what if?

Freedom and Small Government

A staunch Republican from Minnesota makes the case for gay marriage on principle.

If we are truly the party of freedom and limited government, what
justification is there to use the power of government to restrict people's
lives?

Overwhelmingly, younger generations support marriage for same-sex couples, and I agree with Sen. Petersen that it is inevitable. As a mother of generally Republican-leaning children in high school and college, it was difficult to explain to them why our party took the position it did. The philosophical double standard was troublesome, to say the least.

I believe it is time for Minnesota state law to finally reflect the fact that marriage is about the love, commitment and responsibility that two people share. Marriage is good for children, and it strengthens families and communities. If we truly believe these things, I cannot think of any valid reason for our state to continue to exclude same-sex couples from having the opportunity to marry and pursue happiness like anyone else.

Furthermore, I believe that it is time for the Republican Party to seriously address this issue. Public polls continue to show increasing movement in Minnesota and across the country towards understanding that the basic freedom to marry the person you love should no longer exclude gay and lesbian citizens. In fact, recent polls show that only 23 percent of Minnesotans still believe same-sex couples should have no legal recognition. Our Republican Party needs to recognize that as generations age, the world changes, and that supporting government intrusion into Minnesotans' personal lives is antithetical to being the Party of limited government and individual liberty.

The fact is that tens of thousands of same-sex couples live in Minnesota -- they may be your neighbors, family members, or fellow churchgoers. Same-sex couples are raising children -- successful, healthy and happy children -- in communities all across our state. Gay and lesbian Minnesotans pay taxes, vote, and serve in the military on behalf of their fellow citizens. They take care of each other, their families and their children -- and ultimately, aside from whom they fell in love with, they are no different than anyone else.

There is no substitute for marriage in society. I cannot imagine being told that it was illegal to marry my husband. Same-sex couples who have made lifelong commitments of love and fidelity to each other deserve the recognition, responsibilities and protections inherent to marriage, and the children of same-sex couples deserve to grow up in stable homes with married parents. It is not the role of government to discriminate based on gender or sexual orientation.

The Devil is in The Details

In today's world of hype, we are continually bombarded with messages about products that are "environmentally friendly" and going to Save The World from ourselves.  But - let's look under the hood.  How good are some of these items for us, anyway?

Electric cars never really made any sense. They are cloaked in the sanctimony of the green movement, because they don't use nasty fossil fuels like gasoline. Instead, they use electricity, which is sent out through power lines from big power plants, which generate this electricity—how? Oh yes, by burning fossil fuels like oil, coal, and natural gas. This is known as the "long tailpipe," which goes from the car charging up in your garage all the way back to the smokestack of a coal-fired power plant. And don't forget, electric cars also have giant batteries made from nasty toxic metals like lithium and cobalt, the manufacture of which frontloads carbon dioxide emissions.

So the electric car was always more an exercise in green paternalism—it is the future, as selected for us by our betters—than a serious attempt to solve any real or imagined problem.

But the folks at Tesla have gotten swept up in the quasi-religious hype of environmentalism. They're not just manufacturing a curiosity for hobbyists. They're saving the planet, one preening and sanctimonious upper-middle-class driver at a time.

In service to this environmentalist posturing, they've turned the whole purpose of technology on its head. We have to use more of our, human resources—more of our precious time and effort—in order to save natural resources. The machines can't serve us, because we have to serve nature. Instead of making labor-saving devices, they're making labor-sucking devices. And if we complain that the new green technology isn't good enough, we're told that it is we who are not good enough for the technology.

That's why the electric car, in its current incarnation, is a technological abomination.

If a technology provides great improvement for us, of this be sure.  Private companies will build it, then make pots of money off of it. 

We do not have to have the government subsidizing success.

 

 

Keeping America Safe

Here's something that will do it!

Say goodbye to that 2-liter bottle of Coke with your pizza delivery, pitchers of soft drinks at your kid’s birthday party and some bottle-service mixers at your favorite nightclub.

They’d violate Mayor Bloomberg’s new rules, which prohibit eateries from serving or selling sugary drinks in containers larger than 16 ounces.

Typically, a pizzeria charges $3 for a 2-liter bottle of Coke. But under the ban, customers would have to buy six 12-ounce cans at a total cost of $7.50 to get an equivalent amount of soda.

“I really feel bad for the customers,” said Lupe Balbuena of World Pie in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn.

Domino’s on First Avenue and 74th Street on the Upper East Side is doing away with its most popular drink sizes: the 20-ounce and 2-liter bottles.

“We’re getting in 16-ounce bottles — and that’s all we’re going to sell,” a worker said.

He said the smaller bottles will generate more revenue for the restaurant but cost consumers more.

It will also trash more plastic into the environment.

“It’s ludicrous,” said Robert Bookman, a lawyer for the New York City Hospitality Alliance. “It’s a sealed bottle of soda you can buy in the supermarket. Why can’t they deliver what you can get in the supermarket?”

We've got nuclear threats from other nations, catastrophic debt, deep unemployment and more - and this is what the mayor of New York is working hard to achieve?

Gimme a break!

 

 

Incentives Work

Humans respond to incentives.  Offer them something that will improve their life, and many will opt for it.  Conversely, if a new law or rule creates difficulties, many will look for ways around it.

So it is with Obamacare.

More than a few flaws have been found in this massive "we have to pass the bill so we can find out what's in it" legislation.  Now, however, we are finding out.  We are also discovering how employers are dealing with the difficulties.

Welcome to the strange new world of small-business hiring under ObamaCare. The law requires firms with 50 or more "full-time equivalent workers" to offer health plans to employees who work more than 30 hours a week. (The law says "equivalent" because two 15 hour a week workers equal one full-time worker.) Employers that pass the 50-employee threshold and don't offer insurance face a $2,000 penalty for each uncovered worker beyond 30 employees. So by hiring the 50th worker, the firm pays a penalty on the previous 20 as well.

These employment cliffs are especially perverse economic incentives. Thousands of employers will face a $40,000 penalty if they dare expand and hire a 50th worker. The law is effectively a $2,000 tax on each additional hire after that, so to move to 60 workers costs $60,000.

A 2011 Hudson Institute study estimates that this insurance mandate will cost the franchise industry $6.4 billion and put 3.2 million jobs "at risk." The insurance mandate is so onerous for small firms that Stephen Caldeira, president of the International Franchise Association, predicts that "Many stores will have to cut worker hours out of necessity. It could be the difference between staying in business or going out of business." The franchise association says the average fast-food restaurant has profits of only about $50,000 to $100,000 and a margin of about 3.5%.

Democrats who thought they were doing workers a favor by mandating health coverage can't seem to understand that it doesn't help workers to give them health care if they can't get a full-time job that pays the rest of their bills.

Diversity of Thought Today

In some venues?  Non-existent.

Israel’s deputy ambassador to Britain was forced to flee from a university campus after protesters caused a lecture on the Middle East to be abandoned.

Alon Roth-Snir was speaking at Essex University in Colchester on Wednesday when 40 students disrupted the meeting.

The university’s student union has a series of anti-Israel policies in place and had actively campaigned against the invitation to Mr Roth-Snir to speak to the government department.

An Israeli embassy spokesman said: “These students make a mockery of the very foundations of freedom of speech, a pillar of the academic world. Their actions shame Essex University and British academia, and damage a long tradition of positive academic exchange.

“Such behaviour should be strongly condemned by all those who cherish democratic values.”

Small Government

Another superb ad why we all ought to want it.

P. J. O'Rourke famously quipped that "giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys." If he were writing today, though, he might have compared the state's self-restraint to that of FBI agents handed smart phones and surveillance equipment. As reported by Reason 24/7, an internal disciplinary report from last fall shows that our fearless G-men (and women) have been busy sending each other pictures of their junk and using their surveillance skills to bug their supervisors' offices. So you can definitely trust them with all of that extra spying power they've been gathering.

 FBI employees were also disciplined for, among other naughtiness: knowingly marrying drug dealers, misusing their FBI status, shoplifting, using stolen ATM cards, purchasing child pornography, check fraud, perusing FBI databases for personal reasons and tax fraud. Personally, I don't object to anybody hitching up with purveyors of illicit intoxicants or dodging taxes, but if you're going to willingly enforce drug and tax laws against other people, it seems unsporting to return at night to a home stocked with cocaine and bundles of cash.

CNN quotesFBI assistant director Candice Will commenting on years of disciplinary cases:

"As long I've been doing this ... there are days when I think 'OK, I've seen it all,' but I really haven't," Will said. "I still get files and I think, 'Wow, I never would have thought of that.'"

I appreciate that. People have always done some stupid and irresponsible things, and they always will. Maybe the best reason ever to limit coercive government authority over people's lives is to limit the damage that can be done by inherently flawed human beings.

Nothing is Left

Much of what exists is not good nor bad on the face of it.  Fire can warm us and cook our food - and also burn down our home and kill us.

And so it is with unions.  Back when workers were really little more than "free" slaves, unions helped to improve their working conditions, wages and benefits to something reasonable.  Yet, as the decades passed, union officials became so greedy, they ultimately killed the improved workplace they had achieved.

One of the best illustrations of this sad path is in Detroit.  The last ones out should turn off the lights - assuming, of course, that the union rules allow for it.

We keep hearing that the car industry in Detroit is “on the rebound” or that “Detroit is back.” In fact, the city itself is on its back, and it’s bounding toward bankruptcy or a state takeover. How did one of America’s most storied cities land in this predicament? While the city population has shrunk (from a peak population of 1.8 million in 1950 to 714,000 in the last census), it has hardly reduced the government that serves it. All you really need to know about Detroit, which is facing a $327 million budget gap, is that last year it was discovered to still be paying for  a “horseshoer” (or farrier) on the Detroit Water & Sewer Department (DWSD) payroll. This individual costs some $56,000 in pay and benefits, despite the city not having any horses to shoe in his department.

Union bosses insisted the DWSD (average compensation: $86,000) needs more, not fewer, such unionized employees, a view associated with a broad spectrum of thinkers from Jimmy Hoffa to the Keynesians running the United States. The DWSD has more than twice as many employees per gallon of water pumped as that other paragon of Midwestern governance, Chicago. An independent report said four out of five employees in the bloated department were redundant and discovered a thicket of union regulations driving up costs. Plumbers complained that, due to union work rules, they had to wait to fix pipes until duly authorized “operators” came along first to shut them off.

The Mask is Removed

George Galloway lets the mask fall away.  Full blown hatred and rage is exposed.

Controversial Left-wing MP George Galloway shocked an Oxford University audience by refusing to debate with an opponent because he was Israeli.

To cries of ‘racism’, Mr Galloway picked up his coat and stormed out of the hall.

The Respect MP had been booked to appear in the debate at Christ Church college and had spoken for ten minutes in favour of the motion that ‘Israel should withdraw immediately from the West Bank’.

But when his opponent, Eylon Aslan-Levy, began putting the opposing view, Mr Galloway took umbrage at learning he was an Israeli.

Film of the incident shows Mr Aslan-Levy, 21, a third-year philosophy, politics and economics student at Brasenose College, using ‘we’ in reference to Israel.

Mr Galloway can be heard muttering: ‘Did he say “we”?’ before interrupting his opponent.

‘You said “we”,’ said the Bradford West MP. ‘Are you an Israeli?’ ‘I am, yes,’ Mr Aslan-Levy replied.

‘I don’t debate with Israelis. I have been misled. Sorry,’ said Mr Galloway.

As he reached the door, he added: ‘I don’t recognise Israel, and I don’t debate with Israelis,’ before storming out of the room.

 

Galloway’s behavior is disgusting, racist, antisemitic, and anti-Israel. It’s also wonderful insofar as it rips off the gooey, sweet, PC mask that the Left uses to cover its censorship and hatred and when it comes to opposing views. This is what BDS (Boycott, Divest, and Sanction) is all about. This is what anti-Israel rhetoric is all about. The Left doesn’t want a two-state solution. The Left doesn’t want to see Palestinians and Israel reach an accord. What the Left wants is to see Israel and Jews silenced — and Galloway is no longer making a pretense that he has any other goal.

Galloway is as disgusting a human being as it’s possible to be, but he gets kudos today for being sufficiently useful to reveal the core ugliness that lies at the heart of the Leftist approach to Israel and the Middle East.

Broke

What happens when you have liberal Democrat politicians and liberal Democrat policies for decades?

This.

Nearly half of the owners of Detroit's 305,000 properties failed to pay their  tax bills last year, exacerbating a punishing cycle of declining revenues and  diminished services for a city in a financial crisis, according to a Detroit  News analysis of government records.

The News reviewed more than 200,000 pages of tax documents and found that 47  percent of the city's taxable parcels are delinquent on their 2011 bills.

Delinquency is so pervasive that 77 blocks had only one owner who paid taxes last year, The News found. Many of those who don't pay question why they should  in a city that struggles to light its streets or keep police on them.

"Why pay taxes?" asked Fred Phillips, who owes more than $2,600 on his home  on an east-side block where five owners paid 2011 taxes. "Why should I send them  taxes when they aren't supplying services? It is sickening. … Every time I see  the tax bill come, I think about the times we called and nobody came."

 

Free Markets and Equal Rights

And then - there is this.

I’ve been married for 29 years. My marriage has been the greatest joy of my life. There is nothing conservative about denying other Americans the ability to forge that same relationship with the person they love.

All Americans should be treated equally by the law, whether they marry in a church, another religious institution, or a town hall. This does not mean that any religious group would be forced by the state to recognize relationships that run counter to their conscience. Civil equality is compatible with, and indeed promotes, freedom of conscience.

We are at a crossroads. I believe the American people will vote for free markets under equal rules of the game—because there is no opportunity or job growth any other way. But the American people will not hear us out if we stand against their friends, family, and individual liberty.

 

Tipping Point?

As most of my readers know, I am in favor of gay marriage.  I see it no more and no less as simply treating consenting adults equally.  Some of my conservative friends disagree strenuously with me.  And, for a long time, at the ballot box, their view was winning.

Now, however, I wonder:  have we reached a tipping point in American opinion?

Voters express strong support for the notion that the ability to marry the person you love is a fundamental freedom and Constitutional right for every American, including gays and lesbians. Three-quarters of voters (75%) believe that it is a Constitutional right, up from 71% in 2011. This sentiment spans across party lines, as 91% of Democrats, 75% of Independents, and 56% of Republican voters all believe the freedom to marry the person you love is a Constitutional right.

Gilded Hypocrites

Doesn't anyone on the left ever get tired of their leaders' hypocrisy?

In the State of the Union, Obama once more went after “the few” and “the wealthiest and the most powerful,” whom he blasted as the “well-off and the well-connected” and the “billionaires with high-powered accountants.”

Like clockwork, the president then jetted to West Palm Beach for yet another golfing vacation at one of the nation’s priciest courses, replete with lessons from a $1,000-an-hour golf pro to improve the presidential putting.

The rest of the first family jetted off on their own skiing vacation to elite Aspen, Colo., where nobody accepts that at some point they’ve already “made enough money.” Meanwhile, below the stratosphere, unemployment rose to 7.9 percent for January — the 49th consecutive month it has been 7.8 percent or higher. The economy shrank in the last quarter of 2012, gas is back to almost $4 a gallon, and the government continues to borrow almost $4 billion a day.

Today’s leftists like the high life as much as their demonized conservative rivals do. The more they damn the bad “millionaires and billionaires,” apparently the less guilt they feel about living it up in Palm Beach or Aspen — paying no taxes, offshoring their profits, or wearing Rolex watches.

The vast growth of the federal government has splashed so much big money around New York and Washington that even muckraking progressives can’t resist. Loud redistributionist rhetoric offers the necessary vaccination shot that makes privileged leftists immune from any criticism — or guilt — over indulging in tax avoidance, billion-dollar speculation, or aristocratic tastes.

 

If Liberal Nordic Nations

Are heading toward a more entrepreneurial, capitalistic state - then why are we going in the opposite direction?

What is most  instructive about the current Nordic model is that these nations have  reached the end of the welfare state and have pulled back.  Nordic  nations are cutting spending, cutting taxes, cutting government debt and  encouraging entrepreneurs.

Why the sudden turnaround?  The Economist quotes a Danish historian as saying, “The welfare state we have is excellent in most ways.  We have only this little problem.  We can’t afford it.”

One feature of the Nordic turnaround has been an emphasis on entrepreneurs and innovation,

“Nordic  governments recognise that they need to encourage more entrepreneurs if  they are to provide their people with high-quality jobs, and that they  can no longer rely on large companies to generate business ecosystems on  their own.”

 

 

Billions and Billions

How come lefties get their knickers all twisted up about individuals spending their own money on political speech - something protected by our Constitution .... But don't seem to mind our government spending trillions of dollars on items not ever mentioned in the Constitution?

Regulating our most prized speech has proven to be ineffective, arbitrary, and it criminalizes (and no doubt ices) run-of-the-mill free speech. (It also has its roots in the racist crusade of South Carolina’s Sen. Ben Tillman, who sponsored the first federal campaign finance law, but today’s activists prefer not to grapple with that legacy, nor are they ever asked to.) The threshold should be pretty damn high for placing limits on it. The icky feeling campaign finance activists get from the idea of more than $2,600 isn’t enough.

Another reality check: 2012 was the most expensive campaign year in history, clocking in at $7 billion, according to the FEC.

There was a lot of hand-wringing over that number when the FEC announced the stat, with this bit from Politico typical: “The total number of dollars spent on the 2012 election exceeded the number of people on this planet.”

$7 billion would run the federal government for about 16 hours. The 2012 campaign was a garage sale value by comparison. We never hear any hand-wringing about that number.

Standards

Something to applaud - and hoping more is on the way.  A fellow with high standards - and the guts to take risks to uphold those standards and values.

The lone conservative columnist at the largest and most influential newspaper in Kentucky says he quit writing for the paper because editors are refusing to publish his opinion piece calling the publication out for its apparent liberal bias.

Dyche says he quit after Pam Platt, the paper’s editorial page editor, left him a voicemail on Feb. 11 making it clear they wouldn’t run his piece about the paper’s politics.

After Platt rejected the column, Dyche sent an email letter to her and  publisher Wesley Jackson offering his resignation. He argued his submitted  column very much fit under the category of “a conservative take on the issues of  the day.”

“One of those issues is liberal media bias,” he wrote in the email, which  TheDC obtained.

Continuing, Dyche wrote: “Another such issue is the survival of old line  newspapers in a changing media marketplace. Conservatives think there is  liberal media bias and that old line newspapers would fare better in the  marketplace if they made changes of the sort I propose. Indeed, your  refusal to run this column vividly illustrates the very issues about which I  write!”

We need more like journalist John David Dyche.

 

News

And not news.

The liberal media manifest their bias not primarily by writing things that aren’t true–although that sometimes happens–but rather, by selecting what they do and do not report as news. Major scandals and events of great importance are simply ignored if they do not reflect well on the Democratic Party, while minor stories receive endless attention if they advance the liberal agenda.

Attempted murder? Ho hum. ABC and Yahoo News aren’t interested. Instagram? Millions of Americans need to know about this!

This is how the liberal media try to shape your opinions: they tell you stories that they think make liberals look good and conservatives look bad, and they conceal from you the news that doesn’t fit their agenda.

An absolutely brilliant and accurate depiction by my friend John Hinderacker of what is so wrong with our world - and journalism - today.

 

 

My Kind of Town

Chicago used to be my kind of town.  Born in the early '50s, I loved so much about the city from the time I was a tiny tot:  Lake Michigan, the museums, the Art Institute, Riverview, Chinatown, Old Town, Chicago dogs (no, these are not a type of pet) - and so much more.  It was The City That Works.

Today?  The City of Broad Shoulders, of vibrancy and vitality and strength, now seems like a decaying corpse.  Gang violence?  Record murders?  Deficits as far as the eye can see?  Yeah; it's got 'em all.  Today, the city I so loved is now Gangsterville.

Chicago was the only U.S. city to break 500 murders last year, and that is a spike — but a spike only over the past few years. Chicago has seen these waves before: In 2008 the city saw 516 murders, and it had nearly 1,000 in 1974, the year David Barksdale’s past finally caught up with him and he died of kidney failure resulting from a gunshot wound suffered years before. Things have been worse in the past, but there is a sense that Chicago is moving in the wrong direction. New York City had nearly 2,000 murders in 1974, and more than 2,000 the year before. But those numbers are unthinkable today: New York City finally got control of itself, which is a big part of the reason why Rudy Giuliani, a thrice-married recreationally cross-dressing pro-choice big-city liberal, was taken seriously as a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination. Rahm Emanuel would need a miracle worthy of his surname to follow a similar path, to get Freckles to give up commerce and to get Mr. Butt to regard him as something other than a municipal joke. Chicago may have torn down the projects, but building the city is a different thing altogether.

As a moody teenager, I would drive to the lake at midnight and walk the beach.  In the waves and the wind I looked for solace and answers - at least usually finding the former. Then - it was my kind of town.

No Go

Over and over again, those who favor higher taxes for more revenue don't seem to comprehend this:  change the laws and people will alter their behavior.

Manny Pacquiao's chief adviser insisted Monday that the Filipino  superstar's preference is for his next bout – a fifth fight against Juan Manuel Marquez – to take place away from Las Vegas, with the off-shore  Chinese gambling resort of Macau emerging as the "favorite."

Michael Koncz told Yahoo! Sports that the 39.6 percent tax rate Pacquiao would face if he were to fight again in the U.S. makes a fall bout in  Las Vegas "a no go."

And--

Insurance chain State Farm is reportedly buying up substantial workspace in Texas, which may signal a coming exodus from the company's home state of Illinois. ...

At the end of 2010, in a special session, the Illinois Legislature  passed a 67% hike in its corporate and personal income tax. The state is struggling with a structural deficit and its credit rating was recently lowered. The state now has the worst credit rating in the country. A  number of businesses have floated the idea of leaving the state. A move  by State Farm, however, would devastate the downstate economy.

Wouldn't it be superior to have lower percentage tax rates and have some revenue for this fight in Las Vegas, and some revenue for Illinois by having State Farm in their state rather than moving to Texas? 

Why is the notion that a small percentage of something is far better than a whole bunch of nothing so difficult for so many to appreciate?

What We're Up Against

What do small government, fiscally responsible citizens face as the opposition today?

This.

And this.

We need some racing luck!

 

Minimum Questions

Are you someone who believes that raising the minimum wage will reduce poverty and is good for workers?  If so - then please read this.

 

 

Dear Mr. Obama:

In this year’s State of the Union Show you called for the hourly minimum-wage to be raised from $7.25 to $9.00.  That’s an increase of more than 24 percent.  Because you trumpet this proposal as one to assist low-paid workers, you, presumably, deny that such a hike in the cost of hiring low-paid workers will prompt employers to hire fewer such workers.

In last year’s State of the Union Show you bragged of your administration’s increase in the tariff rate on Chinese-made automobile tires.  This tariff increase, which averages 30 percent over three years, is explicitly designed to dissuade Americans from buying Chinese-made tires – an effect that you recognize and applaud.

Question: If a government policy that artificially raises the price of Chinese-made tires reduces the quantities of such tires that are bought, why does a government policy that artificially raises the price of low-skilled labor not reduce the quantities of such labor that are hired?

I’m told that you’re a man of science.  I await your response.

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
and
Martha and Nelson Getchell Chair for the Study of Free Market Capitalism at the Mercatus Center
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA  22030