical. Is the Internet a "wire-communication facility"? 4. Social. Gambling in the US has a fascinating history, going from a vice to a major source of government revenue is a few short decades. Now Congress is working to ban online gambling, though I'm not sure why. How should society treat gambling? I'll take comments on any of the 4 topics, or any others that you can think of.

Police protection

2006-07-25T07:45:00.000+02:00

Here's an interesting case. The city of Oakland, CA, was found liable in the 2001 murder of a woman whose estranged boyfriend fatally stabbed her after an officer failed, twice, to arrest him when he violated a restraining order. The failure by Oakland police to jail Brown was the "proximate and legal cause of the death of Freddie Marie Christian," said the lawsuit. I think this case is interesting because it seems that, at the US Supreme Court at least, there has been a gradual erosion of the service we can expect and demand from our police forces. For instance, the Supreme Court recently ruled that victims of domestic violence have no right to have their protective orders enforced. In fact, in a famous case in Washington, DC, Warren v. District of Columbia, the Court of Appeals found that the police were under no specific legal duty to provide protection to individuals. (The pro-gun people love that ruling). So when a court finds that the police were liable because they failed to provide protection, it seems to reverse this thinking. But could it mean that the police will become so lawsuit-shy that they will began to act in ways that protect them from legal action but that don't necessarily have the public interest in mind?

Sports question

2006-07-25T07:18:00.000+02:00

Floyd Landis, an American and former teammate of Lance Armstrong, won the Tour de France on Sunday. What do you think it means when this news is carried on the front page of a conservative website, but only gets 3rd tier treatment at Sports Illustrated?

State of Fear

2006-07-24T15:52:00.000+02:00

I just finished "State of Fear," Michael Crichton's much-ballyhooed critique of the global warming debate. In general, I don't like Crichton's work; his books sound great in theory but suffer in the execution, and this one was no different. In fact, this one was worse than usual because he relentlessly beats his readers over the head with his highly charged politics. There wasn't even a hint of subtlety. But after finishing the book in a huff, I read the author's afterward and was surprised to learn that Crichton actually has a very reasoned and reasonable attitude toward global climate change, one with which I largely agree. He also included a very lengthy and interesting bibliography, something that the usual potboiler does not contain. So my recommendation is to skip the book and just read the afterward.

Stem cells

2006-07-24T15:47:00.000+02:00

I've been working on a post on Bush's veto of the stem cell research bill, but today I came across this piece by Ronald Bailey that pretty much sums up what I think in a more succinct way. Bush's veto--his first, by the way--was an obvious attempt to pander to the religious right. Senator Arlen Specter "compared the president’s position to those who opposed Columbus, imprisoned Galileo, and rejected anesthesia, electricity, vaccines and rail travel. Such attitudes, Specter declared, “In retrospect look foolish, look absolutely ridiculous.”"

Thou shalt cohabit

2006-07-21T12:57:00.000+02:00

A 200-year-old North Carolina law that prohibited unmarried couples from living together was struck down as unconstitutional by state court. I of course support this ruling, as should everyone who supports individual liberty. Said the ACLU, "the government has no business regulating relationships between two consenting adults in the privacy of their own home...the idea that the government would criminalize people's choice to live together out of wedlock in this day and age defies logic and common sense." What do you think the social conservatives will say?

Hug your Hummer

2006-07-21T07:36:00.000+02:00

"Have You Hugged a Hummer Today? Hybrid vehicles' overall energy costs exceed those of comparable non-hybrids." That's the scandalous headline from a recent Reason article that discusses something called the "dust to dust" energy usage of cars. An analyst looked at data on the energy necessary to plan, build, sell, drive, and dispose of a car from the initial conception to scrappage. He even included in the study such minutiae as plant-to-dealer fuel costs of each vehicle, employee driving distances, and electricity usage per pound of material. All this data was then boiled down to an "energy cost per mile" figure for each car. According to this analysis, the dust to dust cost of a Honda Civic hybrid is $3.238 per mile. For a Ford Escape hybrid, $3.2 per mile. And for a Hummer, $1.949 per mile. The reason for this cost difference, the analysis says, is that the dust to dust cost is correlated to the "fanciness" of the car. A car like the Hummer has a very simple engine, simple frame, unsophisticated design, and components made of cheap steel. A hybrid has a complicated propulsion system and is composed of expensive, sometimes exotic materials. In fact, the energy costs of disposing a Hummer are 60 percent less than an average hybrid's and its design and development costs are 80 percent less. And it only gets worse. According to Reason, "One of the most perverse things about U.S. consumers buying hybrids is that while this might reduce air pollution in their own cities, they increase pollution– and energy consumption -- in Japan and other Asian countries where these cars are predominantly manufactured. 'In effect, they are exporting pollution and energy consumption,' the analyst says." Voila. Environmentalists are once again exposed as the hypocrites they are. I mean, isn't that the purpose of these types of articles? First let me say that I am glad someone did a life cycle cost and energy audit of cars. It gives us valuable data with which to make informed decisions. Unfortunately, I currently can't access the original report, because I would love to see the methodology. As with any study like this, when the author includes things like "plant to dealer fuel costs" or "employee driving distances," well, you need to take the results with a grain of salt. There would have to be so many assumptions made in calculations like those that they become open to criticism. But, I'm sure those costs are small compared to the development, construction, and disposal costs. And this is where my real problem with this analysis is. I think that it is disingenuous to essentially compare a ten-year old technology to a 100-year old one and conclude that the 100-year old one is cheaper. Isn't that what is really going on here? Of course the design and development costs for a hybrid are higher. Even though the idea for a hybrid car has been been around for a while, it's only been in mass production since 1997. There are currently, what, five hybrids on the market now. If you are looking to amortize your design and development costs, five models over ten years is not a large baseline. Meanwhile, cars with internal combustion engines have been in continuous mass production for over one hundred years, with literally thousands of models. (We'll also ignore the fact that the Hummer was designed and developed by the military, so GM's costs in that regard were very small). The design and development challenges for the most part are resolved. Further, as the article notes, parts are widely interchangeable with such an ample product line. The marginal cost to produce today's internal combustion car is very low. I doubt that anyone would countenance a similar comparison between the simple carbureted engine of a 1940 Ford and the computer-controlled, fuel-injected engine of a 2007 Ford, a comparison that would yield similar results. I also have a problem with the "exporting pollution" argument. I don't disagree that it's true. But can you think of a single product for which it is not true? Environmentalists are exporting pollution when they compose air quality legislation on their computers. They are exporting water consumption when they buy low-flow toilets. They are exporting energy consumption when they buy solar panels. Of course, environmentalists aren't the only ones who consume things, so we are all guilty. And that leads me to my overall beef with this article. The whole thing can be factually and contextually correct (which I'm not sure is completely true). But the conclusion it draws is all wrong. I'm convinced that a major reason that so many people oppose eco-conscious initiatives is that in accepting the correctness of the initiative, they are acknowledging that their current actions are wrong. For instance, if I accept that my current 3.5 gallon-per-flush toilet wastes water, then every time I flush it, I know I'm being wasteful. I can either replace it with a low-flow toilet, which takes time and effort, or I can buy into the myth that low-flow toilets don't actually save water because they require more flushes to do the same job and so I can feel good about my current habits. (The multiple-flush myth, by the way, was exploded by the American Waterworks Association's Residential End Uses of Water survey). The same goes true for auto fuel consumption. I'm sure that a Hummer offers a very nice driving experience, certainly much different than a Prius or Civic. I'd sure hate to give it up just because it is fuel-inefficient. I feel vaguely guilty about driving it. But wait! A Hummer is actually better for the environment than a Prius. Now I can have my cake AND eat it, too. At any rate, that's what people want to hear. What I want to hear is an acknowledgement that as hybrids or electrics or whatever alternative to gas guzzlers become more established in the market, costs will come down. (In fact, the dust to dust cost analysis was based on the fact that the Prius has a life of 100,000 miles versus a Hummer's 300,000. As the Prius matures, which it undoubtedly will if it is kept in production, we should see that lifespan improve. If it doubles to 200,000--not unreasonable and still 30% less than the Hummer's--the energy per mile cost drops to $1.6). What I want to hear is acknowledgement that perhaps our current lifestyle choices are not always sustainable or in our overall best interest. This article represents the easy way out.

The truth about bloggers

2006-07-20T08:35:00.000+02:00

According to a new study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, the blogosphere is nonpartisan, a lot more diverse than thought, and nearly half female. The average blogger is well educated, gainfully employed and blogs fully clothed. Other facts: English is the second most prevalent language among blog posters internationally. Thirty-seven percent of postings are in Japanese; 31 percent in English. Pew estimates that 57 million Americans read blogs. The Pew study found that the largest percentage of bloggers in their sample (37 percent) blog about their "life and experiences," and 52 percent said the major reason they blog is to express themselves creatively. They didn't ask me, but the major reason I blog is to disseminate the truth.

No news is good news

2006-07-20T08:28:00.000+02:00

"US Airways to place ads on barf bags" Why is this news? Are US airlines so bereft of creativity that when they do something that many European airlines have been doing for years, they get banner treatment?

Gone

2006-07-17T11:00:00.000+02:00

I'll be out of town until Thursday....

Highway Capacity

2006-07-17T08:42:00.000+02:00

A piece I posted on the Interstate Highway System sparked an interesting discussion on ways to deal with our lack of highway capacity. Anonymous and squantum had different solutions to the problem. I think it's worthwhile to expand on their comments a little bit. First of all, Anonymous hit on a very good point. Most traffic congestion occurs on "intra-city" roadways. In fact, most metro auto travel happens not in a suburb-to-center pattern, but a suburb-to-another-suburb pattern. Our roadways for the most part do not reflect this travel pattern, and so if we lack critical road links, it is in this way. Anonymous thinks that the major causes of urban traffic congestion are: poor driver behavior, weather, construction, and carpool lanes. He was actually pretty spot-on. Let's look at this in detail. Weather and construction don't really need comment, except to note that construction is only going to get worse. The American Society of Civil Engineers gives the US road system a "D" on their infrastructure report card. The carpool lane is an interesting case. The problem with making statements about carpool lanes is that each one is very different, even two that serve the same metro area. Some are unsuccessful and some are very successful, succesful, by the way, at moving people, not necessarily at moving cars. Remember that by definition, a carpool lane is carrying cars that have more people in them. (Average vehicle occupancy in the US is about 1.1 people). If a carpool lane is 2+, the average vehicle occupancy of cars not using the lane is 1.0. So if the carpool lane carries 51% of the traffic of a normal lane, it is more efficient than a non-carpool lane. With a 3+ carpool lane, the difference is more striking. (Of course, this is simplified because in CA, for instance, hybrids with only 1 person can use the carpool lane). So the thing to look at is the area that a carpool lane is serving. The obvious problem with carpooling is that for it to work, you need several people who live near each other to also work near each other, and have similar schedules. The Oakland-San Francisco city pair meets this criterion, and so carpooling over the Bay Bridge is very successful. The Fremont-Contra Costa County area does not meet this criterion, and so carpooling on I-680 is not so successful. Also, reports from police suggest that carpool lane misuse and abuse are not as widespread as one might think. My point is that carpool lanes can't be uniformly condemned. They must be examined on a case-by-case basis. As for driver behavior, I think I have to agree with squantum. It's dangerous to design a system without taking into consideration the attributes of the users of that system. In other words, we can't design a highway and wish that drivers were better. We have to realize that drivers will do "stupid" things and so design the highway system to be as robust and forgiving as possible. Better driver education would probably help, though I can say that the very rigorous driver education they have here in Italy (year-long, very intense) still produces a slightly higher traffic-related death rate (12.5/100,000) than in the US (12.1/100,000). Finally, a note on induced demand. Induced demand is the term to describe the phenomenon of "if you build it, they will come." If you build a new highway to address traffic congestion, within a few years, that highway will be just as congested because demand has grown and shifted to make use of the new supply--and it's not just attracting people from farther away. Businesses will relocate, commuters will change routes, people will move house. Induced demand is a well-known concept, though not necessarily well-quantified. It's also not clear that it's necessarily a bad thing. In fact, some people (but not me) say induced demand is really unmet latent demand. But in the end, it is real. So, I guess I don't really have a point. I just wanted to talk about traffic.

Hidden Fees

2006-07-17T08:12:00.000+02:00

If you are like me, you are annoyed by all the hidden fees that businesses tack on to their goods and services. For instance, take your printer. You pay $50 up front, thinking you are getting a great deal. But when it comes time to buy the replacement ink cartridges, you realize that maybe it wasn't a good deal after all. Cell phones, hotels, and airlines are also good at this behavior. Why do businesses do this? According to two economists, businesses do this because it's in their best interest to do so. Here's how they explain it, using two hotels as examples:

The first, Hidden Price Inn, has a very low room rate of $80 a night, but makes liberal use of high "shrouded" fees: Three bucks for a minibar Coca-Cola, $25 for parking, $12 for eggs at breakfast. The unsophisticated traveler cheerily (if unwittingly) forks over the fees, all the while patting herself on the back for getting a cheap room. Now imagine a second chain, Straightforward Suites. It charges much more reasonably for the extra costs ($1, say, for that Coke), but because it makes less on the extras, it has to charge slightly more for the room -- $95, instead of $80. Even an unsophisticated traveler can tell $95 isn't as good as $80. Through an aggressive ad campaign, Straightforward could try to point out how devious the approach of Hidden Price Inn is and how much less deceptive its own prices are. But Laibson and Gabaix show that there's a catch in this strategy: Hidden Price Inn actually has two key types of customers. Yes, there are the clueless consumers (the economists prefer to call them "myopic"). But there are also the sophisticated ones, who know that if they avoid the hotel restaurant, take a taxi instead of using the parking garage and call home with a cell phone, they'll actually get a better deal at Hidden Price than at Straightforward.

So be that sophisticated consumer. By the way, on a recent trip to India, I discovered that India is the land of the hidden fee. Take my trip to the museum in Trivandrum. I paid the entrance fee, which was reasonable. Then I walked down a long hall until I get to a waiting area to wait for the mandatory guide. There I learn that shoes are not permitted in the museum and that I have to leave mine in the shoe room. Oh yeah, there's a charge for shoe storage. Once the tour starts, I try to take a picture, only to learn that there's a photo charge. Finally, at the end of the tour, the guide tells me that he's not included in the entrance fee and he'll be extra. So all told, I paid about three times the entrance fee in all the hidden fees. So we should be glad that we don't have it that bad.

Why is gas so cheap?

2006-07-14T07:45:00.000+02:00

Yesterday, Steve was surprised at inflation-adjusted price of gasoline. He asks, "Here I thought rising prices were a sign of scarce oil becoming more expensive to procure. Yet somehow the oil industry continues to offer us oil at prices even to, or less than, what we've been paying for the last 80 years. How does the Hammer explain this?" Well, I'm no energy economist, but I think if we look at the components of the retail price of gasoline, we can make some educated guesses at how oil companies have been able to keep the price of gas so low. The price of a gallon of gas breaks out this way, according to this chart I shamelessly stole from the Department of Energy: One reason that gas is still relatively cheap is that refiners can get more gasoline from a barrel of crude. One barrel of crude oil is 42 gallons, which produces, in gallons: 19.5 gasoline 9.2 distillate fuel oil (includes both home heating oil and diesel fuel) 4.1 kerosene-type jet fuel 2.3 residual fuel oil (heavy oils used as fuels in industry, marine transportation and for electric power generation) 1.9 liquefied refinery gasses 1.9 still gas 1.8 coke 1.3 asphalt and road oil 1.2 petrochemical feedstocks (for making plastic) 0.5 lubricants 0.2 kerosene 0.3 other However, of that 19.5 gallons of gas, only 13 gallons can be extracted easily. The other 6.5 gallons requires some pretty sophisticated chemical processes that we haven't always had. The second factor is that refining unit costs have come down as well. This goes hand in hand with the first reason. However, as fuel standards become more stringent for air quality reasons, total refining costs may increase. Low- and zero-sulpher diesel, which is the latest air quality fuel of choice, requires going through a certain refining step multiple times in succession. The unit cost of the refining step is decreasing, but since the number of times that step is performed is increasing, the total cost of diesel is increasing. (This is why trucking companies, city governments--they operate buses, garbage trucks, and other diesel vehicles--and the like are opposed to low-sulpher diesel. They would rather install sulpher traps on the vehicles themselves. But history shows that it's not long before on-vehicle equipment like these traps fail because of poor maintenance.) The third factor is that the distribution costs have come down. Most gasoline is transported by truck, and over-the-road truck transportation has gotten pretty cheap, a fact we can see in the price of just about everything we buy, not just gas. Things like containerization, multimodal freight terminals, and increased fuel efficiency of the trucks are all responsible for this. The one thing that has not decreased over time is taxes. Today, the federal gas tax is 18.4 cents/gallon, while the average state tax is 21 cents/gallon. (Note that the gas tax, unlike other excise taxes, is a fixed amount as opposed to a percentage of the total price. This is problematic because it takes the passage of law to change it. Many people, including me, think that the gas tax is too low--a topic for next week).

Cell Phone Warnings

2006-07-13T12:48:00.000+02:00

The Department of Homeland Security will soon be sending warnings of national emergencies to cell phones. Italy has been doing this for two years now (it was first used when Pope John Paul II died), but when the program first started, people had serious privacy concerns because it meant that the government had access to everyone's cell phone number. Those concerns seemed to have abated. Will there be similar concerns in the US?

Price of Gasoline

2006-07-13T12:44:00.000+02:00

The price of gasoline is high right now, but as this graph, from the Department of Energy, shows, when adjusting for inflation (the blue line), gas isn't so expensive after all.

Interstate Highway System

2006-07-13T07:45:00.000+02:00

This year is the 50th anniversary of the signing of the 1956 Federal Aid Highway Act, which created the Interstate Highway System. Actually, what it created was the Highway Trust Fund, a special pot of federal money that was filled by a dedicated gas tax. The federal government would then give 90% of the cost of building highways that met certain design standards to the states, who had to contribute the final 10%. This milestone anniversary has prompted a lot of introspection among people who think about these things (like me). Overall, the Interstate system has been an amazingly successful project. But if you live in LA, Washington DC, San Francisco, Atlanta, or any of the other metro areas that the Texas Transportation Institute rates as having very bad traffic, then maybe you don't agree with me. The problem, though, is that the Interstate system has been too successful. As you sit in traffic on I-405, remember that you chose to take I-405 because even with traffic, it is your best option. You chose to live and work where you do, requiring you to take I-405. I'm not saying that these choices are bad or unreasonable. I'm pointing out that I-405, even crowded, gave you the power to make these choices. That's the real benefit of the Interstates. So what do we do in the next 50 years? How do we further expand choice (without breaking the bank or paving over the landscape)? Is it toll roads? More telecommuting? Intercity trains? Reform national transportation financing? Mass transit? It's all of the above.

More gun control

2006-07-12T11:04:00.000+02:00

Much of the controversy surrounding gun control in the US is due to the ambiguous wording of the Second Amendment. To review, the Second Amendment says: "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." A lot of ink has been spent in arguing whether the Founders intended that only militias should have access to arms, a so-called collective right, or if they meant an individual right. I personally believe that even if we discover what the Founders intended, we should utilize that insight with caution, because the Founders probably never imagined, in the days of black powder muzzle loaders, the available, compact, and portable lethality that today's firearms provide. Just as we can pretty much ignore the Third Amendment, which prohibits the quartering of troops in private homes, because it is no longer relevant, we should look carefully at any interpretation of the Second Amendment. But here's an idea. Instead of arguing endlessly about the intent, why don't we just amend the Constitution to clarify the Second Amendment? It's been done before (the 16th Amendment, for instance). It we decide that it's a collective right, it could say, "Congress shall have no power to prohibit state-organized and directed militias." If we decide that it is an individual right, it could say, "Congress shall have no power to prohibit individual ownership of arms."

Gun control

2006-07-12T10:23:00.000+02:00

Ben Shapiro, who often writes naive things, continues that tradition with a piece against gun control entitled "Why Citizens must own and carry guns." I found his argument sophomoric for several reasons. First, it's not really clear that had Senitt, the victim in Shapiro's drama, been armed, the crime would have been averted. One of the 4 assailants did have a gun. If Senitt drew his gun, he probably would have been shot. Maybe more people would have been injured or killed in any ensuing Reservoir Dogs-style stand-off. Shapiro is presenting a pretty sad story, it is true, but do they help us examine this issue? So maybe Shapiro is really suggesting the common argument that if everyone were armed, criminals would think twice about committing their crimes, the deterrence argument. My research suggests that the deterrence idea is far from settled. For instance, FBI statistics show that in the 3 years after the passage of the 1994 Brady Bill, the federal gun control law, crime actually decreased, firearm crimes by a full 25%. This implies that the presence of guns catalyzes crime. On the other hand, it could be that this drop was due to the contemporaneous improving economy, which would in turn suggest that the key to crime prevention is not more or less guns, but more economic activity. At any rate, it is not clear. And even if the deterrence argument is true, is it worth the cost? A 1998 study found that for every time a gun was used in a self-defense or legally justifiable shooting, there were four unintentional shootings and 11 attempted or completed suicides. In fact, the US leads the world in child deaths due to firearms. Our rate is 1.7 per 100,000, over 3 times the next country (Finland at 0.5 per 100,000). Firearms injury is the second leading cause of non-natural death in childhood and adolescence in this country. If we have a fully armed citizenry, imagine the carnage as unintended shooting deaths increase. I'm not arguing for or against gun control. I'm saying that jejune arguments like Shapiro's, arguments that appeal to emotion but ignore the facts, will do no good in the complicated issue of guns.

Transportation Fuel

2006-07-11T08:23:00.000+02:00

Two months ago, I argued that the key to oil independence is to ween ourselves off of petroleum as a transportation fuel. I advocated greater fuel efficiency in the vehicle fleet as well as policy and land use changes to reduce the total amount of travel that we perform. Yesterday, Reason carried a piece that said the same thing (though they were a little more optimistic about ethanol than I am). It's nice to know that people are starting to come around to my point of view.

Information ownership

2006-07-10T11:43:00.000+02:00

Here's an interesting article on parents using high-tech to spy on their kids. "Move over, Big Brother. Big Mother is in the house." The teenagers, predictably, complain about invasion of privacy. But as a legal expert notes, privacy laws do not protect kids from prying parents. "'In the United States, we sort of think of children as being the property of their parents,' said Jennifer Granick, executive director of the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School. 'Generally, there's not going to be anything that says parents can't keep tabs on their children.'" But the technology in the article can be used by others to keep track of the parents. For instance, the CarChip, which monitors the driving behavior of the car, can be used by the police and by insurance companies to help determine guilt in a car accident. In that case, what kind of protection will privacy laws provide? This leads to a bigger question about information ownership. If there is an accident, who owns the information that the CarChip contains? The driver? If so, can the driver refuse to provide it to the insurance company if it is incriminating (citing the 5th Amendment?). Will the police have to subpoena it? Medical information is likewise contested. You may think that you own your medical information, but you don't. In fact, until 2003, under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, you didn't even necessarily have the right to read your own medical record. Read California's laws on access to medical records and see who actually owns the information.

No free lunch

2006-07-07T07:50:00.000+02:00

Here's an extract from a Tax Policy Center report on the federal income tax cuts.

In his recent statement responding to the tax reconciliation bill conference agreement, President Bush asserted that failure to extend the tax cuts contained in the bill would be "disastrous" for "all working Americans." The President's claim is implausible in light of the distribution of the reconciliation bill's benefits. Some 68 percent of all American households will receive no tax cut at all from the legislation, and the average tax cut for households in the middle fifth of the income distribution will be $20. While the $43,000 average tax cut that households with incomes over $1 million will get from the bill could have a significant impact on a family's finances, it hardly seems that the loss of a $20 tax benefit would qualify as a disaster. An even larger fallacy in the President's claim is that it rests on the assumption that the tax cuts are a costless gift from a beneficent government. In fact, deficit-financed tax cuts eventually have to be paid for. The 68 percent of households that receive nothing from the tax cuts will, nonetheless, almost surely have to bear a share of the costs. More than 85 percent of all households have incomes below $100,000, and the vast majority of these households will be net losers when the financing costs of the tax reconciliation bill are considered, according to an analysis by the Urban Institute-Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center. Moreover, if the tax reconciliation bill is taken to have been partly financed by the spending reconciliation bill enacted earlier this year, then households with modest incomes are already net losers from the tax cuts (see discussion on page four). Some claim that there really is a free lunch to be had in this case because the tax cuts will spur economic growth, which will help everyone and generate enough additional revenue to offset most, if not all, of the tax cuts' costs. That claim is not supported by the evidence (see box on page three). Rather, it is widely recognized that the tax cuts eventually must be financed. Financial markets will not indefinitely tolerate large, persistent, and growing deficits of the type that the nation is projected to face. As former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan warned, "If you're going to lower taxes, you shouldn't be borrowing essentially the tax cut. And that over the long run is not a stable fiscal situation." Simply stated, funds that are borrowed must eventually be paid back.

Jumping to conclusions

2006-07-07T07:37:00.000+02:00

I got two very different responses to my post about Richard Lindzen's consulting work for oil and gas interests. The first one, from someone who works at a state department of environment, said "Also, thanks for your blog in regards to Richard Lindzen being paid by OPEC and other O&G groups. The NM Governor has formed an climate change advisory group http://www.nmclimatechange.us/ that will look into greenhouse gas emissions and such. My bureau has been bouncing emails around about Lindzens op ed response back at CNN's Michelle Mitchell report about the NAS report. It is always good to know the full spectrum of things ...." The second one says "Well, I don't know any more about Dr. Lindzen than from what I've gathered perusing the links you've posted, and I do believe that global warming is an issue. However, I don't see how you can jump to your conclusion that he must be a corrupt quack simply on the basis of one small CMD article revealing that he's done some consulting work for oil and coal companies." I admit that I may have come across too harshly against Lindzen (though I didn't call him a "corrupt quack"). The real target of my criticism was not Lindzen, though, but those conservative commentators who constantly claim that scientists who support the theory of anthropogenic global climate change are prostituting themselves. I wanted to point out that it can go both ways.

Show me the Money

2006-07-06T12:38:00.000+02:00

Cuba Gooding, Jr, won an Oscar with his mantra, "Show me the money!" The mantra of truth-seekers like yours truly should be the same. For instance, take Richard Lindzen's op-ed the other day casting doubt on global warming. Lindzen is an MIT climatologist, so you'd think he'd be credible, but it turns out that he is (or at least has been) on the payroll of "oil and gas interests." Science for hire. Isn't that what the conservatives are always accusing the liberals of? Hats off to Steve for pointing this out.

America in Decline

2006-07-05T13:31:00.000+02:00

Here are two contrasting views of America. Jeff Luken fears that America is in decline: "It seems the time-honored notions of courage, honor, sacrifice, responsibility and decency have become a thing of the past...You don't need to be a Founding Father to figure out that spiritual faith, courage and liberty are what make a people great. Once upon a time, we instinctively knew this. It is a lesson we need to relearn." Meanwhile, Robert Kaplan says that decline is good; we need to start thinking Beyond American Empire: "No doubt there are some who see an American empire as the natural order of things for all time. That is not a wise outlook. The task ahead for the United States has an end point, and in all probability the end point lies not beyond the conceptual horizon but in the middle distance—a few decades from now." Luken's view is certainly not new. Almost fifteen years ago, culture warrior William Bennett said our decline began in 1960. Thomas Brewton, a vocal proponent of the America-in-decline argument, is a little more circumspect but seems to peg the beginning of the end at 1789. In fact, if you google America in Decline, you'll find that there are as many opinions on when the decline started as there are conservative bloggers. But the truth is, the "America in decline" mantra is as old as America itself. America was the richest, most powerful country in the world in 1900, yet immigration fears, a serious depression in the 1890's and several recessions in the next decade, a war (Spanish-American), and the assassination of a president (McKinley) all fueled talk of decline. As Alan Dowd states, "Many observers worried that America was in decline in the 1950s, when communist forces fought U.S. and allied forces to a stalemate in Korea. So taxed was the U.S. in Northeast Asia that Washington called for German rearmament in late 1950. American power was thought to be waning in the late 1940s as well, when "we lost China," and in the immediate postwar period, when Americans were reading news stories about failure and futility in occupied Germany." America is not in decline. (and I'm not the only one who thinks so).

A Deist Nation

2006-07-04T08:48:00.000+02:00

It's so common today to hear that the US is "Christian nation," that the Founding Fathers would be scandalized by our interpretation of the First Amendment, and by our generally "un-Christian" culture. A recent book suggests that these thoughts are wrong.

Congressional Timewasting

2006-07-04T08:31:00.000+02:00

If you think that Congress doesn't really have a lot to do these days, you're apparently right. Their latest timewaster? Several congressmen want to hold hearings on the Motion Picture Association of America's (MPAA) movie rating system. It seems that "Blunt and a handful of other House members said they remain concerned about the subjective nature of the ratings process."

Global Warming

2006-07-03T09:57:00.000+02:00

Richard Lindzen, a climatologist at MIT, published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal saying that the hype surrounding global warming is just that, hype. He states that we simply do not understand the earth's climate well enough to make any substantial claims about anthropogenic climate change.

Firework safety

2006-07-03T08:21:00.000+02:00

Are fireworks dangerous? Should they be banned? Or are fireworks laws merely another Nanny State intrusion? Fireworks would seem to be pretty dangerous. They are explosive, incendiary, mass-produced, with low production quality standards. And I know from vast personal experience how powerful and destructive off-the-shelf fireworks can be. But, according to the American Pyrotechnics Association, fireworks are actually quite safe: "Consumption of fireworks in the United States has risen dramatically over the past two and a half decades, from 29 million pounds in 1976 to over 281.5 million pounds in 2005. While the industry has seen an 870.7% increase in fireworks consumption per million pounds, there has been a 90.1% decrease in fireworks-related injuries per 100,000 pounds." And in another report, the APA says that: "Approximately 70 million Americans sustain nonfatal injuries each year, according to data compiled by a special commission of the National Research Council. Motor vehicles, firearms, and falls account for over 60% of this total. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission(CPSC) has estimated that approximately 10,000 Americans have been injured annually in fireworks-related incidents over the past decade, with serious misuse accounting for a large majority of the incidents. Fireworks, therefore, are involved in only about 0.01 % of all injuries — 99.99 % of injuries in this country are associated with something other than fireworks. There are an estimated 6,820 hospitals in the United States, according to the AmericanHospital Association. Each hospital, on the average, treats approximately one fireworks-related injury per year. In contrast, there are approximately 205 automobile related and 82 bicycle related injuries treated per hospital per year." Finally, the APA lists these numbers for major sources of heat- or burn-related injuries for the year 2000: Ovens--44098 Fireplaces--26831 Stoves--21713 Gasoline--18525 BBQ--17967 Lighters--14693 Fireworks--11000 Therefore, they conclude, cooking is more dangerous than fireworks. Should we accept this? Well, I think that it's always a good idea to be skeptical of data produced by a trade group. I mean, of course the American Pyrotechnics Association is going to say that fireworks are safe. In this case, I don't mean that the APA is lying. I just mean that the numbers deserve a little more nuanced analysis. For instance, let's remember that fireworks use, for the most part, is concentrated in an approximate 7-day period in June/July once a year. Ovens, meanwhile, are used pretty much year-round. So if we take the injury numbers above and calculate a per day rate instead of a per year rate, we see that fireworks are much more dangerous. Ovens--121 Fireworks--1571 Now consider who actually uses fireworks. By the APA's own numbers, most fireworks users are males older than 15. We can probably exclude males older than, say, 65 as well. So if we go to the US Census for age data, we see that of the 281 million people in 2000, 91 million fit into our age/gender range of fireworks users. I'm sure that we could filter it down even more with more time. How many people, on the other hand, use ovens? I bet it's closer to half the population, or 140 million. So if we divide the injury numbers by users, we get Ovens--0.8/million/day Fireworks--17/million/day That's a factor of 21. Of course, this analysis is very crude. My point is that the APA's numbers must be looked at with a critical eye. Now, all that being said, fireworks don't seem to be as dangerous as they might at first appear. 11,000 injuries a year, no matter how concentrated, really isn't that much. And even though there's no discussion of the seriousness of the injuries, in my experience, most injuries are relatively minor (though I work with someone who lost 3 fingers to a whistling rocket with report). Finally, I think we need to consider the cost/benefit analysis that I mention so often. Laws banning fireworks are not banning the professional shows that communities or businesses often sponsor. They are banning the private sale of low-grade fireworks to average citizens for their own little displays. So how important are these private neighborhood shows to our expressions of patriotism on the 4th of July? Are they worth 11,000 injuries and $5.4 million in damage a year? Maybe yes, maybe no, but that is the question that needs to be asked.

Independence Day

2006-06-30T08:11:00.000+02:00

There are a couple holidays a year that bring out the worst in syrupy-sweet patriotic bathos, Memorial Day, the Fourth, Veterans' Day. This year is no exception. Here's a selection from today: The Fourth of July and Heroes A quote: "The citizens of the small rural community will have the opportunity to get up close and personal with America's bravest and finest on God's green earth" (Note: the author is talking about baseball players). The 4th of July When We Were Still E Pluribus Unum The Fourth of July and The United States of America

Conservative Compassion

2006-06-30T07:45:00.000+02:00

In the spirit of Conservative openness to debate, compassion, and intellectual honesty, I offer the following list of book titles on sale at Amazon:

Godless: The Church of Liberalism
Unhinged : Exposing Liberals Gone Wild
How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must)
Do As I Say (Not As I Do) : Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy
Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right
Treason : Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism
The Terrible Truth About Liberals
Deliver Us from Evil: Defeating Terrorism, Despotism, and Liberalism
Liberalism is a Mental Disorder : Savage Solutions
The War on Christmas: How the Liberal Plot to Ban the Sacred Christian Holiday Is Worse Than You Thought
Slouching Towards Gomorrah : Modern Liberalism and American Decline

Conservative self-delusion

2006-06-30T07:22:00.000+02:00

Maybe I'm biased, but it seems to be a cottage industry on the Right to tell us Liberals what we think. For instance, here's a contribution from Bob Webster telling me what motivates my views. It's probably useless for me to go on with this post because Webster tells me that "Ultimately, at the heart of modern liberalism is an astounding ability for self-delusion on a continuing basis." I will, however, press on like the soldier of justice that I am. But in truth, how can we take a conservative seriously who says this "Consequently, liberals are at the forefront of those in denial of Constitutional restraint on government and who must resort to intellectually vapid arguments in any political debate. The modern liberal is a devout believer in the orthodox liberal belief that our Constitution is a document designed to be "reinterpreted" by succeeding generations to suit contemporary whims and should not be interpreted in accordance with its original intent." when liberals are the ones fighting unconstitutional wiretapping, detentions, and search and seizures, when the liberals are fighting the modification of the Constitution to suit the "contemporary whims" against flag burning and homosexual marriage? Who's really self-delusional here? I've said it before: all I ask is a little honesty from the rightwing commentators.

Congress Report Card

2006-06-29T08:40:00.000+02:00

No matter where we sit on the spectrum of politics, I think we can all agree with The Heritage Foundation's recent Congressional Report Card. The Senate gets a overall D, while the House gets a C-.

No More Shuttle

2006-06-29T07:58:00.000+02:00

Today, Matt Towery says we need to re-evaluate the value of the shuttle program. I heartily agree. Both the Challenger and the Columbia accident investigation boards found the same root causes for the respective tragedies. (A couple years ago, the Atlantic carried a fascinating piece on the backstory of the Columbia accident investigation. You should read it.) Chief among these causes was the whole raison d'etre of the shuttle itself. When the shuttle program was conceived, during the Johnson Administration, the shuttle was touted as "routine space flight." NASA estimated that within a few years, they would have up to 50 launches a year, with a 10-day turnaround, and that the program would be fiscally self-supporting. In fact, the shuttle is officially known as the STS, Space Transportation System, to reflect this idea. After only the 4th launch, Reagan officially declared the STS "operational." Of course, we all know the truth. The shuttle has never lived up to billing. It is anything but routine. For instance, a shuttle requires 1.5 million work hours of inspection and maintenance between launches. By comparison, the equivalent inspection for a Boeing 747, the so-called D inspection, takes about 25,000 hours and occurs once every 8 years. The shuttle program is definitely not fiscally self-supporting. And it is not even needed. The STS is the ultimate make-work project. Today's shuttle is a testament to yesterday's romantic ideas about spaceflight. We need to move on. In the near- and medium-term, space travel will most likely be unmanned rockets and probes. Not sexy, but sensible.

More Freedom of Religion

2006-06-29T07:45:00.000+02:00

The California Supreme Court today allowed two Riverside County girls to sue a Christian high school that expelled them because the principal believed they were lesbians. The girls argued that their expulsion violated California civil rights laws, in particular the Unruh Act, which prohibits businesses from discriminating on the basis of a person's actual or perceived sexuality. The school said that it was not a business, and moreover that its Constitutionally-guaranteed freedom of religion trumped any state laws. This is a tough one. While I support civil rights laws that protect homosexuals, attendance at a private Christian school is a voluntary act, and I'm quite sure that the girls or at least their parents were aware of the school's policies and attitudes toward homosexuality before they started. The school in its defense referred to the US Supreme Court's 2000 ruling that allowed the Boy Scouts to exclude a gay man as a troop leader in New Jersey despite an anti-discrimination law in that state because the Boy Scouts are a private, voluntary organization. In that ruling, while I didn't agree with the Boy Scouts, I did agree with the US Supreme Court. Of course, I don't know the details in this case (I couldn't find the opinion online), I think in this case, I agree with the school.

Hooters and Sexism

2006-06-28T08:22:00.000+02:00

If you are like me and believe the sexism is still perniciously present in our culture, then the case of Hooters presents a real conundrum. It's no secret that Hooters appeals to our basest instincts. (No, the buffalo wings at Hooters are not that good). But I think I have to agree with John Stossel on this one that Hooters is not acting in a discriminatory way. What is sexist, though, is statements like this "that there would indeed be a class of disappointed males if the government insisted men do the jobs of Hooters girls. " Notice how on the one hand, it's "men" but on the other, it's "girls," even though in theory these wait people would be the same age. When boys like Stossel call women girls, or when dinosaurs like Dennis Prager or J.D. Morris say that women are just naturally unfit to lead, that's the sexism we need to fight.

Flag Burning is Okay

2006-06-28T07:50:00.000+02:00

The Flag Burning Amendment fails. To recap, I agree with Senator Inouye of Hawaii, who said, "I have no patience for those who defile our flag. [But] We should make sure all Americans have the right to express themselves, even those who harbor evil thoughts," and Senator Boxer of California, who said, "There are many things in life that we find offensive, repugnant to beliefs that we hold dear. But we cannot amend the Constitution every time there is something we consider outrageous, offensive or repugnant.''

Styrofoam ban

2006-06-27T14:51:00.000+02:00

In keeping with the Nanny State/defer to experts string, take a gander at this: San Francisco mulling Styrofoam ban for restaurants for '07. Is that enlightened despotism, a la my argument about experts and public policy, or blue state meddling at its most heavy-handed? Maybe this is a case for full social cost accounting.

Free Speech

2006-06-27T13:29:00.000+02:00

Here's something tangentially related to previous discussions of free speech. David Limbaugh takes the NY Times to task for something it published that supposedly undermines national security. Limbaugh invokes the Supreme Court's statement that "the most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing panic." The right-wingers have denounced the Times and other media outlets for this sort of thing in the past. But go back to the Supreme Court's statement. The Times is shouting fire, all right, but my question is, is it shouting falsely?

The Bible

2006-06-27T11:12:00.000+02:00

Anonymous, who I'm guessing based on the tone is different from the normal contributor of the same name, says in regard to the Brick Testament post from last week: "I'm curious what your point is. The creator of the lego bible is an atheist. Sex, drunkenness, and violence in the Bible would not come as a surprise to those who have read it." I apologize if I was too dry--the facetiousness was obviously lost. Actually, I'm rather familiar with the Bible. So what's my point? Well, to be perfectly frank, my point is that those who claim that the Bible is the inerrant word of God and that its literal (or nearly so) reading can be used to define and support public policy today are just silly. It's no mystery that the Bible is chock full of contradictions and inconsistencies, both within the texts themselves and with the supposed doctrines and dogmas that it is supposed to support. Let's take one of my favorite examples. The destruction of Sodom by a wrathful God (Genesis 19) is one of the most common passages used to denounce homosexuality. Ignoring the fact that the passage doesn't explicitly say "homosexuality"--leaving open to interpretation as to what the Sodomites' actual crime was--doesn't it seem strange that the only person deemed righteous and thus worthy of saving from Sodom's destruction, Lot, first offered his virgin daughters to the unruly crowd so that the girls could be gang-raped, and then immediately after the disaster (and loss of his wife, because she became a pillar of salt), engaged in drunken, incestuous sex with the aforementioned daughters? How are we to apply this lesson to today? My point is that the Bible, as evidenced by all the sex, drunkenness, violence, and contradiction, is best read as exactly what it is: a collection of social documents composed and normalized over a span of 1000 years by a wide group of authors coming from extremely diverse sociopolitical situations with variegated movitations for writing. There is no denying its influence or its value as a moral wellspring. But it is an oh-so-human document, starring man, written by man, anthologized by man, edited by man, translated by man, and interpreted by man (and, finally, lately, woman). There's nothing new about my point. It has been being made as long as the Bible has been being written.

The Bible in Legos

2006-06-20T14:05:00.000+02:00

Here's a scene from Exodus 33:11, Moses meeting Yahwey, courtesy of The Brick Testament. And below are Adam and Eve conceiving Cain. Turns out the Bible is filled with sex, drunkeness, and violence. Who knew?

More Nanny State, Flag Burning, and Fighting Sioux

2006-06-20T07:59:00.000+02:00

Anonymous is fired up about the mascot/flag-burning paradox. I'll address his points one by one. 1. Littering is freedom of speech in the same way that a political protest is. I don't have the jurisprudence at my fingertips, but I think it's a dead end to call every single human action "freedom of speech." What statement is a litterer trying to make? Meanwhile, littering has definite social costs, including health impacts (despite strenuous protestations to the contrary. Read, for instance, "The Search for the Ultimate Sink," by Joel Tarr for a history of urban waste generation and disposal [I know, I know, only a geeky engineer would read a book about the history of urban waste generation and disposal]). As I've stated earlier, the freedom of speech concept rests on a balance, a balance between the right itself and protecting public welfare (yelling fire in a theater). You can always dig up some social cost for every instance of free speech, but if we do the social calculus, I think we'd find that a political protest comes up a plus, while littering, if it is indeed free speech, would come up a minus. 2. Lack of personal accountability is a big problem in the US. I agree with this statement. I guess I wasn't clear in my Nanny State post. I have a lot of faith in what the "experts" tell me (as long as the topic is within the expert's field). I myself used to be one of those experts (when I worked for the San Francisco County Board of Supervisors as a city planner, my colleagues and I were the city planning experts for those 11 elected officials and thus for city/county policy). So when an expert tells me that riding without a helmet is bad and here's why, I have no problem with that being the basis for public policy. Some might call this deference to experts "liberal elitism." But the truth of the matter is, I know more about city planning and its related topics than most people do, not because I'm smarter or elite, but because I studied and practiced it. Therefore, I feel I am better suited to make city planning decisions for "the people." For an interesting but in my opinion flawed look at this from the other side of the aisle, go here. Disclaimer: I admit I am biased in this whole Nanny State discussion, because city planning as a profession is based on a very Nanny State/anti-free market idea. I can support this, though, by looking at the history of city planning in the US and see that for the most part, it has been a reactionary force for good--though I happen to find our current rigid separation of land uses bad. 3. What we need is tough love. I also agree with this, though in a broader way than Anonymous probably meant. I call it "full social cost accounting." The idea of full social cost accounting (FSCA) is in the grandest free market tradition, but with the added bonus of internalizing all the market-failure externalities. In the motorcycle helmet example, the FSCA principle would have motorcycle riders pay for the privilege of riding without a helmet. Call it an "advance disposal fee." I would have no problem at all with anyone who drives a Hummer--if the price of gas included all the external costs. (I read an article a while ago, though I can't seem to find it now, that explained how insurance companies were cross-subsidizing SUV owners because SUV premiums weren't reflective of the greater damage- and crash potential that SUVs had with respect to passenger cars. That's a big FSCA no-no). 4. Flag burning is the same as offensive sports mascots. First, let me heartily disagree with the statement that "veterans have earned an aggrieved status comensurate (sic) with that of Native Americans." I am a veteran, and I believe this gives me some moral authority in this matter. In fact, as cliche as it sounds, I firmly believe that I "fought"--I put that in quotes because as an engineering officer, I was never on the front lines and was only ever shot at once--to preserve the right to burn the flag. I also don't think that the flag burning issue belongs to veterans alone. So let's put those veterans aside. I had brought up in an earlier post the idea of moral reasoning. By that I meant the deliberate consideration of the moral costs and benefits of a particular sports mascot. What are the moral costs of, say, the Cleveland Indians logo? Well, it's a gross caricature (can you imagine if the logo were a similarly stylized Chinese or black face?). It perpetuates stereotypes of Native Americans (I doubt that the Kickapoo, Miami, or Erie tribal members wore the headband with the feather, if indeed anyone ever did). It glosses over or even celebrates the horrible treatment that Native Americans received. What are the moral benefits of the mascot? It preserves a tradition that goes back to 1914, though a tradition that was embarked upon with very little thought and indeed quite offhandedly. I think that in this case, the costs clearly outweigh the benefits. Now, on to flag burning. What are the moral costs of banning flag burning? It is an indubitable erosion of our First Amendment rights. It sets the stage for amending the Constitution for every possible slight. It undermines what the flag stands for. What are the moral benefits? It avoids the possible offense of groups like veterans. It places a very high value on the flag as a symbol (though the irony here of course is, a symbol of what? Freedom?). You can do your own moral calculation. As I said earlier, if I were the arbiter of sports mascots, I would ask that teams do their own calculations, too. If the Fighting Sioux did that, and, again, the fact that they changed their logo suggests that they did so at least in part, then I'm satisfied. My complaint is that too often, people don't fully consider the effects of their actions, or they lean too heavily on that thing called "tradition." Tradition has value, but it doesn't trump. (This is where we talk about the Confederate flag).

Political Satire

2006-06-19T08:06:00.000+02:00

Nathan Tabor produces another piece of fatuous nonsense, in which he claims that among other things: 1. Leftwingers don't represent true Americans--"SUV-driving, church-going, baseball-loving moms and dads?" 2. President Bush is a model of restraint and voice of reason. 3. Democrats are responsible for federal binge spending. Wait. Was this a satire?

The Nanny State

2006-06-19T07:31:00.000+02:00

The sport mascot issue definitely gets more complicated as we drill down. And I admit that my stance on it compared to my stance on flag burning may seem contradictory. But I'd like leave that for just a second to talk about something that is related, the so-called rise of Nanny State, the idea that the [liberal] State knows better than we do and must therefore govern our actions, particularly with regard to lifestyle choices. According to CNN, A Florida Today analysis of federal motorcycle crash statistics found "unhelmeted" deaths in Florida rose from 22 in 1998 and 1999, the years before the helmet law repeal, to 250 in 2004, the most recent year of available data. (First, let me address Dave Carroll's, helmet law opponent, stupid statement about helmets. He's against helmet because "What causes most of the crashes is cars," he said. "Usually, it's the car driver turning left at an intersection and causing an accident because they didn't see us coming." This is probably true, but Dave, no one said that helmetlessness causes accidents, and that a mandatory helmet law would reduce accidents. What helmets do do, and the statistics show it, is reduce the lethality of the accidents, however they are caused.) So here we have a situation in which people knowingly engage in dangerous behavior. The consequences of their decisions are plain to see. (I'm assuming, by the way, since it's not stated in the article, that the number of motorcycle riders and the length of motorcycle trips have stayed about the same over the study period). If these motorcycle deaths had no costs to anyone other than the victims, then these people can ride without a helmet all day long. But their actions do in fact incur costs to others, such as the cost of police and emergency responders, higher insurance premiums for everyone, etc. I discuss this in more depth here, but can sum up by saying that a mandatory helmet law saves taxpayer money by eliminating certain externalities. The Nanny State, at least in this instance, is a good thing. So how does this relate to the sport mascot issue? Well, we could say that forcing the elimination of potentially offensive mascots is an example of the meddling Nanny State in action. If people really cared, some argue, the Washington Redskins would quickly change their mascot because of lost ticket or merchandise revenues. I agree that this is probably true. But I also agree with others who say that if people don't care, they should. I also believe that if people gave it a moment's thought, they in the end would care. This gets to the core of the Nanny State question. If we look at the spectrum of what we might call Nanny State issues, such as smoking bans, helmet laws, food content laws, and the like, I think we'll find that for the most part, the State is right. Smoking is bad. Helmetless riding is dangerous. The Washington Redskins name and mascot are offensive to Indians. Further, many of these bad habits create and pass on costs to others. So how do we address what I consider both a social and fiscal equity problem? I have my ideas. When the numbers point clearly to a solution, such as Florida's helmet story, then a law is warranted. Banning littering, which is a public health hazard and a waste collection management headache (read higher collection costs), is another example of an easily defended law. In general, I don't really have a problem with the Nanny State. What do you think?

Monday Science Funnies

2006-06-19T07:29:00.000+02:00

Here's a little lighthearted piece about the truth of Creationism. Thinking readers will get a good belly laugh out of it, or raise their eyebrows in amazement.

Liberal Blogosphere

2006-06-16T11:29:00.000+02:00

Earlier, I stated that there wasn't much commentary on the Yearly Kos convention from the right wing , which led me to conclude that the right don't really consider the liberal blogsphere much of a force. An article in the Weekly Standard supports this. I guess that all us lefties out here in cyberspace are talking to ourselves.

Moral Authority

2006-06-16T07:17:00.000+02:00

As much as I generally dislike David Limbaugh's stuff, I think he did raise an interesting point in this article. He's discussing Ann Coulter's latest book (can I make an aside here the Coulter is one of the most shameless self-promotors I have come across?), where she says that liberals grant absolute moral authority to victims of personal tragedy, such as Cindy Sheehan: "As a result of their status, these individuals are entitled to say anything they want, not just as a matter of free speech, which no one would dispute, but with full immunity from criticism. Their actions and statements cannot be challenged, no matter how ludicrous, no matter how destructive." I thought this was an interesting idea in general. Do the victims of personal tragedy have more moral authority by virtue of their loss? Do the widows and widowers of 9/11 deserve more input into any planned memorials? Do the families of people killed in product liability cases (such as the Ford Explorer/Bridgestone tire case) have more say in the final outcomes? I think that despite Coulter's cries of partisanship, we all think so to some extent.

Burning the Flag

2006-06-15T12:50:00.000+02:00

Says Anonymous: "However, I don't agree with the argument that such an [flag desecration] Amendment would be a catastrophic death blow to civil liberties. I mean come now, are you really so horribly oppressed today simply because it is against the law to yell fire in a crowded theater or to mail a letter threatening the life of the President? Would American lives be so much more complete and enriched if they could legally do so?" No one said "catastrophic death blow." I said "erosion." And that is exactly what such an amendment would be: a small, seemingly benign tweak that in reality undercuts ever so slightly our civil rights. There's no argument that it takes away an aspect of our freedom of speech, right? So the question becomes, to what benefit? There must be a cost-benefit trade-off. The benefits of prohibiting the proverbial yelling of fire are obvious: human lives are saved. Illegality of threatening the President is less obviously beneficial but I think justifiable. Benefits of prohibiting flag burning? Besides assuaging some hurt feelings I can't think of one. I doubt that a flag burning amendment if passed would ever remotely impact me. But how do I know? And how do I know that my other potentially offensive forms of protest (which I will not describe) won't one day be similarly outlawed? This issue clearly ties into the sport mascot one. I may seem to be contradicting myself. In the one case, I support distasteful public speech, while in the other, I am calling for soothing special interest groups. The big difference is I'm not asking for a Constitutional amendment against offensive mascots. If the NCAA, a voluntary, private organization, chose to ban flag burning as a condition of entry, so be it. (I also think that the flag is a political symbol and therefore different from a logo that represents a people).

Fighting Sioux

2006-06-15T07:28:00.000+02:00

As usual, Anonymous asks some good questions, this time in response to the sports team mascot post from yesterday. Question 1: How far do we take this? For instance, what about mascots like the Fighting Irish? Question 2: If we accept the idea that cultural groups should be contacted with regard to their use as a mascot, how do we assure that we are asking the right and the right amount of people? The Notre Dame Fighting Irish always come up as a counterexample in discussions of this issue. Of course, it's impossible to come up with a bright line between good and bad mascots. What about the Fighting Engineers of Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology (whose logo is an elephant!)? Should I as an engineer be offended? But even if we can't come up with a clear division, I think we can apply some moral reasoning to individual circumstances. Obvious slanders are out. If the Notre Dame mascot were really the Fighting Micks, I don't think there'd be any question. I also think it's fair to say that, given the history of Indian relations in this country, any Indian mascot should immediately be suspect. Irish people, despite the prejudice they faced in the early 1900's, were never on the receiving end of a national policy of genocide. I happen to believe that most Irish-Americans are proud of the Notre Dame connection (though interestingly, Notre Dame was founded by French monks and didn't get to be "Irish" until Irish catholics from Chicago started sending their sons there almost 100 years after the school was created). In general, and this goes toward Question 2 as well, if I were the arbiter of mascots, I would simply look for a good faith effort at acknowledging and attempting to remedy any possible offensive aspects of a mascot. Clearly not every Sioux in the world or even North Dakota can be contacted or expected to accept a mascot. That shouldn't stop the university from trying. The fact that the current logo was designed by a Sioux is an important first step. (I happen to like the logo and don't find it offensive. Compare it to the Atlanta Braves or Cleveland Indians cartoonish logos. In fact, I don't think anyone who looks at the Cleveland logo can deny that this issue is indeed an issue. These are the current and old Cleveland logos:. Is one better than the other?)

Yearly Kos

2006-06-15T07:09:00.000+02:00

My friend Steve sent me an email about Yearly Kos, the recently-held liberal bloggers convention in Las Vegas. "I'm curious what the conservative bloggers are saying about the supposed power of the liberal blogosphere. Maybe you could look into it and do an entry on it." Actually, I didn't find much conservative commentary out there. And the one piece I did find, from Ben Shapiro (a 20-something conservative wunderkind with two inane books under his belt), suggests that the right haven't really given any thought to the matter. Shapiro's article is mean-spirited and filled with ad hominen attacks very much in the mold of Ann Coulter, but doesn't actually say anything interesting. Meanwhile, there is plenty out there on the Marriage Protection Amendment and the Flag Desecration Amendment. So, does that mean that the supposed power of the liberal blogosphere is just that--supposed? Or that the right wing talking heads don't know their enemy?

Uniting North America

2006-06-14T11:23:00.000+02:00

The US Council on Foreign Relations, a nonpartisan research group, has recently released a report, Building a North American Community, that calls for "establishment by 2010 of a North American economic and security community" with a common "outer security perimeter." The rightwingers hate this idea. Undermines US sovereignty and all that. What do you think?

Politically Correct Sport Mascots

2006-06-14T07:18:00.000+02:00

We haven't heard from this issue in a while: racist sport team mascots. In today's story, the NCAA has asked the University of North Dakota to change its mascot from the Fighting Sioux. The difference is that the UND has resisted, for which it is applauded by the right wing. Conservatives feel that this issue is an "absurd paean to the God of Political Correctness." I disagree. Think of such mascots as the Washington "Redskins" or the Oklahoma State "Savages." Quite offensive. Really, are those names any different than if we had teams like the "Darkies" or the "Fighting Pickaninnies"? What about the gross caricatures such as the "tomahawk chop"? Surely we can all agree that those are wrong. I admit that it is a slightly different story when the mascot is merely the name of a tribe. Those team names are not necessarily disrespectful. But I feel in these cases, the tribe in question should have a say. Doesn't that seem fair? And in fact, the Seminoles, Chippewas, and Utes are all recent examples of tribes that have been asked and given their consent to use their names as university mascots. Well, in our example here, the Sioux don't like the name. Haven't for a long time, it seems. So UND talks about inclusiveness and respect, but it is all hot air if the Sioux aren't on board. Is this Political Correctness? Yes, but that's a good thing.

Flag Desecration

2006-06-13T08:06:00.000+02:00

If you thought that the assault on civil liberty and common sense was over when the Marriage Protection Amendment failed, you are wrong. Next up from the culture warriors is the Flag Desecration Amendment. Let's ignore the fact that of all the issues that face our national leaders today, burning the American flag, no matter one's opinion of it, is or should be very, very low on the priority list. The politics behind this issue show that my cynicism is not deep enough. Let's also ignore the fact that flag burning is exceedingly rare. According to the ACLU, there have been only 45 documented cases of flag burning since 1777. This amendment is most definitely a solution looking for a problem. Let's concentrate on the fact that this amendment will erode our first amendment rights. In that, there is no question. Indeed, if this weren't a reduction to our Constitutional rights, then an amendment to the Constitution woudn't be necessary in the first place. The US Supreme Court has repeatedly explained since 1931 when it first applied the First Amendment to a flag statute, that the non-verbal, peaceful use of the flag to make a political statement, whether it be by flying, saluting, or burning, is fully protected under the First Amendment’s guarantee of free expression. That is why, since 1931, the Supreme Court has consistently struck down flag statutes requiring students to salute the flag, prohibiting flying a “red flag,” and prohibiting burning the flag. The Court has said that it is a“bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment…that the Government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itselfoffensive and disagreeable.” The First Amendment is designed precisely to protect unpopular forms of peaceful expression and political dissent such as flag burning, although these acts are highly offensive to almost all Americans. Let's also concentrate on the squishiness of the amendment. Here's how it reads: "The Congress shall have power to prohibit the physical desecration of the flag of theUnited States.” It doesn't actually say "burning." It says physical desecration. What is that? We can all come up with ludicrous examples of someone's idea of desecration. US flag on that shirt you bought at Old Navy? Jasper Johns' famous flag paintings? Someone displaying the flag in the incorrect manner?

Top novels

2006-06-12T07:35:00.000+02:00

Some researchers recently surveyed men and women on their favorite novels. The survey also revealed some interesting things about the way men and women perceive novels. The lists are here. I've read 15 of the men's and 7 of the women's. Like most men in the article, I had a hard time coming up with a favorite, but it may have to be one of two John Fowles' novels, The Magus or The French Lieutenant's Woman. How many have you read? What's your favorite? MEN'S LIST 1 Albert Camus The Outsider 2 J.D. Salinger The Catcher in the Rye 3 Kurt Vonnegut Slaughterhouse-Five 4 Gabriel Garcia Marquez One Hundred Years of Solitude 5 J.R.R. Tolkien The Hobbit 6 Joseph Heller Catch-22 7 George Orwell 1984 8 F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby 9 Milan Kundera The Book of Laughter and Forgetting 10 Harper Lee To Kill a Mockingbird 11 Vladimir Nabokov Lolita 12 J.R.R. Tolkien The Lord of the Rings and Fyodor Dostoevsky Crime and Punishment 14 Graham Greene Brighton Rock 15 Nick Hornby High Fidelity 16 James Joyce Ulysses 17 Mark Twain The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn 18 Joseph Conrad Heart of Darkness 19 Franz Kafka Metamorphosis 20 John Steinbeck The Grapes of Wrath WOMEN'S LIST 1 Charlotte Bronte Jane Eyre 2 Emily Bronte Wuthering Heights 3 Margaret Atwood The Handmaid's Tale 4 George Eliot Middlemarch 5 Jane Austen Pride and Prejudice 6 Toni Morrison Beloved 7 Doris Lessing The Golden Notebook 8 Joseph Heller Catch-22 9 Marcel Proust Remembrance of Things Past 10 Jane Austen Persuasion 11 Mary Shelley Frankenstein 12 Jeanette Winterson Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit 13 Gabriel Garcia Marquez One Hundred Years of Solitude 14 George Eliot The Mill on the Floss 15 Louisa May Alcott Little Women 16 Gustave Flaubert Madame Bovary 17 C.S. Lewis The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe 18 Margaret Mitchell Gone with the Wind 19 Joseph Conrad Heart of Darkness 20 Harper Lee To Kill a Mockingbird

Estate Tax

2006-06-09T09:16:00.000+02:00

Politics is about perception, and perception is about spin. That's the lesson I take away from this press release about the recent estate tax vote in the Senate. The press release comes from TheVanguard.org, a conservative web site. If you read the release, you'll see it is chock full of the fear-mongering, emotional appeals, innuendo, and unsubstantiated assertions that unfortunately characterize too many national debates. The spin? It calls the estate tax the "Death Tax"--an old and sophomoric trick. It says things like, "[Estate tax supporters] honestly believe that family farmers and corner grocers should pay 55% of everything they own to the government when they die. These are old-school socialists: they believe in punishing honest, hard work, and that government bureaucrats are smarter and better than you...." It phrases everything in terms of a righteous struggle against forces of evil. If you want the truth, it's not hard to find. All I ask is that we do our research. You know, an intelligent debate, backed up by facts?

Killing for Christ

2006-06-08T09:56:00.000+02:00

Ah, the irony. Left Behind Games, based on the best-selling fundamentalist Christian end-of-the-world book series, has released a new shoot-'em-up video game called Left Behind: Eternal Forces. The purpose of the game? "Imagine: you are a foot soldier in a paramilitary group whose purpose is to remake America as a Christian theocracy, and establish its worldly vision of the dominion of Christ over all aspects of life. You are issued high-tech military weaponry, and instructed to engage the infidel on the streets of New York City. You are on a mission - both a religious mission and a military mission -- to convert or kill Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, gays, and anyone who advocates the separation of church and state - especially moderate, mainstream Christians. Your mission is "to conduct physical and spiritual warfare"; all who resist must be taken out with extreme prejudice." The ironic elements aside, what do you think the outcry would be if, instead a Christians, the game were about Muslims killing infidels? Or white supremacists killing minorities?

No more FCC regulation

2006-06-08T08:00:00.000+02:00

Long-time readers will know that I have been against FCC regulation of TV content. Reason magazine published something yesterday that supports my position.

Native Hawaiians

2006-06-08T07:47:00.000+02:00

Yesterday, a couple of readers thought it was a no-brainer that Hawaiians should be considered an Indian tribe, and therefore they should be granted the same quasi-sovereignty that Indian tribes are. But the Supreme Court disagrees. In Rice v. Cayetano, Governor of Hawaii (2000), the Court has already adjudicated on the issues found in the Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act of 2005. First, the Court said that Hawaiians are not an Indian tribe but rather a race. Therefore, second, it said that treating "Hawaiians" or "native Hawaiians" differently violates the 15th Amendment.

Sustainable Cities

2006-06-07T15:41:00.000+02:00

Here's an interesting counterpoint to the 10 most conservative cities: The top sustainable cities. I say counterpoint because we all know that "sustainable" is one of those squishy liberal words that means anti-property rights and pro-government regulation.

Native Hawaiians and Self Government

2006-06-07T07:35:00.000+02:00

Here's an interesting bill in the Senate right now: the Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act of 2005. This bill was introduced by Sen Akala of Hawaii. According to Akala, the bill does the following:

It establishes the Office of Native Hawaiian Relations in the Department of the Interior to serve as a liaison between Native Hawaiians and the United States. It establishes the Native Hawaiian Interagency Coordinating Group to be composed of federal officials from agencies which administer Native Hawaiian programs. Both of these provisions are intended to increase coordination between the Native Hawaiians and the federal government. And third, the bill provides a process of reorganization of the Native Hawaiian governing entity. I am very proud of the fact that while the bill provides structure to the process, it also provides the Native Hawaiian community with the flexibility to truly reorganize its governing entity.

Admittedly, I don't know a lot about this bill, but at first blush it seems pretty fishy. The Heritage Foundation agrees and so does the Republican Policy Committee. From what I can tell, the bill is intended to extend the rights and protections granted to Native American tribes to native Hawaiians. The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights says, "The Akaka Bill is important because unlike other indigenous peoples living in the lands that now constitute the United States, Native Hawaiians currently do not have a process for establishing a government-to-government relationship. " The US Constitution does explicitly mention Indian tribes, most importantly in Section 8, where it says, " Congress shall have the power...To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;" So are Native Hawaiians an Indian tribe?

Empty Marriage Rhetoric

2006-06-06T07:23:00.000+02:00

I know that it isn't worth the time to discuss, but I am stupefied by the vacuity of the arguments in support of the Marriage Protection Amendment (MPA). Chuck Colson says that the MPA will stem the rising rate of incarceration in this country. How? Well, most inmates are young men who came from broken homes. They lacked moral training during their formative years. So, isn't it obvious that outlawing--no wait, preventing the creation of--same-sex marriage will not only encourage currently or future unwed parents to wed, but it will also ensure that the marriages are happy and morally sound? And this in turn will stem crime rates? And Michael Gaynor has finally provided what was really inevitable: the argument that our founding fathers would support the MPA, would have in fact included it in the original if they had only known that 240 years on, their country would be so morally adrift. Colson's logic is risible. First, we already know why incarcerations are so high in this country, and it has little to do with marriage. But even if it were somehow shown that more marriage = less crime, how could something that will increase the pool of people who can get married actually result in fewer marriages? One thing's for sure, that successful passage of the MPA would not nudge today's marriage rates. Gaynor's argument is just silly. It may be that the Washington, Jefferson, Adams, and the rest of the crowd opposed homosexuality and thus same-sex marriage. But you know what? They also opposed women's right to vote, emancipation of slaves, direct election of senators, and a host of other things that reflect cultural values in the 1780's. But who cares what they thought? Their greatest legacy is not their particular moral code, but the ability to shape our country to fit our present moral code. Really, the MPA is about politics, anyway. As Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said "This proposed constitutional amendment is being used to satisfy the most extreme right-wing supporters and politicians. The Constitution is too important to be used for such a partisan political purpose." Luckily, the MPA will be DOA.

Oil Shortage?

2006-06-05T13:02:00.000+02:00

Conspiracy theorists, for all their ingenuity in constructing their conspiracies, always seem to neglect one crucial aspect: the motive for the conspiracy to exist in the first place. For instance, take Rod Martin's "Oil Is Well The Shortage Is A Myth, And Not A New One." According to Martin, there is actually more oil now than ever before. In fact, it could be that "the world is literally floating on a sea of oil deep in the Earth's core." But unfortunately, "environmental extremists" (Jimmy Carter is one, apparently) continue to cry wolf about world oil supplies. Worse yet, they have artificially jacked up prices, "especially [for] the poor northeastern widows and African villagers for whom they endlessly claim 'compassion'". But, Rod, why? What would motivate "environmental extremists" to increase prices thus, which hurts them as much as anyone? Is it their unquenchable thirst for power? Their utter disdain for the lower classes? Their contempt for democracy? Or could it be that maybe they're on to something? I've stated before that we need to start working to decrease our oil dependency. The physical oil supply and its obvious finiteness is one reason. (The so-called abiotic oil theory has been roundly disproved). The environmental impacts of its extraction, processing, and use are another. The geopolitical implications of the petroleum industry are a third. We won't run out of oil tomorrow, but most people agree that we will 60 years from now--even sooner if the rest of the world begins to consume at our present rate. 60 years, you say? Shoot, we've got plenty of time, you say. No, we don't, not if you remember that it took us over 100 years to get where we are now.

Capital Gains Tax and Tax Reform

2006-06-05T09:22:00.000+02:00

"Americans got some good economic news last week when President Bush signed legislation that will extend the 15 percent tax rate on dividends and capital gains through 2010." Thus says Daniel Mitchell of the Heritage Foundation. Mitchell is a vocal supporter of supply-side fiscal policies, and claims that our recent strong economic performance is due in part to the previous rounds of capital gains tax cuts. The capital gains tax is paid only when the capital gain is realized, which is to say, when a capital asset is sold (unlike a tax on stock dividends, which is paid annually). Therefore, to avoid paying a high capital gains tax, people will forgo selling assets. Mitchell's theory, then, is that a high capital gains tax reduces the total amount of liquid capital in the system, which in turn reduces entrepreneurial activity and hence job creation. Supply-siders say that reducing the tax rate will actually increase tax revenues because the overall tax base will be enlarged by that much more. Mitchell's piece is just the latest salvo in a long-running debate about capital gains tax treatment. There are strong opinions on both sides. Those who want a higher capital gains tax say that there is no evidence that supports the supply-side trickle-down effect. In fact, they say, a low capital gains tax encourages tax sheltering and diversion of capital from productive uses, and, oh yeah, provides a windfall to the wealthy while hurting the lower classes. Of course, there is always more to the story. As Leonard Burman of the Brookings Institution states in this interesting discussion of the capital gains tax, both sides are victim to faulty statistics, anecdotal evidence, and poor reasoning. Burman examines the capital gains tax from what he considers the foundations of public finance: economic efficiency, equity, and simplicity. Efficiency says that a tax should intrude as little as necessary into functioning market, and when it intrudes, it should do so only far enough to restore market efficiency. Equity refers to the level of taxation that different income levels should face. Simplicity refers to a tax system that is easy and inexpensive to administer. Burman says these factors should guide our consideration of a capital gains tax. The article is long but worth reading (if you are interested in this sort of stuff). His conclusions? Well, his first one is that any change to the capital gains tax in isolation is unlikely to have the positive effects that supply-siders hope (It seems that even Mitchell agrees with this. He says, "This does not mean that tax cuts necessarily 'pay for themselves.'"). More general tax reform is needed. He says that the real problem is not the tax rate, but the way in which the capital gains tax is designed. He offers numerous solutions, none of which I will discuss here. But I think the larger point is that it's time for comprehensive tax reform. Okay, not a thunderous insight. But if we use Burman's criteria, we should not be looking at the flat tax but instead at a consumption tax.

Marriage Protection Amendment

2006-06-02T10:07:00.000+02:00

The conservative stupidity du jour is the Marriage Protection Amendment, up for vote next Wednesday in the Senate. Luckily, the amendment has almost zero chance of gaining the required 2/3 vote. Regardless of your opinions on gay marriage--and I support it--a constitutional amendment is a bad idea. As this good Reason article makes clear, marriage has been and should remain a state issue. Most states have made their positions clear, either for or against same-sex marriage. I'm surprised that right-wingers, who usually fight the enlargement of federal powers, are so quick to turn to the federal government on this issue. But I'm also still mystified by how a move to expand marriage, to make marriage an even wider institution, supposedly attacks marriage. The slippery-slope arguments are ludicrous. I also happen to believe that many pro-marriage people suffer from a false nostalgia, a longing for days of ideal marriage that have never actually existed. In her book, "The Way We Never Were," Stephanie Coontz exposes all sorts of myths and half-truths about marriage and family values in our history. As she says, American families "have not suddenly and inexplicably 'gone bad.'" The MPA is bad news.

Adoption and Religious Freedom

2006-06-02T07:43:00.004+02:00

Yesterday, I discussed an issue that I felt was an erosion of freedom of religion. Because of the State of Massachussett's position on gay marriage, the Catholic Church there is prevented from providing adoption services. Anonymous responded with some good points. In a nutshell, his argument is that providing adoption services is not core to the religion, and that therefore it should not be exempted from civil rights laws as more traditional religious activity is (just as male-only ordination). Further, he says that these Catholic groups, by refusing to place with same-sex couples and thereby restricting the pool of eligible placement homes, are harming the kids in orphanages by making them have to wait longer "in the system." I disagree with both these points. Taking the second one first, we can turn the argument on its head by claiming that the State, by reducing the number of private adoption agencies (without, I'm sure, commensurately increasing its own adoption staff), is actually doing more harm to the kids because it is reducing the total number of kids that can be processed. It's not as if each adoption agency has its own pool of kids to place, so that the Catholic pool will grow stagnant because the Catholics are refusing to place with same-sex couples. All agencies draw from the same pool. Therefore, any increase in the number of agencies drawing from that pool, no matter how limited the production of any individual agency, is a net increase to total production (if you'll excuse the economic language). The State is thus decreasing total production and the welfare of the kids. At any rate, I can almost guarantee you that the State's motivation in this matter is not the well-being of the orphans. Returning to the first point, I can see why Anonymous feels that adoption is not a religious pillar. But neither is adoption a civil right. Adoption agencies are supposed to evaluate the fitness of potentially adoptive parents, which means that they are by definition discrimintory. Here are some of the things that can disqualify a potential parent: household income, career plans, views on discipline, quality of marriage, number of kids, number of previous adoptions, religious faith. Yes, religious faith. Christian organizations don't usually place with non-Christian families, and Jewish groups prefer to place with Jewish families. In their opinion, religious faith is part of the fitness equation. A secular agency may not place with a family that lacks secure employment. Is that illegal discrimination? And let's remember that the Catholic Church does not have a monopoly on adoption in Massachussetts. If a same-sex couple wants to adopt, they have a wide range of private adoption agencies to use. (My quick Google search turned up 50 agencies in the state, of which 7 were Catholic, 4 Jewish). As the author in yesterday's article pointed out, "Catholic Charities did not obstruct that [equal rights] effort; it only declined to assist it." I stand by my original post.

Government Regulation

2006-06-01T07:32:00.000+02:00

I'm sure it's probably childish, but as a vocal supporter of much-maligned government regulation (as opposed to unfettered free market or libertarian capitalism), I always like the "told-you-so." So here's one. A senior editor at Fortune Magazine, hardly a bastion of pro-regulation thought, is thankful for some recent SEC rules. "Three cheers...for SEC rules on executive-pay disclosure. Without them, we might not know how some executives were robbing their shareholders - and it might still be going on."

Freedom of Religion

2006-06-01T07:20:00.000+02:00

Sometimes the left makes itself such as easy target for criticism that I start to understand what the Ann Coulters of the world are railing against. Take this example. Because of the State of Massachussetts' anti-discriminatory stance toward same-sex marriage, it is preventing Catholic charity groups from providing adoption service. These Catholic groups, you see, will not place kids in same-sex marriages. The state requires all adoption agencies to sign a non-discrimination statement in this regard, something the Catholic groups as a matter of belief won't do. I am in support of same-sex marriage. I also support their adopting kids. But I believe the state's actions really constitute an erosion of freedom of religion. As the article's author, a legal scholar, says, "The issue is not whether the Church or the state has the better of the debate over gay families. When freedom is at stake, the issue is never whether the claimant is right. Freedom of the press protects publication of pornography, blasphemy, and personal attacks. Freedom of religion is above all else a protection for ways of life that society views with skepticism or distaste."

More, I mean Less, Government Spying

2006-05-31T07:54:00.000+02:00

Anonymous, in response to my anti-government spying post from yesterday, asked if I were against intelligence gathering in general: "Should we disband the MI-5, DIA, NSA, CIA and FBI?" No, I am not against intelligence gathering. In fact, I would say that much of our problem in the Middle East is due to inadequate intelligence (and I don't just mean the obvious embarassment of the missing Iraq WMDs. Weren't we supposed to be greeted as liberators?). I believe that in reality we need to step up our intelligence efforts, particularly in the field of HUMINT, or human intelligence. If we had known more about our enemy, the Khobar Towers and USS Cole bombings, as examples, likely wouldn't have happened, and we probably wouldn't be in Iraq now. But what I am against is intelligence gathering that attacks our civil liberties and civil rights while providing only marginal or even specious improvements to our security. As shopworn as the metaphor is, Orwell's 1984 is still instructive in this. I am also against the fearmongering that has become the current administration's stock-in-trade. "He who would trade liberty for some temporary security, deserves neither liberty nor security" -Benjamin Franklin

Incarceration Nation

2006-05-30T09:08:00.000+02:00

In the US, there are 2.2 million people now in prisons and jails. That's one inmate for every 136 U.S. residents. According to the group The Sentencing Project, that's the highest rate in the world. For comparison, take a look at these numbers (in prisoners per 100,000 people). US--702 Russia--628 South Africa--400 England/Wales--139 Canada--116 Germany--91 France--85 Why do we have such high prison populations? One reason is that we have relatively high crime rates, especially for violent crimes. But a bigger reason seems to be our sentencing policies, and in particular, our treatment of drug offenses. The US on average issues longer sentences. In one study, for instance, burglars in the US served an average of 16.2 months in prison, compared to 5.3 months in Canada and 6.8 months in England/Wales. As another example, over 25% of all inmates are in prison for drug offenses, a ten-fold increase since 1980. So why should we care about this? Well, I don't think liberals need to be told that incarceration has high social costs. But conservatives may need to be reminded that incarceration also has high economic costs. It costs about $40,000 a year to house a prisoner. The US spends about $40 billion a year on its prison system. Surely, that money could be spent elsewhere.

Government Spying

2006-05-30T08:55:00.000+02:00

The Weekly Standard, a conservative news site that often infuriates me, offers this defense of government phone tapping and other spying. Gary Schmitt argues that the London bombings of 2005 may have been prevented if the British government had listened in on more phone calls and had practiced more "assertive" information-gathering techniques on detainees. I disagree with this line of thinking. Hindsight is always 20/20, and we can (and do) always second-guess ourselves after the fact. "We could have cracked this case if only we had listened to one more phone call...if only we had more powers to spy, we could have caught that guy red-handed...." You get the point. It's easy to see why reasoning breaks down. The slope is a slippery one indeed.

Wal-Mart Blocked

2006-05-30T08:43:00.000+02:00

Here's an interesting article that ties together some of the eminent domain and Wal-Mart discussions we've had. The city of Hercules, a poor city in the San Francisco Bay Area, has used its power of eminent domain to keep Wal-Mart out. Wal-Mart, not surprisingly, will fight the action. They will spin it as a defense of private property rights. In this case, though, the citizenry was 100% behind the city's decision. This brings up a lot of interesting issues. First, is this a legitimate and justifiable use of eminent domain? What if the the citizens had not been in support of the city council? Second, this is not the first time that a city has taken action to prevent the entry of a Wal-Mart, though it is certainly an interesting tactic. Other cities have passed ordinances and onerous taxes. Wal-Mart always fights and usually wins. It is undeniable that Wal-Mart can offer goods at very low prices. It also often provides needed employment. Hercules is a city that would probably benefit from a store. Should a city even try to block a Wal-Mart? If so, how far should it go?

Off to Jolly Old England

2006-05-22T14:33:00.000+02:00

I'll be out of town until May 30. Tune in then....

Libyan Spin

2006-05-22T07:34:00.000+02:00

The Bush Administration and its supporters like to point to Libya as a success story in the great experiment of regime change in the Middle East. The story goes that Libya, scared by our invasion of Iraq, decided to come in out of the cold. Of course, this is spin. Libya's rehabilitation started during the Clinton Administration, as Clinton conducted negotiations with Khaddafy to surrender for trial the Libyan agents responsible for the Pan Am 103 bombing. Not only did Khaddafy release the agents in 1999, but also agreed to a $3 billion settlement. Don't be fooled.

Dubai's Economy

2006-05-19T09:22:00.000+02:00

Steve, an occasional contributor, sent in this dispatch from India: "I was catching up on the hammer and wanted to mention that I read somewhere that the growth in the UAE is not all driven by oil profits. In fact, I seem to recall the argument that the growth is intended to build an economic base for the region--through tourism, trade, etc.--that will sustain it in the post-fossil fuel world." He was referring to my discussion of Dubai and globalization. Well, here's what the Department of Energy has to say about the UAE economy: "The overall performance of the UAE's economy is heavily dependent on oil exports, which account for over 30 percent of total gross domestic product (GDP). Growth in real GDP was 6.4 percent in 2004, partially due to higher crude oil prices. For 2005, real GDP growth is projected to reach 6.5 percent. The non-oil segment of the UAE's economy also is experiencing strong growth, particularly the petrochemicals and financial services sectors. "

More on Hybrids

2006-05-19T08:30:00.000+02:00

I got a lot of interest in my post the other day about CAFE standards versus increased gasoline prices as ways to reduce gasoline use. squantum felt that any appeal to the market is misguided because the petroleum market is far from free, with subisidies present throughout. He also felt that higher CAFE standards could be layered over high prices and be doubly as beneficial. Well, one problem with this view is that high prices and high CAFE standards come at a cost. The CBO report I referenced earlier says this: "The costs that higher CAFE standards would impose on consumers have two components: higher prices paid by purchasers of new vehicles and a loss in the well-being of consumers who would be discouraged from buying a new vehicle because of the higher prices...A tax increase would, similarly, raise gasoline prices and reduce the quantity sold, which would also reduce the welfare of gasoline consumers...With an increase in CAFE standards, average vehicle production costs would rise more than prices would as firms added fuel-saving technologies. Thus, firms' vehicle profit margins would decline, as would total vehicle sales. In the case of a gasoline tax increase, while the retail price of gasoline would rise, the price received by gasoline producers and suppliers would fall--with the tax increase making up the difference." And a little further on: "The total costs associated with setting car and truck standards so as to reduce gasoline consumption by the benchmark target of 10 percent would reduce producers' and consumers' welfare by about $3.6 billion per year ." So if we raised CAFE standards AND increased gas prices, that $3.6 billion could be even higher. One could take issue with the exact model used by CBO to arrive at that figure, and one could also argument, as I would, that the welfare benefits of reduced gasoline use were not properly accounted for in the calculation. But my point is that it's difficult to strike the balance. Meanwhile, Anonymous 1 and Anonymous 2 tell us that hybrids are not all they're cracked up to be. In response to the Anonymouses, my point about hybrids in the original post was not necessarily that hybrids are better, but that Japanese auto manufacturers seem to be more nimble and astute at providing what the market wants. Hence Detroit's problems. And remember this. Cars are much more than transportation. They are lifestyle statements. As the Car and Driver editorial page says, what's wrong with buying a hybrid to make the statement "I care about the environment and reducing our dependence on foreign oil"? No one questions the economics of the person who decides to buy the Hummer, who is making a decidedly different statement but a statement nonetheless.

Worst President in History

2006-05-18T08:19:00.000+02:00

Is Bush the worst president in history? Some think so.