what if?

#1

Be you conservative or liberal, Democrat or Republican, male, female . . . . No matter your race, religion or sexual preferences - you should applaud this.

One of the greatest blessings of living in America is our First Amendment, which protects the right of all of us to speak out without facing government persecution. People in other countries, even strong Western democracies, are not as fortunate.

Be vigilant; no matter how offensive, better to have concepts open and discussed than hidden.

In America, there are efforts, particularly on college campuses, to silence voices of dissent through the imposition of punishments for stirring bad feelings. But most citizens still seem to understand the Founders’ wisdom in crafting the First Amendment: A vigorous exchange of ideas helps us solve problems, and protects other freedoms. Without a First Amendment, government officials would move quickly to silence the spread of information they found inconvenient or threatening to their power.

My Affliction

Blogging will be light.  Very light.

Until this is gone....

Code Words

When Obama uttered his fateful words about "bitter" people in Pennsylvania - Mary Grabar knew about whom he was speaking.

Stop the Madness

Sooner rather than later.

And this:

Perhaps turning food into transportation fuel would make sense if massive amounts of grain spoiled every year from a lack of demand, but that certainly isn’t the case. Farmers love the higher prices that come from the new demand to fill gas tanks, but higher prices have consequences for poorer nations that have just begun to be felt. Morally speaking, shouldn’t we feed people before we feed cars?

What makes this even more absurd is ethanol itself. It burns cleaner, but has significant problems as a transportation fuel. It has only two-thirds the potential energy of gasoline, which means more of it has to be used to get the same mileage. Ethanol has to be shipped by truck as it cannot be pumped through a pipeline, so much more energy has to get expended just to bring it to market. In order to use more than just a small amount in a mixture, car engines have to be designed differently to use it, which means more energy and resources have to go into producing the vehicles.

Every fill of the tank with ethanol uses the same amount of corn a child would eat in a year, and let’s not even talk about the amount of potable water used to grow the corn in the first place. Given the above, which is the better use of the corn?

Hoist by His Own Petard

John McCain was one politician I admired greatly.  While I still believe that the man is a true hero, and while I still do applaud some of what he does, the veil has been lifted from my eyes for one major reason:  McCain-Feingold. 

Although I, like so many others, wish that we lived in some la-la land where candidates never had to solicit campaign funds from anyone, and that we could miraculously learn about the candidates' beliefs, abilities, character, experience, etc. for free, such is not the case.  We live in the real world, and in the real world, we need money to accomplish this. 

McCain-Feingold restricts our speech and the ability of candidates to communicate with the public.  I have always found it to be straight out unconstitutional; perhaps one day the Supreme Court will strike it down.

Until that happens, however, all of us will have to labor under its inequities and burdens.  Right now, McCain is finding himself ensnared in a web of his own making. 

The McCain camp is teaming up with the Republican National Committee to tap into big, big donations from big, big donors – hoping to close the big, big money gap with Democrats.

Their effort to do so will involve some creative abuse of the campaign finance restrictions Mr. McCain authored a few years back. Whatever. The Arizonan may not yet fully understand that money is speech. At least he has come around to the view that more of the stuff is better when it comes to winning the presidency.

************************************************
Whether this will ease Mr. McCain's financial woes is yet unclear, but it's arguably his smartest move, given the hand he's dealt himself. Just imagine what might have happened if Mr. McCain had fought instead for simple transparency – and trusted Americans to decide how much to give and to whom. Free speech, via money, can be a liberating thing.

Part of me feels like saying, "Serves you right!" to Senator McCain.  But, as I believe he would be a better choice for president than Obama or Clinton, I'll simply hope that he and others learn from this ironic lesson.

Hear, Hear

One of my girlfriends is smart as a whip and a talented artist to boot.  Cathy is also hard of hearing.

While Cathy can read lips and she also has a device that allows her to converse in very small groups, she is unable to hear in most other settings.  Last year, the two of us attended a fundraiser for Rudy Giuliani.  As we watched Rudy live on TV, I quietly "translated" what he was saying for Cathy.  Many of the other people in attendance thus realized how unfortunate it was that there weren't closed captions for Cathy and people like her.

Elise Knopf, of the Minnesota Commission Serving Deaf and Hard of Hearing People wants the state of Minnesota to pass a law making it mandatory to have closed captions in political ads.  As you all know, my philosophy is to urge small government, and I'm not quite certain that people should be forced to include closed captions.  Nevertheless, I am very sure that the captions should be included in these ads - not to mention most everything else on TV!  Cathy has explained to me that the cost to do so is minimal - and that the captions can be invisible to those who do not need them.

Including those among us who cannot hear well or at all has a simple solution.  Let's apply it.

Teach Your Children Well

From a Wall Street Journal reader:

"The courageous thing for Congress to do would be to get rid of student-loan subsidies entirely. Then watch tuitions tumble towards 'the affordable' as academe realizes nobody's throwing money at it any more."

-- John K. Lunde

Why is it so difficult for so many to miss this simple truth?  If the enormous maw of federal spending were not available to pump up tuition prices at schools, then they would of necessity fall to levels where real people could pay them.

And if our schools taught courses highlighting this sort of reasoning, we'd all be far better served, too!

Exciting News

Marv, the Answer Bird, is back!

Even more exciting news:  Marv is in love.

Get Over It!

Justice Antonin Scalia will appear on 60 Minutes this coming weekend.  A preview of what he has to say is here.

“I say nonsense,” Scalia responds to Stahl’s observation that people say the Supreme Court’s decision in Gore v. Bush was based on politics and not justice. “Get over it. It’s so old by now. The principal issue in the case, whether the scheme that the Florida Supreme Court had put together violated the federal Constitution, that wasn’t even close. The vote was seven to two,” he says, referring to the Supreme Court’s decision that the Supreme Court of Florida’s method for recounting ballots was unconstitutional.

Furthermore, says the outspoken conservative justice, it was Al Gore who ultimately put the issue into the courts. “It was Al Gore who made it a judicial question….We didn’t go looking for trouble. It was he who said, ‘I want this to be decided by the courts,’” says Scalia. “What are we supposed to say -- ‘Not important enough?’” he jokes.

And--

Stahl asks how he can be a close friend of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, his liberal bench mate, despite the fact that they oftentimes disagree. “I attack ideas, I don’t attack people, and some very good people have some very bad ideas,” he tells Stahl.

Bravo, Justice Scalia!  I have dear friends (and, dare I say it - relatives) whom I very much love and care for - yet, on some topics, they are utterly wrong.  Of course, I myself have been utterly wrong on issues and at times in my life!

If we are looking for perfection in our friends, relatives, peers, associates .... we will assuredly be woefully disappointed in our lives.  We also will have never ending battle.

I do not agree with Scalia myself on a number of topics.  On what he says above, however, applause from me.  And - get over it, those of you who have not!

I'm with Senator Obama

At least on this topic.

Economists in general oppose a tax holiday because it would encourage consumption of gasoline at a time of soaring demand.

Billionaire oilman T. Boone Pickens, a longtime Republican donor, criticized Sen. McCain's policy in an interview with The Wall Street Journal and other news organizations last week.

Mr. Pickens said suspending the federal gas tax "sends a signal that we have plenty of gasoline and diesel, and that's not the case."

Yep; what Boone said.

Open Minds

One of the toughest tasks to master is to keep an open mind.  We work hard to discover what we ultimately believe to be the truth.  After all that effort, often the last thing we wish to do is have to re-analyse, check - and toss out what we have labored so long to achieve.

Nevertheless, sometimes the honest course is to do just that!

Here is a man who took that course. 

Raise Your Hand

Are you someone who thinks that the Republican Attack Machine is far more vicious than anything Democrats could ever dream up?

Please read this - and if you are still convinced, raise your hand.

That is - if you have never been tortured and are still able to raise your hand.

Bigotry of Another Sort

All of us are familiar with traditional bigotry.  Even though the hooded white costumes of the KKK have pretty much disappeared, we know that some out there would be delighted to don them once again.  These people believe that their race is superior to others, that civil rights, fair housing and jobs should be denied to people of the "wrong" races.  While their numbers are, mercifully, dwindling, do not fool yourself into thinking that virulent racists have died and gone to hell.  They have not.

But - that being said, bigotry can show its face in other ways.  In my mind, one of the most pernicious is the bigotry of low expectations.  Some well meaning people do not realize that in an effort to "protect" those who suffered from the slavery, Jim Crow and racism of our nation, they actually continue to perpetrate harm.  Insisting that blacks cannot achieve without racial affirmative action is one of the ways in which this is done.  Another method is the "cocooning" protection some which to extend to minority races.

A commentary piece in our local paper today highlights this all too well.

Silent Tsunami

As an update to this previous post, be sure to read this from The Economist.

Governments ought to liberalise markets, not intervene in them further. Food is riddled with state intervention at every turn, from subsidies to millers for cheap bread to bribes for farmers to leave land fallow. The upshot of such quotas, subsidies and controls is to dump all the imbalances that in another business might be smoothed out through small adjustments onto the one unregulated part of the food chain: the international market.

For decades, this produced low world prices and disincentives to poor farmers. Now, the opposite is happening. As a result of yet another government distortion—this time subsidies to biofuels in the rich world—prices have gone through the roof. Governments have further exaggerated the problem by imposing export quotas and trade restrictions, raising prices again. In the past, the main argument for liberalising farming was that it would raise food prices and boost returns to farmers. Now that prices have massively overshot, the argument stands for the opposite reason: liberalisation would reduce prices, while leaving farmers with a decent living.

There is an occasional exception to the rule that governments should keep out of agriculture. They can provide basic technology: executing capital-intensive irrigation projects too large for poor individual farmers to undertake, or paying for basic science that helps produce higher-yielding seeds. But be careful. Too often—as in Europe, where superstitious distrust of genetic modification is slowing take-up of the technology—governments hinder rather than help such advances. Since the way to feed the world is not to bring more land under cultivation, but to increase yields, science is crucial.

The record of governments trying to manage markets is woefully poor.  Free markets assuredly are not free from their own anomalies and swings; witness our current real estate difficulties.  Nevertheless, even with all their flaws, free markets are superior to the alternatives.

As Ye Sow

So shall ye reap.

Am I the only one who finds massive government interference in agricultural markets to be insanity?  And, surely our own nation's recent love affair with ethanol is a significant contribution to world wide inflationary food costs - and starvation.

I would say we should vote for politicians that will end government sticking its snout into agriculture markets.  But - would we have anyone left for whom to vote? 

Sadly, the answer is unclear.

Luck Be A Lady Tonight

Is life a roll of the dice - or rolling up your sleeves and working hard?  Is where you end up a function of where you began and with what? Or, is it a matter of doing the best with what you've been dealt?

At Booker Rising today, Avery Tooley muses these questions and more.

See ultimately, I think — no, I know — life is a combination of choice and chance. Some choices are activated by “luck.” But at the same time, some “luck” is brought from the potential to the kinetic by the active choices people make. I really don’t think it’s possible to parse it down further than that without actually being able to see peoples’ timestreams. However, the part of me that believes in people thinks that they have a great deal of control over their ultimate destination, regardless of the circumstances into which they were born, or even the ones they navigated themselves into. Yeah, a sundry word here and a pick-me-up there can make a huge difference. But it’s also the fact that the person allowed the pick-me-up to actually BE a pick-me-up as opposed to just some platitude somebody who don’t really know what I’m goin through was spittin at me. Or even better, when things DON’T go my way, is it time for lamenting my luck or changing my behavior, so if the same set of circumstances presents itself, I won’t fall for the okey doke again? That, I would argue, ain’t really about luck.

And for real, I don’t know that there’s really any explicitly political label that belongs to this train of thought, but I do think that depending on the set of circumstances, those on the left are more likely to mention the things that are out of a person’s control — except when it came to them. And that’s what gets me. If you really came from the hard-luck side of town, shouldn’t part of your “giving back” be stressing the methods that helped you to get to where you are? That’s all I’m sayin. Cuz the minute somebody who has made it somewhere starts explainin why everybody can’t, I start thinkin they really ain’t a person of the people. Don’t tell me why I can’t, or shouldn’t expect to, tell me how I can and what obstacles I’ll hafta avoid. Chances are, I won’t get the exact same results, but with any luck, my results will be better than they would’ve been otherwise.

My bottom line?  You'd have to be a fool to think that luck plays no role whateover in our lives.  A friend of mine who coaches high school sports is in intensive care today; one of his students hit a line drive into his face, shattering his jaw and almost killing him.  Bad luck certainly seems to fit the bill.  Of course, all his family, friends, fellow colleagues and students pray that this shot of incredibly awful luck is counteracted.

None of us is capable of doing everything under the sun.  Nevertheless, most of us do have strengths and possibilities within us that can overcome at least some of the bad luck we face - and to take advantage of good fortune when it smiles upon us.

Hey; just read Avery.  He stated the case quite well!

Nails It

This New Yorker column truly captures a key Democrat flaw.

Obama’s devotees, who have an unattractively worshipful tendency to blame his mistakes on everyone but him, would do their candidate and the Democratic Party a favor by acknowledging the damage he’s done to both. It wasn’t accidental. Obama betrayed his own and his Party’s essential weakness, and in the process handed the opposition a great gift. He won’t be able to turn this weakness into the kind of strength that ends eras and wins elections until he understands what happened over the past few days.

Yes, They Can

One of my longstanding arguments with some of my liberal friends is about mobility of class.  Though I would never argue it's easy to do so, I nevertheless maintain that those who are born into poverty or lower middle class families are able to climb out and prosper.  For that matter - being of the manner born is no guarantee of lifelong wealth.  The son of an acquaintance recently sent his family's inherited corporation into bankruptcy, despite having had a childhood of privilege and good education.

Many of my liberal friends believe that where you arrive is where you end.  Despite the bountiful examples of people who had childhoods on ghetto streets or grindingly poor rural homes, these friends still argue that these individuals are anomalies.  For them, you are your ancestors.

One of our leading contenders for president is faced with a difficult choice.  Senator and Mrs. Obama enjoyed an income of over $4 million last year.  By virtually any standards, they are a wealthy family.  This, along with some of candidate Obama's recent statements - and those of his wife's - have them repeatedly facing charges of elitism. 

"Oh, no!" responds Michele Obama.  She and her husband are both products of working class families.

“I am a product of a working-class background, I am one of those folks who grew up in that struggle. That is the lens through which I see the world,” Michelle Obama told a cheering crowd at Harrison High School, the first stop of a three-city campaign swing ahead of the state’s May 6 primary.

So Much for That Argument....

I have long argued that, as a compassionate society, we should do what we can to provide assistance to those who need it.  Nevertheless, I also believe that help should be given because of deserving need; not based upon race or sex.

Some on the left argue that without racially based affirmative action, jobs and slots in schools will disappear for minority candidates.  (This has always seemed a terribly racist argument that these folks aren't as capable as others - but - that is an argument for another time!)

In any case, now some evidence is in.  What a surprise; people of all backgrounds are able to apply themselves and do well.  Who woulda thunk it?

Contrary to what supporters of race preferences argue in each state where they are threatened with extinction by civil rights initiatives, that the number and proportion of “underrepresented minorities” is greater now than it was in 1997 at seven of the nine campuses of the university system (not counting Merced, which did not exist in 1997). At UCLA, along with Berkeley one of the two most selective, the Fall 2008 proportion of “underrepresented minorities” is 19.4%, compared with 21.2% in 1997. At un-holistic Berkeley, the Fall 2008 proportion is 17.7%, compared to 25.2% in 1997.

Worst President

With a mind boggling statement like this one, how can anyone possibly think that George W. Bush comes even close to being our worst president?

“In a democracy, I realize you don’t need to talk to the top leader to know how the country feels. When I go to a dictatorship, I only have to talk to one person and that’s the dictator, because he speaks for all the people .”