Month: October 2005

I take from the Rich, I give to the middle class… Well, the upper middle class.

President Bush spoke in Louisiana yesterday and made a couple of interesting remarks about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. First, consider this:

In response to the government’s initially slow response to Hurricane Katrina, Bush said, “If I didn’t respond well enough, I’m going to learn the lessons.” The federal government’s response to the second huge storm to slam the area, Rita, has gotten better reviews.

“The story will unfold. I mean, the facts of the story will come out over time, and the important thing is for federal, state and local governments to adjust and to respond,” Bush said.

I’m only going to pick on that for a moment, long enough to point out that “if I didn’t…” seems like a nice way of saying “my critics are wrong.” That may be the case, but it would’ve been easy enough to leave that part out and just say what he said in the last line above. Admittedly, I don’t know the specific question, but it just seems ludicrous. Otherwise, his response was fine. (And Democrats need to stop the useless insinuation that he’s only going to Louisiana and Mississippi for political gain. Maybe, but he’s still the president.)

Moving along, here’s the other quote from President Bush:

“I don’t think Washington ought to dictate to New Orleans how to rebuild,” he said. Bush said he had told New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin that “we will support the plan that you develop.”

I agree that the federal government shouldn’t dictate how New Orleans rebuilds, but wouldn’t it make sense, using that logic, that perhaps the federal government shouldn’t fund it, either? Since we don’t believe in that form of federalism and personal responsibility any more, I want the federal government dictating the terms. I don’t live in Lousiana or Mississippi, but the residents and businesses of those states will use some of my money to rebuild. I don’t want them wasting my money making the same mistakes that compounded the damage caused by Hurricane Katrina. Dictate the terms or don’t spend the money. It’s simple.

Post Script: This in no way constitutes an endorsement of the current administration’s theory on federalism and fiscal policy. I merely expect accountability with how the federal government throws my money (and yours) around for rebuilding purposes.

Staring at trees shrubs inside the forest

Researchers released an interesting report today. Consider:

Community-acquired methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infections are cropping up with surprising frequency in newborn boys, and mom could be involved, researchers reported here.

It’s always useful to study increases in infection rates, so this report is no doubt important, but I have no knowledge to add to the increase in MRSA, nor am I trying to imply any. I want to take a different angle on this, and anyone who’s read my writings probably knows where I’m going with this. I am going there, but not with the attack some might expect.

The word “circumcision” jumped out at me, as you probably guessed. I’m not looking to get into a “circumcision causes increased MRSA infections” because I can’t prove that, even if I thought it true. Reading through the rest of the article, I don’t get the impression that it’s remotely indicated in the research. I think that’s a dead-end. For me to argue that, I’d have to read something that implied it. Also, having gotten into enough circumcision debates to know what hysteria looks like, I wouldn’t go there. The facts are on my side. Throwing baseless arguments around just because I want to win would only hurt my case. My only argument going forward is a matter of semantics and how those semantics flaunt simple reason. The rest of this entry should be read as arguing nothing more than that.

What I want to focus on is inherent in the excerpted sentence above and these paragraphs further down in the article:

They drew from data on a prospective cohort of all children treated at Texas Children’s hospital for S. aureus infections between the summer of 2001 and the spring of 2005. The cases were classified by route of acquisition, either nosocomial or community acquired.

They looked at the demographics, hospital course and outcome of a subgroup of patients who were younger than 30 days old when they were diagnosed with community-acquired MRSA. The babies, all of whom were full-term or near-term neonates (> 36 weeks gestation) had been healthy before being infected with community acquired S. aureus. They defined as previously healthy any child who had no hospitalizations other than at birth, and no surgery other than circumcision.

Why does “no surgery other than circumcision” keep coming up? Circumcision is surgery, even if proponents wish to portray it as just a little snip. (It’s much more than “just a little snip,” but I’ve already discussed that.”) Why exclude it, especially if you’re trying to portray the infants as healthy? In what other circumstances do we operate on healthy children? It’s ludicrous to associate the two, as if they can logically co-exist in the same realm of logic. They can’t. Yes, I know I’m being extremely nit-picky about this, but I remain baffled that otherwise intelligent people possess such a blind spot in their medical thinking.

The Earth isn’t flat. Taxes should be.

Apparently, Utah is considering a flat income tax. Or should I say, was considering. Here’s an editorial cheering its demise. I want to focus on one segment which gets the argument wrong. Okay, so the entire editorial gets it wrong, but I only want to focus on one. Unfortunately, I can’t decide which gets it more wrong. Thus, I offer them together. Consider:

But even if the tax rate is the same, and the dollars paid by the rich are more than those paid by the poor, a flat tax is not a fair tax. A tiny reduction in the income of a working family stings much more than the same percentage, or even a much larger one, charged to a higher-income household.

Besides, nobody pays only income tax. As part of the mix with property taxes and, of greatest impact, sales taxes, a flat income tax rate only serves to make the total tax structure more regressive, more burdensome on the lower-income brackets.

There are exemptions and rebates that could ameliorate the burden on the working class. But every one of them would reduce total revenue and require higher rates to make up the difference.

Keeping the charitable deduction, as the [Latter-day Saints] Church wants, is reasonable. The real solution, of course, is a truly progressive income tax structure, one that would increase the burden as a household’s ability to pay increases.

Most of those non-arguments can be countered with the fundamental point I linked in my previous post about the flat tax. Here it is again.

A flat tax on personal incomes combines a threshold (that is, an exempt amount) with a single rate of tax on all income above it. The progressivity of such a system can be varied within wide limits using just these two variables.

As I said, I believe we should remove as much progressivity as possible from the tax code. Completely removing it, though, isn’t practical or reasonable for the most basic reason listed in the editorial. But we can’t pretend like it’s logical for a household’s burden to increase as it’s ability to pay increases. That’s so anti-success as to be downright socialistic. I hide under no delusion about the editorial author’s likely inclination to socialism, however, given the ideas thrust forward in the editorial.

The editorial suffers from two particular flaws. First, in its argument for progressive taxes, it highlights the existing tax burden, consisting of property, income, and sales taxes. This burden is not the fault of the flat tax, but instead suggests that Utah needs tax reform. The author points to the sales tax as the greatest trouble for the poor. My interpretation of the author’s failure to attack this instead of the flat tax suggests an animosity for the so-called rich rather than concern for the poor. That’s an ideology rather than a solution.

According to this article about the Utah flat tax proposal, the flat tax appears to reduce the burden for the poor(er). Is this wrong? If so, explain why. If it doesn’t imply the correct income level for “poor”, explain why and consider a modified plan. Solve the problem or get out of the way for those attempting to do so.

That, of course, reveals the editorial’s second problem. The author dismisses the flat tax, calling for a “truly progressive income tax structure”. Fine. I disagree, but I’m listening. Show me why it makes more sense to increase a household’s burden as its income increases. Do the rich not take care of the poor if they’re allowed to keep the money they earn? Should they? I don’t know because the editorial never says. As I said, I’m left to interpret the author’s intentions as a socialistic “soak the rich” mentality. If that’s right, say so. If it’s not, enlighten me. I’m waiting.

Until then, the flat tax is the right answer, for all the reasons I’ve listed.

You know what you almost never see? Somebody heckling a diver.

Back in July, I wrote that this quote about new Chief Justice John Roberts concerned me. It’s even more relevant today about Harriet Miers. Consider:

I’m told that the President waited to make this decision and that it was a deliberate decision. The President, I’m told, wanted someone he knew, someone who would be seen as conservative, and someone who would “tread carefully” on Executive Powers. Roberts was the only one in the end who fit the bill.

I reiterate what I said then. The last thing we need right now is someone who will tread carefully on Executive Powers. If there has ever been a President who needs to be restrained by the Constitution’s checks-and-balances, it’s President Bush. I reserved judgment on Chief Justice Roberts and eventually decided that there were no obvious reasons to vote against him. I remain hopeful that he will become a good Supreme Court Justice, one who is faithful to the Constitution. I refuse to take the same approach for Ms. Miers, who is so blatantly unqualified for the Supreme Court that her nomination makes a mockery of the process. I would suggest that President Bush should be ashamed of himself, but I don’t believe he’s capable of such a simple observation of reality.

I don’t know that we’ve ever needed Congress and the President to be from opposite parties more than we do now. Is it November 2006 yet?

Does God believe in Karl Marx?

These recent questions from The One-Handed Economist fascinated me. No doubt this paragraph could be hacked at by someone looking at tedious nuances, but the basic idea stands as rather valid, I think. Consider:

Why is it that so many of those who are willing to accept that something so complex and diverse as the life on Earth came about as the result of an essentially random process cannot also accept that the modern economy can organize itself the same way? Why is the converse also often true? Neither position seems particularly consistent to me.

Ah, the beauty madness of the politics of ideology and party rather than intellectual curiosity and principles.

Uh, what country do you think this is?

In a recent column for Townhall.com, Ben Shapiro wrote about the recent announcement that Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez directed the FBI to increase its anti-obscenity efforts against pornography. While the anti-pornography crusade is wrong-headed for many reasons, I’m more amused with Mr. Shapiro’s reasoning for his support of this policy. In challenging unnamed FBI agents who criticized the new program with comments like “I guess this means we’ve won the war on terror,” Mr. Shapiro explains political philosophy. Consider this nugget of twisted nonsense:

Plainly it is not governmental inefficiency these agents are worried about. They find the anti-pornography crowd disturbing because they believe that policing pornography violates fundamental rights. This has become the dominant view in our society: As long as what I do doesn’t harm you personally, I have a right to do it. It’s a silly view and a view rejected by law enforcement policies all over the country. Were we to truly recognize such a philosophy, we would have to legalize prostitution, drugs and suicide — as well as the murder of homeless drifters with no family or friends. After all, if someone kills a homeless drifter, how does that affect anyone else? Consent should make no difference here — that’s an imposition of your values. Just because a murderer offends your moral sensibilities doesn’t give you an excuse to impose your subjective values on a society.

Such logic means destroying human communities. It is uncivilized, in the purest sense of the word. It makes us each selfish actors. The effects of our actions on others are irrelevant. No, you can’t punch me in the nose, but if you choose to perpetrate genocide, and if none of my friends or family members is thrown into a mass grave, what business of mine is it? When everyone is an island, no one is safe. Actions cease to have consequences.

With so many holes in his theory, I’ll just start at the beginning and slog my way through. What he attempts to discredit describe is a libertarian view that everyone has liberties which are inherently free of government possession or granting. I’m not sure who said it (otherwise, I’d attribute the quote properly), but Mr. Shapiro suggests that the prevailing philosophy in America is based on the sentiment that my rights end only where your nose begins. Oh, if that were only true. I only need mention same-sex marriage to dispel that notion as little more than lip service from many. The dominant view seems to be more I have the right to do anything I want as long as I don’t harm you. You, on the other hand, have to live by my idea of right and wrong. Unless I choose to read Mr. Shapiro’s statement without the implied “physical harm” and replace it with the not-implied “moral harm”. In that case, he’d be 100% correct. But he’s not arguing that. Anyone disagree?

There are people who do hold Mr. Shapiro’s original statement as political gospel. I happen to be one of them. We should legalize prostitution and drugs. (Suicide? What argument is that, other than the “Culture of Death” stupidity preached today?) The drug war? If that was a war in a foreign country with large numbers of soldiers involved, the American public would revolt at the devastating failure. Exactly how much has the drug war slowed down drugs? All it does is criminalize what has always happened, what will always happen. People get high. One must acknowledge nothing more than “alcohol” to understand the lack of difference. What’s happening now in the market for drugs is exactly what happened during Prohibition. We’ve done little more than trade the mafia for gangs, which seems an even trade in a best-case analysis. That’s not smart, nor is it effective.

And prostitution? I can’t personally imagine what would drive someone to a prostitute, but wouldn’t it make more sense from a public health viewpoint to legalize it and regulate it? That way, we can test for STDs. We can devise ways to reduce the dangers associated with prostitution. That makes more sense than defending some illusory idea of public morals. I love theories and ideas but health is practical. It’s here and now. We’re never going to stop prostitution without Theocratic rule. We shouldn’t try.

Continuing, perhaps freedom is silly, but it doesn’t specifically matter what law enforcement demands. Law enforcement agencies are beholden to the public (i.e. elected government) it serves and protects. Law enforcement doesn’t set its policies independent of legislation. Mr. Shapiro’s point is ridiculous, unless he’s interested in a police state. I suspect he is, of the “you have to live by my morals” manner. So be it. He’s a columnist, not a legislator.

Everything after that is an absurd attempt to pander to the stupid. Murdering homeless drifters with no family or friends? Forgive me for missing the logical transition from “as long as what I do doesn’t harm you personally” to “as long as no one will miss you when you’re murdered.” Granted, it must be a brilliant transition, but Mr. Shapiro fails to provide it for the rest of us. I want to understand how libertarianism is little more than barbaric hedonism. Enlighten me, maybe with a future column. Unbelievable.

The same argument he makes for regulation of drugs and prostitution can be made for economic regulation. We don’t want people to starve because that offends morals, so we need to make sure that everyone has a reliable income. They won’t work? Who are you to say that everyone should earn their living? If you like going to work, why should you care about how someone else receives an income? That logic falls apart quickly. I assume Mr. Shapiro would agree. So how is the culture held to a different standard than the economy? Political philosophy should be robust enough to not crumble under some issues facing a society. If it does, it’s not a political philosophy, but instead a hodgepodge of subjective applications designed to promote self-interest over principle.

Mr. Shapiro shuffles out his next argument, at which he’s supposedly arrived from his explanation of libertarian freedoms. Consider:

If we are to maintain communities, someone’s standards must govern. Those standards can either make it easier or more difficult for the traditionally moral to live their lives. The idea that no one’s standards have to govern — that everyone can do what he likes, when he likes — inherently means tolerance for evil. Tolerance for evil means nourishment of evil. Nourishment of evil means growth of evil. Growth of evil is a direct affront to traditional morality.

That makes no sense. The libertarianism Mr. Shapiro smears does not exist in any accepted view. But it does hold that standards must govern. Those standards are that everyone is free to live his life as he sees fit, as long as he does no actual harm to another. There’s nothing particularly complicated about that. It doesn’t mean a tolerance for evil, merely an acceptance that people believe “evil” things and may continue to believe “evil” things. Unless the thinker acts on (or threatens, etc.) his “evil” beliefs, government has no authority to control it.

That doesn’t hinder traditional morality, which is subjective, at best. Mr. Shapiro is free to believe whatever he wants, no matter how crazy or “evil” I might imagine it to be. However, traditional morality is not an objective, stationary principle. It’s a moving, subjective target designed apparently to police the salvation of everyone through the litmus of one. That is not a governing philosophy for a free society, nor is it in the Constitution of the United States.

So here’s a thought: leave people to self-determination. Reduce legislation to the allegedly dominant view in society. We’ll see individual actions conform almost exclusively to the actions individuals previously chose under legislated t
raditional morality. People already make choices, regardless of legality, which inherently means that moral laws are useless. So wouldn’t it make sense to direct law enforcement efforts to immediate (physical, economic, etc.) dangers than to moral dangers?

Cannons destroy muskets

In preparation for Saturday’s Virginia Tech game against West Virginia, in Morgantown, WVa, I present to you a fine explanation of the joy that is West Virginia football. Behold:

Fire officials have ordered the removal of all upholstered furniture, debris and flammable objects from porches in neighborhoods with high student populations in an effort to put a damper on the outdoor furniture blazes that have become a tradition.

The move comes as the city, known as the couch-burning capital of college football, prepares for the West Virginia-Virginia Tech football game on Saturday.

“The reason for the order is based upon statistical fire data gathered following major rival football games or other sporting events,” Morgantown Fire Chief Dave Fetty said Monday. “Data says there are particular areas within the city where we can expect to have illegal street fires.”

Students celebrating victories by the Mountaineers have a long tradition of setting fires in the streets, often with cheap furniture dragged from their rental homes.

Morgantown led the nation in the number of intentional street fires between 1997 and 2003, with a total of 1,129 set.
…

“Officers plan to go door to door posting written, typed-up orders on each house or putting them in mailboxes,” Fetty said. “The notice states all indoor furniture that has been placed outside, along with other debris in specified areas, must be put elsewhere.”

Do I really need to write any sort of punchline?