Ban newspapers because they induce paper cuts

The Washington Post presented an editorial today supporting the looming smoking bans in Washington, D.C. and Maryland. The logic is flawed beyond the most basic “we’re ignoring private property rights because it’s inconvenient,” moving quickly to “Huh?” status. Consider this bit of logic concerning economic hardship exemptions:

Howard County, which also is considering a new smoking law, has a somewhat different hardship situation. To comply with a 1996 law, many restaurants and bars established — at considerable cost — separate, ventilated areas for smokers. Such areas have been found ineffective in fully protecting people from unhealthy air, but those restaurant and bar owners deserve consideration for installing the equipment as called for then. At last count, a majority of the County Council favored exempting these establishments from the proposed new ban. That’s too generous and unhealthy. County Executive James N. Robey (D) proposes giving them until 2008 to comply, which would be more than fair.

Before moving on, I’d like to commend the Post’s editorial staff for approving of restaurant and bar owners who installed the equipment. Since they did it out of general kindness and customer demand, it’s amazing … Wait, oh, yeah. They installed the equipment because it was required by a law. A law whose solution proved to be useless, but costly. Government is a force for good. Especially when unhealthy air on private property is involved. Continuing:

As more and more reports are showing, smoking bans generally have had no significant effect on revenue and employment. Also, as more and more contiguous areas enact bans, the less likely their establishments will be to lose customers. As reported by The Post’s Matthew Mosk and John Wagner, at least seven states, including California, New York and Delaware, as well as 180 localities, require smoke-free bars and restaurants. These areas have recognized that just as eateries are required to serve safe food, they should be required to provide safe air. In this region, it’s time to stop the stalling.

I’ll accept that smoking bans generally have had no significant effect on revenue and employment, but only because it’s generally convenient to moving my counter-analysis along. The larger point offered is that dwindling smoking-friendly areas in public means that businesses will still generate revenues because people have to go somewhere. Except, what if they don’t? The logic implies that people shouldn’t have the choice to smoke in public and they shouldn’t have the choice to stay home and smoke rather than go out to not smoke. What’s next, a law requiring people to frequent affected establishments? Of course not, because that would be crazy. Better to come up with a fix for the resulting economic hardship of a government-imposed cost of doing business. Before the bans, the owners didn’t mind. The customers didn’t mind. So who minds? I’ve already said I mind, but I choose not to patronize business that permit smoking, among other reasons. So what if, just maybe, personal choice matters?

Which leads to the safe food versus safe air comparison. Umm, I don’t have a way of knowing if a restaurant produces my dinner safely. I don’t know if they have E. coli swimming around on every surface in the kitchen. I can’t reasonably impose that standard before I eat the meal. After I eat, it might be too late. Somehow, some form of safe food standard seems workable. How is any of that the case with air quality? I can see cigarette smoke in the air. I can smell cigarette smoke from a surprising distance. I have a distinct, easily-measurable choice before I enter any transaction with a restaurant or bar included in the ban. I’m free to decide whether or not to continue my relationship with them. I’m also capable of doing so.

Stop treating me like a child.

All the news that’s fit to slant

Guess what? Media bias is real. Rather than excerpt any particular passage from the news release, I’ll sum it up with what I’ve said in the past: Duh. This is new information?

Give any thinking person access to media, whether newspapers, television, radio, or The Internets, and they’ll find something that could count as bias. It’s the reader’s job to read with a critical mind. Without that, the reader can be swayed “against his wishes,” which concerns me exactly zero percent. Buyer beware and all that. If a reader wants bias, he’ll seek it out. If he doesn’t, he’ll boycott news outlets that skew against his beliefs. If he’s too ignorant or lazy or whatever to participate in that exchange, I’m not going to feel sorry for him. The marketplace for ideas exists for a reason. Engage or shut up.

Read the summary of the study and make up your own mind; it’s a quick read. If nothing else, it’s an insight into the “Fun with Numbers” mentality of quantitatively comparing items that have no justifiable scientific link. That, tied together with methodology that appears to ignore context, will most certainly achieve the desired confirmation of the liberal media bias thesis. Big deal.

Tortured logic on torture

The McCain amendment (re)codifying prohibitions against torture of prisoners appears close to passage. There are a few last-minute snags, mostly surrounding the Bush Administration’s desire to avoid further criminal liability for anyone who may have tortured prisoners in the last few years. Sen. McCain is correct in refusing to compromise until the White House agrees to the legislation without changes.

Using a bit of choice wording and faulty logic, the editors of the Wall Street Journal further pushed their counter-argument yesterday, determined to see the torture option remain available to any and all U.S. personnel fighting the war against terror. Consider:

Part of the problem with interpreting those words is that they depend on the context. All things being equal, we can’t think of a worse human rights abuse than blowing someone to bits with a Hellfire missile. Yet no one objected when that happened to al Qaeda leader Hamza Rabia in Pakistan two weeks ago. If certain individuals can be ethically targeted for death in a war, then wouldn’t the same hold true for rough interrogation methods? A strange code of morality would allow the killing of Rabia but not his stressful questioning to prevent further murders he might plan against innocent civilians.

Some of the more sophisticated critics recognize this, as well as the possibility of “ticking bomb” scenarios. That includes Senator McCain, who has written in Newsweek that on occasion “an interrogator might well try extreme measures.” But he opposes writing any guidance into law or regulation–the way the Bush Administration has done–suggesting instead that the interrogator should go ahead and do what he thinks is needed and then depend on “authorities and the public” to “take [context] into account when judging his actions.”

I don’t see the direct connection between ethically targeting an individual for death during war and torturing him in captivity. If the individual, in this case Rabia, is free, he’s a danger. The proper intention against an enemy is to stop him from being a threat. Death certainly does that. But if he’s captured, is he a threat any longer? The basic answer is no, although the more complicated answer is presumably yes because he possesses information. Of course, if a target possesses such high value information that torturing him is allegedly justified, targeting him for death seems counter-productive to the larger goal of winning the war. Hellfire missiles and waterboarding aren’t interchangeable in this debate.

That, of course, leads back to the original argument. What is justified? Although specific definitions already exist, and the Bush Administration generated memos designed to pigeon-hole war on terror captives into a small box invented to avoid existing laws and treaties, the editors pretend that torture opponents should justify why current United States policy should be reversed revert back to pre-Bush Administration standards. The argument relies on obfuscation to distract weaker opponents. It’s a fine strategy if they can pull it off. They don’t.

And don’t forget “rendition”–the turning over of captured terrorists–to the likes of Egypt or Syria, the practice favored by the Clinton Administration because it lacked the nerve to handle captured terrorists outside the criminal justice system. We trust the CIA more than Egyptian intelligence, but where are the “torture” critics on the morality of this practice? The truth is that if the McCain Amendment passes, rendition will almost certainly increase. Perhaps this will be the next liberal target, until every al Qaeda detainee is treated no differently than a common thief.

We realize that our views on this subject won’t carry the day, at least not until the U.S. suffers a more serious attack. The Bush Administration is already backing down from Mr. Cheney’s earlier position, holding out in this week’s negotiations on the McCain Amendment only for immunity for the past actions of U.S. interrogators. We still wish the President would take his case to the public, and perhaps even request hearings next year on Capitol Hill, because Americans are more sophisticated about the reality of what it takes to break these terrorists than are most journalists.

But at least the Administration has been willing to admit that protecting Americans takes more than denouncing “torture” at the top of one’s lungs. Once the McCain Amendment becomes law, perhaps the torture moralists will continue their creeping honesty and let us know what U.S. interrogators can do to break the next Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

Of particular offense in that passage is the nonsense questioning the manhood of the Clinton Administration because “it lacked the nerve to handle captured terrorists outside the criminal justice system.” Illegal activity, rendition in Clinton’s case, or torture in Bush’s case, is still illegal activity. It does not matter whether an administration had the balls to do the deed itself. How differently do we treat those who murder and those who hire a murderer in their place? But who has the testicular fortitude to beat the shit out of the bad guys is not all that matters.

Our sense of justice and morals prevent us from allowing or endorsing government-sanctioned torture in America. Whether we call it torture, rugged interrogation, or aggressive coercion, it remains against the law. More importantly, we have a civilian-led military, complete with a Congress and judiciary entrusted with powers to check the executive from abusing and ignoring limits on his powers. When those bodies refuse to act, as they have for the better part of this scandal, we also have the First Amendment. Not to empower individuals to dictate how to break terrorists, but to ensure that limits on military behavior are enforced. The opposite of that is not sophistication, but barbarism.

How about a “Bridge to Everywhere”?

In an editorial in today’s Washington Post, Felix G. Rohatyn and Warren Rudman propose a solution to decaying infrastructure in America. Specifically, they highlight two examples.

On the Gulf Coast, the failure to invest adequately in the levees of New Orleans and to prepare for or manage the resulting disaster was obvious to the world.

On the Pacific Coast, in the state of Washington, a quieter crisis loomed. The region’s infrastructure had been outstripped by growth. But the new governor, Christine Gregoire, had the courage to impose a phased-in motor fuels tax to repair the state’s dilapidated and congested roads and bridges. Her opposition tried to repeal [ed. note: Initiative 912] the legislation with a ballot initiative, but thanks in part to the support of the state’s most powerful business leaders, voters stood by her and supported the tax, which would cost the average driver about $1 a week. They appeared to understand that this is a small price to protect lives threatened by bridges such as Seattle’s Alaskan Way viaduct, a twin deck freeway that is used by 100,000 vehicles a day and that could collapse in an earthquake. Their last-minute intervention may have prevented one more disaster for now, but the opposition will undoubtedly be back.

I only know the general details of how Gov. Gregoire imposed the motor fuels tax, and I’m not impressed by the idea that raising taxes is courageous, but I’m fine with the facts mentioned so far. Infrastructure is in dangerous condition. Something needs to be done. Admittedly I don’t remember the last major earthquake in Washington state, but deteriorating infrastructure is still bad. However they pay for it, the improvements seem wise. However, as I stated in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, fixing the problem at the local level, where information will be most accurate and current, is best.

I’m also aware that Washington isn’t the only location in America with infrastructure problems. Any short drive through the D.C. area will provide the same revelation, though I don’t know of anything specifically in immediate danger of falling down. As with the Wilson Bridge, though, proactive is best. So how do Mr. Rohatyn and Sen. Rudman arrive at this conclusion within a few short paragraphs?

Americans may not want “big government,” but they want as much government as is necessary to be safe and secure. Today state and local governments spend at least three times as much on infrastructure as the federal government does. In the 1960s the shares for both were even. Even so, increases in state spending have not been enough to check the decline in many of our public assets. A new type of federal involvement would be a powerful initiative and would require a new focus. Rebuilding America is a historic task; we have the means to do it.

I suspect that the authors haven’t noticed the federal deficit lately. Otherwise, I doubt they’d say we have the means to do this at the federal level. Regardless, it wouldn’t be a powerful initiative, but rather, a power-grabbing initiative. The federal government did this with the levees in New Orleans. How well did that work?

More interestingly, doesn’t the Washington example show that state and local governments are better equipped to know which infrastructure projects are most urgent? We can argue about whether or not an increased motor fuel tax is the way to pay for upgrades, but I’d rather Washington’s residents determine that. I also expect them to pay fund them. Just like my fellow Virginians and I should pay for road improvements in Northern Virginia.

After proposing the expansion of federal control, the authors offer a funding scheme that, in all honesty, I’m not quite sure I understand. It involves something about a national investment corporation (NIC) and “self-financing” bonds with a federal guarantee. It sounds more like Social Security IOUs than anything. If someone cares to read the article and decipher how the NIC would work, I’d be happy to listen. For now, I’m resigned to regarding it as a central planning sleight-of-hand that would transfer control and decision-making from where local knowledge resides to Washington, while spreading tax obligations everywhere. I’m not persuaded.

By the end of the editorial, the authors acknowledge that they’ll face opposition, although they fail to understand why:

There will no doubt be opposition to solving this problem. Advocates of “small government” will characteristically oppose government’s performing its valid, historical role. Critics will accuse the NIC of being a “new bureaucracy” when, in fact, it might be the only practical approach to reform in the existing bureaucracies.

I don’t oppose solving this problem. Claiming that “small government” advocates characteristically oppose this is incorrect. “Small government” advocates expect the government to perform its necessary, appropriate tasks. However, building roads, bridges, airports and water projects are for state and local governments. Just because we’ve historically violated that does not mean we should continue to do so, adding more bureaucracy and impossible-to-deliver promises to the government heap.

It takes two sides to play the game

In a column today, Robert Novak opines about looming campaigns to derail Judge Samuel Alito’s confirmation to the Supreme Court. Mr. Novak throws around some of the usual rhetoric implying a battle for the soul of the Supreme Court and the nation. Consider:

Little of this has much to do with how Alito actually would conduct himself as a justice, but Supreme Court confirmations have taken on the characteristics of American elections. In truth, the Alito campaign is one part of a relentless, sustained struggle for control of the Supreme Court extending far into the future. Nan Aron of the Alliance for Justice in 2004 declared she will do “whatever it takes” to keep conservatives off the Supreme Court. This year, when Aron was asked what she would do to stop Alito, she replied, “You name it, we’ll do it.”

At least we know early on exactly what Mr. Novak is selling. But what is the meat of the two-sided campaign?

… Alito’s dissents on criminal-search and gun-control cases are cited to turn him into a ”jack-booted thug.” This characterization might seem more credible for Alito, the son of an Italian immigrant, than for Roberts, whose father was a corporate executive.

Alito’s strategists reply with “law enforcement week,” emphasizing his endorsement by the Fraternal Order of Police. To assail Alito’s decisions, said FOP President Chuck Canterbury, is “like attacking a police officer for doing his job and making arrests.”

Based on my initial reaction to a dissenting opinion by Judge Alito, which I did not characterize as support for strip-searching twelve-year-olds as the more hysterical partisans have done, I suppose I’ve attacked police officers. I also hate baseball, apple pie, and puppies. And the Fourth of July. To be more reasonable about it, I’m not concerned about police doing their job. It’s a valid, necessary function in a civil society. I just happen to believe that there should be limits, as previously outlined in the United States Constitution. That isn’t too much to expect. If Judge Alito has given indications in the past that he’s inclined to uphold police/state power, at the expense of the Constitution, then he provided that fact pattern. My only job as a thinking person is to form an opinion on the facts alone. That’s what I tried to do and what I’ll be looking to do during the confirmation hearings. Then I’ll make up my mind.

Given that Mr. Novak uses Mr. Canterbury’s statement as a support for his argument against those interested in stopping Judge Alito’s confirmation, this next bit comes as little surprise.

An Internet ad distributed by the conservative Judicial Confirmation Network to more than 10 million users this week will fire back on critics of Alito’s dissent validating the search of the young daughter of a suspected drug dealer. It contended that “left-wing extremists opposing” Alito “may have found new allies — drug dealers who hide drugs on children.” The ad is also sent on the Internet to Grassfire.org, a conservative activist group with 1.5 million members that produced 700,000 signatures in support of an amendment opposing homosexual marriages.

I’m not sure what that last sentence has to do with anything else in his argument, other than wow, Mr. Novak must have an obsession with the topic. I’m also not sure I can fathom how that slipped past his editor. Whatever. I’ll count that sentence as a minor victory of sorts because marriage wasn’t in quotes. Perhaps he conceded the point. Doubtful, but perhaps. I digress.

Allow me to recap Mr. Novak’s central point. Fringe leftist groups are mounting unfounded attacks on Judge Alito’s nomination, turning the confirmation process into a political circus. This should be seen as a bad turn of events in American politics. I’m with him in theory, although I understand our perspectives diverge sharply beyond that. But an internet ad accusing “left-wing extremists” of siding with “drug dealers who hide drugs on children” is different from the nonsense put forth by the left? Ummm … How? By using the phrase “may have found”? I call shenanigans.

Overdue site maintenance

Short version: http://www.rollingdoughnut.com/index.xml now offers the full-content RSS feed.

Long version: I’ve been detail-challenged with the underlying technical aspects of my site. Content to trust Movable Type to format everything correctly, I never noticed that the “Syndicate this site (XML)” link actually directed the RSS feed to index.rdf. I haven’t gotten into any depth on RSS, other than utilizing for reading blogs and news. In Mozilla’s Thunderbird, I had full content on every post, whether I used index.rdf or index.xml. I never tested the RSS feed to see what it would do in other aggregators. I should have.

Since I read The Internets from multiple locations, I decided I needed a web-based aggregator. I settled on Newsgator and migrated my list of blog and news feeds during Friday’s snow day. I tested my site since I noticed a few differences among various feeds to which I subscribe. My feeds (index.rdf and index.xml) consisted of 40-word excerpts rather than full content. I fixed what should rightly be described as an unknown, ongoing problem. The index.xml feed is now full content. If you subscribe by RSS, change your link from the index.rdf link to index.xml if you want the full content in your aggregator. (I haven’t figured out how to fix the index.rdf feed yet, so only index.xml is full content.)

If none of that made sense, ignore everything and keep reading in whatever way makes you happy.

Seeing nuance where no justifiable nuance exists

From The Corner at National Review Online comes this tidbit on torture. I won’t recap the whole discussion because it mostly veers off into a tangent about what sort of physical endangerment one would choose if captured, but there is a telling explanation made in the process. First, a basic assumption for torture from Jonah Goldberg:

And don’t tell me the analogy doesn’t work because the criminals are choosing torture of their free will. The terrorists in these hypotheticals choose torture too — when they decide not to divulge inforrmation [sic]. Everyone agrees that torture or even coercion for reason not directly tied to pressing need should never be tolerated.

Fine, terrorists choose torture when they don’t talk. What about American soldiers captured in the field of battle? If they’re tortured by their captors, do we dismiss it because they followed orders to reveal only name, rank, and serial number? Or do we denounce the torture as a gross violation of human rights and international standards of war? I agree that there’s a distinct difference between terrorists and American soldiers, but the underlying assumption of how a captor should treat a captive remains the same, I think.

As an aside, I don’t think everyone agrees that torture or coercion should never be tolerated without the ticking time bomb scenario. Many of the debates around the blogosphere reveal particularly nasty examples of people taking glee in the idea of torturing terrorists because the terrorists are bad. Modify the last sentence to “reasonable people agree” and we can move on.

Later, in response to reader reaction, Mr. Goldberg responds with this:

Moreover, innocent people would not choose torture. They would give up the information needed. Of course there is a very real and legitimate danger of torturing innocent people because we wrongly don’t believe they’re innocent, which would be awful — again just like killing or imprisoning innocent people is awful. But for the terrorist who knows that innocent men, women and children are about to be murdered and chooses to stay silent, I simply haven’t read a principled argument that makes the moral case against coercing this accomplice to murder that I personally find convincing. Contrary to what a lot of people think, that alone doesn’t make me “pro-torture.” It makes me unpersuaded by some of the more high-minded arguments of the anti-torture crowd.

I concede that that doesn’t make Mr. Goldberg “pro-torture,” but I still have a question that should seem obvious. How would an innocent person give up needed information? If he’s innocent, he doesn’t know anything to give up. How long do we torture him for withholding information before we realize he’s innocent? Does the torture inflicted remain justified after he’s no longer a suspect because he was thought to be a terrorist at the time of the torture? We know we’ve imprisoned suspected terrorists in the last four years who’ve turned out to be innocent individuals.

I simply haven’t read a reasonable argument that makes the legal case for torture compelling. That it’s also morally and politically devastating to the United States should also factor into what should’ve been a short debate. Senator McCain’s amendment should pass the Congress unchanged. President Bush should sign it.

Behold the power of The Internets

Browsing through the Congressional votes database on the Washington Post’s site today, I discovered a unique and interesting way to review legislative votes. Sure, anyone could think that organizing by party and state. I might even come up with region. But gender? I wouldn’t have thought that overly useful. And baby-boomer status? I guess age could matter. I wouldn’t use that, though. But here’s the Holy Grail (data for vote 618, H.R. 4440):


Astrological sign
Yes
No
Not Voting
Aquarius3311
Sagittarius2412
Taurus2121
Gemini4502
Leo2903
Aries3001
Capricorn3401
Libra4102
Scorpio3000
Cancer5400
Virgo4800
Pisces2600
Total415413

Someone please explain to me when that might ever be useful. Other than the bored hippie constituency, maybe, I don’t get it. Just because technology rocks doesn’t mean we should use it to use it.

Congressman Tackleberry should heed the lesson

The case of the shooting death of Rigoberto Alpizar by air marshals in Miami on Wednesday took an interesting turn. We have the official line, which hasn’t changed:

“He was belligerent. He threatened that he had a bomb in his backpack,” said Brian Doyle, spokesman for the U.S. Homeland Security Department. “The officers clearly identified themselves and yelled at him to ‘get down, get down.’ Instead, he made a move toward the backpack.”

But now this emerges:

Passenger John Mcalhany told The Associated Press on Thursday that Alpizar bumped into him as he ran off the aircraft, and he did not hear him say anything about a bomb.

“The first time I heard the word bomb was when I was interviewed by the FBI,” McAlhany said. “They kept asking if I heard him say the B-word. And I said, ‘What is the B-word?’ And they were like, ‘Bomb.’ I said no. They said, ‘Are you sure?’ And I am.”
…

Mary Gardner, another passenger, also said Thursday she not hear Alpizar mention a bomb.

Obviously I have no idea which version is true. I’m no less inclined to assume that the air marshals acted properly. However, this is why we investigate these cases. We don’t want cover-ups on mistakes to allow the government to save face. If the air marshals erred in their judgment of the situation or disregarded the reality of the situation with a trigger-happy response, we should find out. We assume they acted properly but leave open the possibility that they did not. Should the shooting turn out to be improper, we need to know why so we can prevent it from happening again.

Just as important, this is why public officials like Rep. John L. Mica should not be so eager with glee that a man died. Unless he wants to imply that we shouldn’t bother investigating this further because the system worked better than we expected. I wouldn’t be surprised if he did, though.

Congress is turning tricks again

Good news from Congress: we no longer need think that pressure from constituents or logic might influence them into some notion of sanity. Hooray! Just think of all the time we’ll save that would normally be spent bitching about how irresponsible they are. Again, hooray!

The House passed three separate tax cuts yesterday and plans to approve a fourth today, trimming the federal revenue by $94.5 billion over five years — nearly double the budget savings that Republicans muscled through the House last month.

GOP leaders portray the tax bills — for the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast, affluent investors, U.S. troops serving in Iraq and taxpayers who otherwise would be hit by the alternative minimum tax — as vital to keeping the economy rolling.

“Our economic policies have done the trick,” said Rep. Deborah Pryce (R-Ohio). “We are in the middle of one of the strongest economies this country has ever seen.”

In order: qualified yes, qualified yes, qualified yes, and absolutely. It might be surprising that I’d offer a qualified yes or absolutely to all proposals, yet still insist that it’s bad news. Allow me to explain.

Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast. A friend who visited New Orleans recently on business returned with a clear understanding that the devastation is far worse than it appears on television. Something must be done. But I don’t trust Congress to do it correctly, especially when its idiocy got us into the situation where only the Federal government could fix the problem. Destroy market forces (insurance, flood walls, etc.) that would make population and business decisions more in line with the inherent risk in the Gulf Coast and a federal response is all that’s left. My reservation stems from that. Congress doesn’t get to take credit for fixing a problem it created. Also, handing out gifts tax breaks to businesses, only to exclude less-favored, “sinful” businesses, is an awful form of central planning. Let the people of New Orleans decide. But I understand that goes against every belief Congress currently holds. In the end, a qualified yes because we have little choice.

Next, concerning affluent investors. I’ve already addressed this, so I won’t go much further with the issue. Congress needs to stop thinking in terms of poor vs. rich and start thinking in terms of smart economic policy and stupid economic policy. We’re nowhere close to smart policy, but this is a small step. I don’t pretend that this is being done for the right reasons, though, so it gets a qualified yes.

Next, U.S. troops serving in Iraq. I don’t have much information on this tax break, but it “would extend a provision allowing members of the military to use their combat pay to claim the earned income credit.” Fine. At a cost of $153 million, it’s a blip in our fiscal health. It’s qualified because it’s probably more to promote a warm fuzzy feeling of helping our troops. If I gave it a no, I’d probably be unpatriotic. I wouldn’t want that. Merry Christmas!

Finally, the Alternative Minimum Tax is a travesty. Anything that reduces its impact is a bonus. Congress should abolish it immediately. No member has the brains to that, so I’ll settle for this. It doesn’t change the reality that an indiscriminate tax on taxpayers who have no intention of evading taxes (illegally), without any sense behind it, is wrong. And the rich paying their fair share is obscene. Just one more soak the rich policy, which is not soaking the not-really-rich. Get rid of it. This is a small positive step.

None of that changes my original idea that this is bad news from Congress. Cutting taxes by almost $100 billion is wonderful, but without an equal or greater reduction in spending, the deficit will grow. It’s insanity and this doesn’t make me think differently:

“By cutting taxes, you grow the economy, and you generate an enhanced flow of revenues to the Treasury,” said Rep. David Dreier (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Rules Committee.

I like that argument as much as anyone, but it’s not generating an enhanced flow of revenues to the Treasury I’m interested in. I want more money left with the people who earn it. The government should get what it needs, not what it wants. Does anyone believe that Rep. Dreier intends to use that enhanced revenue only on necessary, appropriate expenditures? Our tax policies should be adjusted to meet that criteria, while spending according to the revenue we’re generating, not what we hope to generate through more targeted central planning. Congress doesn’t understand that, even though it’s simple. Cut taxes. Cut spending. Reduce the government’s size and reach.