Return to the Free Liberal Homepage

March 17, 2010

Don't Like Israel's Settlements: Stop Paying the Tab!

The Obama Administration recently condemned Israel's announcement of expanded settlements on Palestinian lands. This is all well and good and it is about time that an American leader at least expressed the position that Israel should not expand settlements as they contradict US policy.

But is this "outrage" going to have any impact? Not really. After all, the Obama Administration speaks with a forked tongue. While they claim to be concerned and frustrated with Israel's antics, the Administration has not threatened to cut the $3 billion in foreign aid American taxpayers send to the nation. So, in essence, while Obama expresses his concerns, we're paying the tab. Does this make any sense?

Me, I'd rather cut off foreign aid to all countries (including Israel which receives a disproportionate share). This is especially true at a time of ballooning deficits and economic difficulties here at home. Ultimately, however, as the Cato Institute has pointed out, foreign aid is ineffective.

Posted by PaulGessing at 11:49 AM | Comments (27)

March 04, 2010

Wanted: Global Warming

It was cold this winter. Indeed, it was so cold, that people are saying that man-made global warming cannot be true.

There is evidence to the contrary and evidence that warming is partly natural. It could be both sides are correct, since climatology is an exact science.

Where I part with most environmentalists, however (especially the Zero Population Growth types) is whether warming is a bad thing. Indeed, if man-made warming is true, then perhaps we would still be in the minor ice age which lasted from the 14th Century to the late 19th Century and that only industrialization ended the ice age.

Continue reading "Wanted: Global Warming"
Posted by MichaelBindner at 02:56 PM | Comments (0)

March 03, 2010

Campaign Finance Reform

The recent Supreme Court decision striking down restrictions on corporate electoral speech has made campaign finance a hot issue. There is even talk of a constitutional convention call to draft an amendment to counteract it and create a system of public financing. Given the likely composition of just the Virginia delegation to such a convention, I am not sure this is a risk I am willilng to take. What I do want to do is below the fold.

Continue reading "Campaign Finance Reform"
Posted by MichaelBindner at 11:49 AM | Comments (2)

February 25, 2010

Note to Spammers

Don't even try - even with canned vague messages of support. I look at who sent the comments when I see such messages and I delete them everytime I get the e-mail notifying me of posted comments. I urge my fellow bloggers to do the same. If your name is Mortgage Modification, free Cialis or a variety of other spam tie ins, you will be deleted.

Posted by MichaelBindner at 09:50 AM

February 22, 2010

The Bindners on the Middle Class

For those who only watch FoxNews, I was on American Morning's story on the middle class in distress. You can see it here http://cnn.com/video/?/video/politics/2010/02/22/costello.middle.class.cnn My wife really did let me talk, however I ended up on the cutting room floor.

Posted by MichaelBindner at 04:03 PM | Comments (0)

February 18, 2010

The Tea Party's Future

Jack Cafferty asks the question on his CNN blog about the future of the Tea Party. I was just about to blog about that and see no reason not to post a paragraph on his blog and more on this one. The Tea Party, at least at the leadership level, is Republican astroturf goaded by one of your main competitors. It was never anything but a GOP activity designed to rally the base, especially the economic conservatives. The poll should have asked what Republican party offices activists have held in the past if you really wanted to know the true nature of the "movement." Now, there is a thread of people who want both more economic justice and less government who the movement was gunning for, but the reason they were being mobilized was to revitalize the GOP, not form a third party. Time will tell whether the GOP gets them or not.

Continue reading "The Tea Party's Future"
Posted by MichaelBindner at 02:05 PM | Comments (1)

January 10, 2010

Reid's Goosey Gander

It never ceases to amuse when karmic payback plays itself out. Somehow or other, people generally and politicians especially don't seem to get the universal truth that you reap what you sow. Or what goes around, comes around. Or even Seinfeld's "even Steven."

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid illustrates the lesson once again. His hushed toned voice and seemingly even temper belies a man who will make the nastiest, most histrionic overstatements in public to "win," not apparently realizing that his bad karma will boomerang and smack him upside his head.

A few weeks ago, Reid said this:

Instead of joining us on the right side of history, all Republicans can come up with is this: Slow down. Stop everything. Let's start over,” Reid said.

“If you think you have heard these same excuses before, you are right. When this country belatedly recognized the wrongs of slavery, there were those who dug in their heels and said: Slow down. It is too early. Let's wait. Things aren't bad enough.

Surely we can agree that health care is an important issue, and we can buy that Reid believes it's as fundamental as emancipation or suffrage, but it strains credibility – big time – to suggest that ObamaCare is anything like the 13th, 14th, 15th, and 19th amendments to the US Constitution. Those amendments were discrete and specific. The currently pending health (really) insurance legislation is complex, complicated, and voluminous. Reid's lame attempt at analogy would (or should) be laughable for the fair minded. (OK, I'm open to hearing how the analogy holds, but I admit to being more than a bit skeptical!)

That was December. Now in January, this news item about Reid is reported:

Majority Leader Harry Reid, seeking to quell the uproar from a report in a new book that he called Barack Obama a 'light-skinned' African-American who lacked a 'Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one,' is mounting a full-fledged damage control effort to save both his job and his political career.


What's interesting is that much of Reid's statement seems true. Obama IS light skinned. There IS a manner of speaking that I suspect most people – black and white – would identify as an African-American's voice, and Obama generally doesn't sound like a black man, although sometimes he does, especially when he's ringing a more populist tone. Politicians do this all the time, sometimes sounding wonkish and sometimes sounding down-home. It's no big deal to recognize that.

It IS, however, embarrassing that Reid was caught in a moment of candor about the sitting President, who has a black father and white mother, but was raised by his mother in Hawaii and Indonesia. Reid seems to suggest that Obama is not authentic in his manner, but rather is acting. Blah, blah, blah...you get the point.

I would not be surprised to see Reid joining Chris Dodd and Byron Dorgan in the soon-to-retire-from-the-Senate camp in the coming weeks.

Even Steven!

-RC

Posted by RobertCapozzi at 09:01 AM | Comments (4)

January 05, 2010

Resolved to be Realistic

2009 was a tough year for freedom lovers: mass bailouts, mass nationalizations, massive deficits...a celebration of bigger government generally. 2009 was a tough year for Americans overall, and tougher times loom ahead. The baby boomer generation is preparing to retire and the federal deficit was 1.7 trillion dollars last year -- when we should be running budget surpluses to prepare for the boomers.

Not my fault. And not yours either if you are a typical Free Liberal reader. Mainstream liberals and conservatives made this mess. That knowledge, and a dollar, will buy you a can of your favorite carbonated beverage.

So for my New Year's resolution, I am resolved to do something about this mess. Oh, I've done a bunch trying to prevent this mess over the past few decades, but obviously, I failed. Ditto, for many of you readers. I am resolving to do, not merely try.

This is not to be some wacky Jedi mind trick, some application of The Secret or other bit of positive thinking. I'm too left-brained for that. This is about thinking negatively, and acting accordingly. It's about applying some advice from the most interesting man in the world:

What can't be done in 2010? How about electing a 100 Libertarians to congress. It can't be done, so why put them on the ballot? Why put effort into the LP at all? How about tax cuts? The government is running colossal deficits. Tax cuts would require cutting spending by $2 trillion dollars! Can't do it. So no point trying. Peace in the Middle East? Not going to happen. A repeal of the recent healthcare bill? Nope, not until at least 2013. Gold standard? Not until we deleverage the economy, including the government. So what can be done?

We cannot have tax cuts but we can have tax help. The IRS could be much more helpful, taking a huge burden off of employers and taxpayers. (Compare paying your phone bill to paying your taxes.) The tax code could be more fair and less full of loopholes.

We cannot have an end to the drug war, but we can have more states with legal medical marijuana, and maybe even a slim chance of outright legalization.

The Democrats may have complete control of the federal government, but they are still open to new ideas -- if presented correctly. For example, many a modern liberal can change her mind on Keynesian economics when presented with the fact that deficit spending is regressive.

The Republicans may have learned a lesson from the spanking they got last election. Maybe they'll put some good people on the ballot. Maybe a few will win.

The purist libertarians won't learn how to do electoral politics properly, but they might learn to focus more on counter-economics and other practical activities for radicals.

I don't have the wherewithal to start that new political party which is begging to launch, but some millionaire donors might materialize to make it happen -- or I might become one myself...

So, my New Year's resolution is to focus on the possible, and put the utopian dreaming, ideological quibbling, and "making a statement" on the backburner. We'll see how long this resolve lasts...

Posted by CarlMilsted at 09:23 PM | Comments (1)

January 03, 2010

More Libertarian Philosophical Quibbles

For those interested in the purist/pragmatist (or moralist/consequentialist) debate that eternally rages in libertarian circles, check out my essay in the December issue of Liberty. It is now available online.

The Other McCain says it's worth reading.

Meanwhile, Stephan Kinsella, Inquisitor of the Rothbard Cult, brilliantly refutes my arguments with a combination of sneer quotes, name-calling, stereotyping, and citation of higher authority.

Posted by CarlMilsted at 10:07 AM | Comments (2)

December 30, 2009

TSA: Fighting the last threat, not the next one

Airline security may seem to be more of a national security issue than a "free market issue," but with aviation experts proposing even more onerous and costly security measures, presumably paid for through higher aviation taxes, the issue becomes economically important.

As Reason's Jacob Sullum writes:

The reaction to Abdulmutallab’s fizzled bomb shows that the government continues to fetishistically focus on the details of the latest incident and impose conspicuous precautions without regard to whether the security payoff is worth the cost. Because Abdulmutallab used a blanket to conceal what he was doing, the TSA told airlines to ban the use of blankets during the last hour of flights to the United States. Also prohibited during the last hour: getting up from one’s seat, “passenger access to carry-on baggage,” and “personal belongings on the lap.”

Why the last hour? Because that’s when Abdulmutallab tried to set off his bomb. Therefore that is what all terrorists will do.

The TSA also instructed airlines to “disable aircraft-integrated passenger communications systems and services (phone, internet access services, live television programming, global positioning systems) prior to boarding and during all phases of flight.” And it forbade “any announcement to passengers concerning flight path or position over cities or landmarks.”

Those rules, combined with the focus on the last hour of flight, suggest the TSA believes Abdulmutallab wanted his bomb to go off as the plane was approaching Detroit, and it therefore is trying to prevent other bombers from knowing where they are. But these precautions are easily evaded by anyone who does a little preflight research and wears a watch (next on the list of banned items?). In any case, other terrorists may decide to strike at a higher altitude, where the damage caused by an explosion would be compounded by decompression.

With airline passengers already facing heavy tax burdens, it would be great if policymakers would focus on keeping bad people off of planes rather than making passenger flight more costly and difficult for all of us.

Posted by PaulGessing at 05:44 PM | Comments (0)

Free-for-all (frfr-ôl) -- n. A disorderly fight, argument, or competition in which everyone present participates.

from Dictionary.com



Advertisement
Free For All -- The Free Liberal Blog