Author: Tony

Only his left eye sees the future.

Sen. Obama was prescient in the current mortgage problem. I’d be more impressed if it had happened in March 2005, or even 2006. But it’s still worth noting.

Also worth noting is what he leaves out of his assessment of the problem. In filling out a standard critique against lenders, he can’t find a single word against borrowers. Sen. Obama does not suggest that borrowers might lie. He does not suggest that they had a duty to understand the terms of their mortgage contracts before signing. Any looming crisis would arise only from insufficient due diligence or outright deception by the lender.

It’s time to move forward to 1791.

Bravo:

In an unusually aggressive step, Fox Broadcasting yesterday refused to pay a $91,000 indecency fine levied by the Federal Communications Commission for an episode of a long-canceled reality television show, even as the network fights two other indecency fines in the Supreme Court.
…

Despite the sharp reduction, Fox said it would not pay the fine on principle, calling it “arbitrary and capricious, inconsistent with precedent, and patently unconstitutional” in a statement released yesterday.

There is no compelling government interest in preventing whipped-cream-covered nipples on television. There is possibly a compelling parental interest in preventing their children from seeing whipped-cream-covered nipples on television. (This possibility is why the networks may have a compelling business interest to refrain from showing whipped-cream-covered nipples on television.) But it’s clear that the First Amendment really isn’t as complicated as we make it in aiming to protect our precious children. Unlike this sentiment:

“We believe in enforcing indecency standards, especially when children are watching,” said FCC spokeswoman Mary Diamond.

I’ll leave the question of “standards” alone, particularly the clarity of those rules. But the first question to that is obvious: how does the government know when children are watching? If nothing else, with the expansion of cable television and the rapid development of the Internet, any prior claims that FCC censorship mattered are now moot.

17 hours, 4 airports, 3 cities, ⅓ baseball game

I’ve journeyed to Clearwater, Florida every March since 2001 for Phillies Spring Training. I’ve slowly increased my time for each visit, seeing as many as four games. For multiple competing interests not interesting to anyone, I couldn’t make an extended trip this year. But I needed to go. My streak matters, but I’m more interested in the joy I get from the games. I had to figure out a way to go. Enter nearly-unusable frequent flier miles on US Airways.

Saturday morning, I boarded a plane at 6:30 leaving National, bound for Tampa. Seventeen hours later, my plane landed at Dulles. Sandwiched inside that time, I enjoyed three innings of baseball before the skies opened up for good, raining out the only exhibition game I could see this year. I loved it.

But first, I got to watch my favorite current Phillie, Chris Coste, play.

And since it appears difficult to find any decent recap of the three innings of a meaningless game that didn’t count, my personal system of keeping score. The Tigers:

And the Phillies:

Notice that Coste drove in the only run in the non-game with a bases-loaded sacrifice fly (to deep center). I enjoyed that, but not as much as I enjoyed the randomness of my only day at Spring Training coinciding with the book signing at the stadium for Chris Coste’s new book, . In a lucky turn of events, the rain pushed the signing to 3:30 rather than the estimated 4:30 or later if the game hadn’t ended in a rainout. That left me a comfortable margin so I wouldn’t miss my flight.

Mission accomplished.

Post Script: For Tigers fans, here’s the unfortunate outcome of this meaningless non-game for you, Curtis Granderson’s broken hand:

Brandon Inge in center doesn’t sound like an enviable short-term solution.

Our gender discrimination permits this immoral argument.

Following on previous entries regarding female genital mutilation, John Tierney updates the conversation with an opinion from Dr. Fuambai Ahmadu, “a native of Sierra Leone, who grew up in America and then went back to her homeland as an adult to undergo the rite along with fellow members of the Kono ethnic group.” I’m not impressed with Dr. Ahmadu’s reasoning.

I also take note of readers’ concerns about consent. While I have serious issues with the concept of consent and how it is applied asymmetrically to African practices of female genital cutting, I do agree with Rick Shweder that a possible way forward would be to consider limiting certain types of genital cutting to an age of majority, for instance, the age at which a girl can consent to marriage, abortion or to cosmetic surgery. A minor procedure can be allowed for girls under the age of consent, as is the case with infant male circumcision. Defining what such a minor procedure would entail and what might be the appropriate ages of consent is an important step that must include the voices of the “silent majority” of women who are affected.
…

The way forward is to look for solutions that would empower women (and men) to choose what to do with their own bodies. …

My position is “pro-choice” on any form of female and male genital modifications (with the exception of minor cuts, such as circumcisions of male and female prepuce discussed above) and a complete rejection of the motto “zero-tolerance of FGM”. …

That’s an interesting notion of choice. Dr. Ahmadu conflates the prerogative of a cultural group¹ to exclude those who do not conform to its rituals with permission to require inclusion through involuntary participation among those who reject its rituals. This ignores the real issue, the use of force on a healthy, non-consenting individual.

Pro-choice should mean what it implies, which is complete consent or refusal. There are no other valid competing interests on the individual when critiquing elective genital surgery. If the person agrees, for whatever reason, it is his or her choice. If the person does not agree, for whatever reason, it is forced. If the person cannot consent, for whatever reason, the assumption must be that he or she would not. Force violates his or her rights as an individual to self-ownership. Permitting force relegates the body part(s) under consideration to property status, possessed without limitation by another. That can never be right.

Introducing subjective qualifications (i.e. minor cuts) is then a diversionary tactic based on a relativist notion of what people should not mind based on the good opinion of others. It is not a principle that recognizes the individual. It rejects a coherent conception of human rights.

Dr. Ahmadu’s minor is my major. Her blessing of my forced circumcision as a cultural rite is irrelevant to the point of offensiveness. I believe in choice. She believes in choice, unless force is necessary to achieve her outcome.

Post Script: Dr. Shweder contributed a comment to the discussion suggesting a curious denial of some of the earlier counterpoints made throughout the threads. I offered a new rebuttal here.

¹ Do not read this as a synonym for government. No government has such authority, nor do citizens possess a right to use government to exclude citizens from society.

It’s not a “deal” if I don’t get to refuse.

Harold Meyerson’s column in today’s Washington Post is propaganda. It is so obviously biased in its consideration of facts and creation of myths that any other conclusion is impossible. Any essay that begins with this:

Putting together everything we’ve learned over the past 10 days about high finance in Manhattan, one thing is clear: If Eliot Spitzer had saved all the money he apparently paid”Kristen” and her co-workers at the Emperors Club, he could have bought Bear Stearns.

… derives from a partisan ever-interested in stuffing the events of the day through to his predetermined conclusion. In Meyerson’s case, that’s always some derivative of how government must act more, control more, and protect more. His political mind is one giant Care Bear Stare at the problem du jour.

Today, he’s concerned with workers.

The key lesson Americans need to learn from today’s troubles is how to distinguish faux prosperity from the genuine article. Over the past hundred years, we’ve experienced both. In the three decades after World War II we had the real thing. Led by our manufacturing sector, productivity increased at a rapid clip and median family incomes rose at a virtually identical rate. The value of the American work product grew significantly and that value was shared with American workers.

That value that’s shared with workers is generally referred to as a salary. Unless workers have stopped receiving salaries for the work they do, this argument is sophistry. Meyerson isn’t interested in anything more than pushing anti-capitalist, anti-corporate class warfare.

In the broadest sense, the American economy over the past three decades has been powered by ever more ingenious extensions of credit to a people whose incomes were going nowhere, unless they were in the wealthiest 10 percent of the population. There were some limits, as a result of New Deal regulations, on how old-line banks could extend credit, but investment banks and other institutions not legally obliged to keep a certain amount of cash in reserve operated under no such constraints. The risk was that one day, burdened by debt and static incomes, American homeowners would have trouble making their payments and the house of cards would come tumbling down. But what were the odds of that?

His entire argument is built on the italicized statement. To work, he needs both a conspiracy by his enemy class and a lack of self-control within his comrades in arms spending. The former is a pathetic assumption not worth consideration. The latter is worth a simple demolition.

When I bought my house, I had a set income with a projected path of growth. For consistency within Meyerson’s frame, I’ll remove the assumption of growth. I also had a (declining) amount of debt consisting of my car and my education. I took on a fixed-rate mortgage for approximately half the amount a bank would’ve given me in 2005. I’ll also assume what a bank would offer me now is less than what it would’ve offered me in 2005, although it would no doubt still cover my original mortgage with a comfortable margin. My (assumed stagnant) income covered my obligations.

How is “burdened by debt and static incomes” relevant, as opposed to poor judgment and financial forecasting by consumers (and financial institutions)? Meyerson sees only the parenthetical and assumes that amounts to conspiracy. And oppression. The notion is biased.

Meyersons demands are unsurprising. I wonder if he wrote this paragraph first.

Pretty good, it turns out. And out of this debacle emerge two paramount lessons for our highest-ranking policymakers: Regulate the American financial sector, which is now turning to the government for a bailout. And commit the government to doing all in its power to generate broad-based prosperity, through laws enabling workers to bargain collectively, through a massive public commitment to projects “greening” the economy, through provision of universal health coverage and affordable college educations.

The lesson from Bear Stearns is that we need the government to give us broad-based prosperity through a massive public commitment to boilerplate progressive talking points. Yep, further buffering Americans from the costs of their financial decisions is exactly what we need, lest they learn to exercise the self-control Meyerson knows they do not possess because they’ve been conspired against by the goal of oppression executed by our financial elite.

But, if I may, a question. When the government makes a college education more affordable, should it regulate who may study finance, and which branches of finance, since its eventual practice carries the risk of unleashing more evil on workers?

Replacing race conflict with class conflict is not an improvement.

Update: After thinking over Sen. Obama’s speech again, I’ve changed my mind. I focused too much on what Sen. Obama wanted us to think he was doing and not enough on what he was doing. One particular line stuck out and I can’t get beyond it.

This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not that someone who doesn’t look like you might take your job; it’s that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit.

That line is a specific repudiation of the message of unity – based on individual liberty – that Sen. Obama tried to sell. He’s not transcending Us versus Them. He’s merely changing the players. He’s only interested in closing divides if doing so can be used for short-term political advantage, even if it means opening a new divide. Without that potential personal benefit, he doesn’t seem to find the principle worth respecting.

I modified my original entry to reflect my revised opinion.

Original entry:

I’ve been paying attention to the Reverend Jeremiah Wright story as nothing more than background noise to my interests. But I know Sen. Obama spoke today on the subject. Having read it, it’s decent enough insufficient in its attention to race and politics and the question of his implicit endorsement of Wright’s ridiculous opinions. There were some off-notes for me, but it’s a step (or four) forward and I think those overwhelm whatever good he could’ve had in the speech.

However, I can’t get past the unnecessary stuck inside his attempt at the necessary. Such as:

… Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. …

… distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze – a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many. …

And politicians exploit fears of economic outcomes for their own electoral ends. Sen. Obama’s (and Sen. Clinton’s) strategy leading to March 4th, full of anti-NAFTA rhetoric and boiler-plate economic stupidity that he certainly understood as stupidity, exploited the fears of voters in Ohio. It was expedient political crap then. It’s expedient political crap here.

If Sen. Obama means inside corporate dealing between private parties, so what? If he means to include public parties, then say so explicitly. Leave out the anti-corporation idiocy, which he could’ve done by hitting solely on the problem of (readily-embraced) rent-seeking in Washington. But that would mean accepting that all parties have a legitimate claim to their own interests, demanding that Washington stay out of picking any winners and losers. Sen. Obama isn’t saying that. He like economic policies that favor the few over the many, as long as the groups are selected to his preference.

I see nothing new or noble here.

In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world’s great religions demand – that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother’s keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister’s keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well.

Why quote the Preamble to the Constitution if you’re going to call on religious impulses for the way forward? Not everyone shares the same faith, or any faith. I’d rather focus on an idea like the Fourteenth Amendment and its requirement that no state shall “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” The context of this speech required the classical liberal (i.e. libertarian) approach to public interactions in America, not the liberal (i.e. Progressive) approach. Less “do unto others (with government)” and more “We hold these Truths to be self-evident”.

If one bad capitalist indicts capitalism, one bad pundit indicts punditry.

I (obviously) haven’t read everything written on the Fed’s Bear Stearns intervention. No need. Today’s column from E.J. Dionne is the most intellectually dishonest piece possible, relying on a skewed, limited set of the facts. There’s too much to excerpt and comment on to fully highlight its idiocy, but this is close to a summation:

But in the enthusiasm for deregulation that took root in the late 1970s, flowered in the Reagan era and reached its apogee in the second Bush years, we forgot the lesson that government needs to keep a careful watch on what capitalists do. Of course, some deregulation can be salutary, and the market system is, on balance, a wondrous instrument — when it works. But the free market is just that: an instrument, not a principle.

Dionne mistakenly assumes that the American economy is a free market. It is among the freest on Earth, but it is not free. The free market is a principle. The American economy is an instrument.

It is an instrument for Wall Street tycoons who like corporate welfare. It is also an instrument for people like Dionne:

So now the bailouts [ed. note: this isn’t a “bailout”] begin, and Wall Street usefully might feel a bit of gratitude, perhaps by being willing to have the wealthy foot some of the bill or to acknowledge that while its denizens were getting rich, a lot of Americans were losing jobs and health insurance. I’m waiting.

If the “wealthy” who will be “asked” to foot some of the bill had no financial interest in (i.e. shares) or transactions with Bear Stearns, why is it her responsibility to pay more for the Fed’s actions? As a response to corporate welfare not benefiting her? And what if she already acknowledges that a lot of Americans were losing jobs and health insurance? Not that acknowledging that matters to anything; why does it matter?

Believing welfare is a dangerous policy for government is a principled stance. Believing that corporate welfare is a dangerous policy for government is a stance that serves as an ideological instrument for further regulating the American economy away from the free market.

Those who can, do. Those who can’t pretend that doing isn’t doing.

Bob Costas switched from enjoyable to insufferable a long time ago. He’s risen to rank one notch below Joe Buck, who qualifies as so self-righteous that I mute my television during his broadcasts, whatever the sport, teams, or scenario. Costas demonstrates this further with these comments:

”Today, I saw on ESPN a poll about which Western Conference teams would not make the playoffs,” Costas said. “Well, 46 percent said the Denver Nuggets, which has zero percent influence on anything. No reasonable person who cares about the NBA should care about that. Who has the time or the inclination to do this, even if you’re sitting on your computer? Why would you weigh in on it?”
…

”I understand with newspapers struggling and hoping to hold on to, or possibly expand their audiences, I understand why they do what they do,” Costas said. ‘But it’s one thing if somebody just sets up a blog from their mother’s basement in Albuquerque and they are who they are, and they’re a pathetic get-a-life loser, but now that pathetic get-a-life loser can piggyback onto someone who actually has some level of professional accountability and they can be comment No. 17 on Dan Le Batard’s column or Bernie Miklasz’ column in St. Louis. That, in most cases, grants a forum to somebody who has no particular insight or responsibility. Most of it is a combination of ignorance or invective.”

What bothers Costas — and he’s not alone — is Internet and talk radio commentary that “confuses simple mean-spiritedness and stupidity with edginess. Just because I can call someone a name doesn’t mean I’m insightful or tough and edgy. It means I’m an idiot.

“It’s just a high-tech place for idiots to do what they used to do on bar stools or in school yards, if they were school yard bullies, or on men’s room walls in gas stations. That doesn’t mean that anyone with half a brain should respect it.”

I don’t find his view of bloggers and blog readers/commenters particularly insulting. This is primarily because I do not care what his position is. He’s engaging in the denial behavior all dinosaurs engage in. Pretend that “they” aren’t as qualified because some majority of their numbers are casual and less-informed. Ignore those among “them” who are qualified and ignore those among your own who are not qualified. It’s too common to cause any indigestion.

What I do find insulting is the implicit idea that only media’s gatekeepers are competent enough to figure out which comments on teh Internets are worth absorbing and which are garbage.

The Internet is a large experiment in merit. Popularity doesn’t mean quality and quality doesn’t mean popularity. Big deal. The opportunity to learn and grow and develop is there for those who wish to try. But only the fool imagines that it’s a revelation that there’s wheat and there’s chaff. Any glance through the hallowed halls of mass sports media shows this.

Link via Baseball Think Factory via Baseball Musings.

Can we frame the debate objectively?

In response to this Will Wilkinson entry and this Kerry Howley entry on the liberty arguments for (economics) and against (morality) legalized prostitution, Ross Douthat goes off the rails with a strange question of how prostitution as sex work differs from molestation and incest. It’s as ridiculous as it sounds. Read Mr. Wilkinson’s response, with all the obvious goodness such a question demands.

Instead, I want to focus on this one sentence from Mr. Douthat’s entry:

If you think that sex, by virtue of being bound up not only culturally but biologically with emotional attachment on the one hand and reproduction on the other, is a unique kind of physical act, one that’s intimate by its very nature in a way that, say, preparing dinner isn’t, then it makes sense to assign a hierarchy of moral value (and moral stigma) to different kinds of sexual activity – most likely with monogamy at the top, serial monogamy somewhat lower, promiscuity lower still, and activities that treat sex as a commodity to be bought and sold somewhere near the bottom.

Of course it makes sense to assign that hierarchy if that’s what you think. But not everyone thinks that. Perpetuating individual liberty demands more than caving to a squishy notion of universal disdain for an activity. Even, and perhaps especially, when one finds activities at the bottom of that hierarchy morally repugnant.

The validity of arguing for the legalization of prostitution does not hinge on the moral argument with regard to selling sex. It is acceptable to believe that an activity is morally unacceptable, yet to acknowledge that two consenting adults may engage in that activity because they are not harming others. Or more precisely, if they are harming anyone, it is only themselves, voluntarily. That question of liberty is at the core of this debate, not the moral defensibility of prostitution.

Free to engage and should engage are different concepts. Ms. Howley and Mr. Wilkinson argue only the former. This (implicitly) injects into the debate the truth that all tastes and preferences are subjective. It sets such subjectivity aside and leaves the legal question only to evidence of objective harm.

For fairness, Mr. Douthat posits in an earlier entry that sex work is by definition self-abuse, justifying a legal prohibition. The posts he responds to in the above links address that argument.

**********

Of course, since it’s apparently okay to ask questions unrelated to the topic, let me ask a question: Why is it automatically self-harm worthy of prohibition for an individual to sell sex, even when it’s voluntarily sold, yet it’s reasonable to permit parents to surgically alter the genitals of their healthy sons – who may or may not approve of such permanent, physical alteration – as Mr. Douthat suggested last year in defense of infant circumcision?

The answer to how one person can hold two incongruent opinions rather obviously rests in a willingness to use personal, subjective tastes and preferences to inform the legal code of a diverse, secular, civil society. It’s the same central planner impulse that resides in every individual who seeks to dictate which freedoms are abhorrent.

Since I’m off on the tangent, in that entry, Mr. Douthat states:

Proponents, like myself, point out that even saying the word smegma is really disgusting. Again, I think we pretty much win the debate right there, without even getting into the whole HIV question.

I get the tongue-in-cheek nature of the comment, whether he meant it or not. I think he did because I think he views circumcision as inconsequential. (Remember subjective tastes and preferences?) But any understanding of human biology demonstrates the stupidity of such an argument. Female genitals produce smegma, as well. We do not cut female minors for that reason. Or, more to the point, we do not permit parents to cut their daughters just because they, the parents, are disgusted by the mere mention of the word. We manage to find the correct reasoning to prohibit that. But for males, parents can use only the mere mention of smegma as an excuse to cut. Or they can reject even that reason and order it because it’s fun to check “yes” on the consent form. The law is based on our conditioned beliefs rather than facts.

Just as it is with prostitution.

Triumph of the Big Government Advocates

Writing about OPEC’s rise to actual cartel power, Robert Samuelson writes this sentence about one of America’s short-comings.

We have steadfastly rejected higher gasoline taxes to curb unnecessary driving and strengthen demand for fuel-efficient vehicles (better to tax ourselves than let foreigners tax us through higher prices).

First, higher prices are not a “tax”, they are the result of supply and demand. As Mr. Samuelson points out throughout his essay, world demand is growing. OPEC has control of a large segment of supply. But OPEC does not have the ability to make us pay its prices. Why didn’t he just alter the sentence and write “better to tax ourselves than let foreigners gouge us through higher prices”? It would’ve been as economically (in)correct.

More importantly, the purpose of a tax on gasoline should never be to limit “unnecessary” driving. Unnecessary to whom? If I go to the store to browse for merchandise I have no intention of buying today, is that unnecessary? If a parent drives his child around to help the child fall asleep, is that unnecessary? If a teenager drives his date around aimlessly for an extra half hour so they can talk longer, is that unnecessary?

Taxes to achieve subjective ideals is ideology, not valid public policy. The only purpose for a tax – a user fee – is to rectify the negative externalities from the taxed activity. Carbon emission is an externality. Fifteen cents more for a gallon of gasoline from higher demand is not an externality.

The price of a gallon of gasoline should be the result of market forces. Either people value driving or they value money. But each consumer is the only legitimate decision-maker on that choice.