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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)

December 08, 2009

15 seconds of fame on global warming

Jack Cafferty asked last night on the Situation Room whether anything would really come out of the climate summit in Copenhagen.

As usual I commented. When I looked on this blog today, I found that he actually used my comments. Here is what he asked:

Here’s my question to you: What do you expect to come out of the global warming summit in Copenhagen?

Michael from Alexandria, Virginia writes:
Like you said, Jack, a binding treaty is never gonna happen. I doubt that we will get honest science on this (which would discount warming). I would much rather we give up on warming and instead target actual pollution of air and water in the developing world. Of course, the Chinese would block this too -as would the U.S., who benefits from both Chinese and Mexican pollution run amok.

Posted by MichaelBindner at 01:26 PM | Comments (0)

December 04, 2009

TSA Stole my Hot Sauce!

We at the Rio Grande Foundation typically go after the idiocy and corruption of our state political leaders, but the TSA is one entity that we all deal with on a regular basis, but that I have not written about extensively. This is largely because there seems to be no momentum in Congress to undo the nationalization of airport security that was enacted after 9/11.

Over the Thanksgiving Holiday, my wife Krista and I spent the week with RGF co-founder Harry Messenheimer and his wife on the Big Island of Hawaii. We were on Oahu for one day and toured the Dole Plantation. There, we purchase a bottle of pineapple-infused hot sauce. Being good travelers, we checked the bottle which was wrapped in some tissue paper to protect it from breaking. Well, when we got home and opened our bags, we had a pre-printed notice in our bag indicating TSA had checked the bag and we had no sauce. Unbelievable!

Apparently, TSA theft is not a new or uncommon issue. I'm proud that my old organization, the National Taxpayers Union, opposed federalizing airport security when it was done and I wish that our political leaders would get rid of TSA and let airlines and passengers handle security issues.

Posted by PaulGessing at 05:58 PM | Comments (3)

November 13, 2009

Ed Thompson Back on the Scene

Ed Thompson, the one-time Great White Hope of the Libertarian Party is running for the Wisconsin senate as a Republican.

Read Bob Capozzi's review of A Remarkable Man, a movie about Ed Thompson.

Posted by KevinRollins at 10:56 AM | Comments (0)

November 11, 2009

Who Is Number One: The Prisoner Remade

Attention aficionados of the 60s TV cult classic, The Prisoner...a remake is about to grace us all.

Previewed here.

-RC

Posted by RobertCapozzi at 08:31 AM | Comments (0)

Must Catholics witness to Life?

As we prepared to execute the DC Sniper (which is a misnomer, since only one of the murders actually happened within the District), a debate about capital punishment and the Culture of Life. I addressed the issue of the sniper in my essay published Monday in the Examiner, so I will now address the larger question.

Continue reading "Must Catholics witness to Life?"
Posted by MichaelBindner at 06:34 AM | Comments (3)

Executing the DC Sniper

Last night, John Alan Muhammed, who brainwashed John Malvo, a teen, and manipulated him into a murder spree that terrorized the Washington area, was executed.

Personally, as one who lives there and lived in fear of death, I am not entirely displeased with this. Of course, this means that my opinion of the rightness of the execution is a bit clouded - much in the same way I would not seeing Osama bin Laden's head on a platter (although I believe he is already dead from kidney disease). Again, because I was within shrapnel range of the Capitol on September 11, having been evacuated from the Department of Labor two blocks away, my judgment on the issue of his fate is also clouded.

Continue reading "Executing the DC Sniper"
Posted by MichaelBindner at 06:30 AM | Comments (0)

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

from Dictionary.com



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