Religion, War, and How It Works

These days, it's the interpretation everyone seems to be so worked up about. Some have decided that the words of the Qur'an justify the killing of the "unbelievers." Some have decided that the words of the Bible justify the same atrocities. Some have decided to forget the whole religion thing and attack those who follow it.

None of these seem to be very good ideas.

I realize that every human being is proud of his or her beliefs. Invariably, every human being has some kind of belief- be it the existence of one God, or many deities, or another God Who is absolutely not related at all to the God of any other religion. Whatever these beliefs are, there is also invariably some kind of conflict. Christians don't like to be told that the God they follow is the Allah of the Muslim religion. Muslims don't like to be told that the Allah they follow is the God of the Christian religion. Nonbelievers don't like to talk about God at all. Everyone else has his or her ideas about how it should all go, of course; but I'll focus on Christians and Muslims since the large-scale conflicts today seem to be mostly between and among those groups.

Religion often provides an excuse for people to do some pretty horrible things. Way back when the Romans threw Christians to the lions, they used religion as an excuse. Nowadays, it's war and different kinds of torture- waterboarding and suicide bombers driving trucks into buildings instead of lions.

But frankly, if religion didn't exist these people would just find a different excuse to kill.

You see, the religious texts themselves have quite a few vague and contradictory passages that can be twisted to mean almost anything; throughout history they have been stretched to convey all sorts of messages. But if the texts had never been written down or dictated or heard (I won't speak to their origins, just to their existence) then both Christians and Muslims would have found something or Someone else to justify their actions. It's a natural human instinct- to blame someone else for what you've done.

I'm not trying to discredit religion. Far from it. I'm trying to demonstrate that religion really has little to do with the conflicts we face today. Because even if we accept the fact that religion dictates everything we do, religious texts could also be taken to mean wonderful and positive things; take for example these three passages:

Remember... the kindness of God to you who were formerly enemies. He has now bound your hearts together, so that through His goodness you may become brothers. -Qur'an, Surah 111:97

...I say unto you, love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.

The lesson of forgiveness is one we can all learn again, and renew; despite and as a result of the many wars this world is fighting and the many smaller conflicts we all must face, every one of us must learn to forgive. For forgiveness leads us to acceptance, and to peace, and to happiness...

Basically what I'm trying to show you is that not only are the religious and nonreligious texts similar to each other, they're also up for positive interpretation; these particular texts promote forgiveness, which seems like a pretty good idea. (We as a planet have tried the whole crusade-jihad-holy-war thing quite a few times and, let's face it, it didn't work.)

In short: Religion is used as a justification for war. We as humans would find a justification for war even if religion did not exist. The need for justification will always exist but is not necessarily valid... Even if religion was necessarily the dictator for our actions, we could also use religion to justify forgiveness. I vote that we decide to either realize that religion is only a justification or interpret the main religious texts in a way that makes these awful wars finally end. Whether you're a nonbeliever or a religious person, one of those options will work for you.

This world has had enough sadness and murder. And what's more, God, Allah, almost all other prominent deities and atheists seem to agree: Forgiveness is what we should be aiming for...

What Bill O'Reilly Can Teach America's Cynics...?

If someone had told me yesterday that Bill O'Reilly, conservative icon and Fox News host of "The O'Reilly Factor," had written a piece examining the value of the lessons Democratic President Obama can teach and has taught American children, I may have laughed rather derisively. But it seems my derision would have been misplaced.

A newly published article penned by O'Reilly admires the President and his ability to overcome adversity and become a leader to whom the children of the United States of America can turn for guidance. Read the article at this link:

http://www.parade.com/news/2009/08/09-what-obama-can-teach-americas-kids.html

I am impressed by O'Reilly's nonpartisan words and his seeming willingness to appreciate our great president's many talents. He writes of President Obama's forgiveness, respect, persistence, and hard work, and holds him up as a shining example of the old adage that "Anything is possible in America." And O'Reilly seems to be sincere.

The cynic in me thinks perhaps this is some kind of much-needed political gamble engineered by the Republican Party to regain some standing in the eyes of the American public; but the human in me believes that perhaps this is the reaction of a man who was truly touched by President Obama's words to his daughters. The letter the president wrote to his children can be read at the link below:

http://www.parade.com/news/2009/01/barack-obama-letter-to-my-daughters.html

Although both O'Reilly's article and President Obama's letter will both probably have beneficial effects on the men's political careers and thus could have been politically motivated, I like to think that regardless of politics both are truly meant examples of a positive honesty of which we could use quite a bit more.

Do We Need Hate Crimes Laws?

I came across an interesting op-ed in the Washington Post this week about hate crimes statutes. That got me wondering, do we need them, and are they fair?

To read the rest of this post, go here.

Parallels, Perspective, and Psychology

I've wondered for a long time about the psychology of commonly hated people. How does it feel to be loathed and feared by entire countries? And why would anyone want to feel such loathing and fear? I still don't have an answer. I doubt I ever will, since my career plans don't include brushing elbows with the likes of Kim Jong Il and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Every so often I abandon my quest for an answer and decide to find comfort like every other American in either simply hating their guts or forgetting about the whole thing. Those, of course, are the mature and civilized things to do.

But sometimes I really wonder. Take, for example, the case of Kim Jong Il, the long-despised (by Americans at least) leader of North Korea. He, or the government he leads, recently had two American female journalists, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, imprisoned and sentenced to twelve years of hard labor on charges of entering the country illegally and committing vaguely defined "hostile acts." And then, a few days ago, they were released, after Bill Clinton went to North Korea to persuade Kim to let them go.

It just makes me think- how could one person be so callous as to punish the two women so severely (for surely two American women couldn't cause too much harm, even from Kim's point of view)? And then, in some kind of political move, that same person releases them...

I would like to know if Kim really thinks he's doing the best for his country. I sure don't think he is; I saw Diane Sawyer's documentary about North Korea and the sheer indoctrination was terrible to see. But, then, that documentary also left me with another question: Are we, as Americans, also being indoctrinated, albeit to a seemingly lesser extent? After all, ask a United States citizen what he or she thinks of Kim Jong Il and, if he or she recognizes the name, the citizen will respond vehemently in a negative vein- much the same reaction the mention of an American leader elicits from North Korean citizens.

I would say that our government would never imprison people without detailed charges and a good reason, but it wouldn't exactly be true after the recent accusations justly leveled at our government concerning torture. I will say for us that we seem to have many more freedoms than the citizens of North Korea, and that I'd much rather live in this country.

Despite all of my criticism of our government, I am fiercely proud of this country and what it stands for (or, more accurately, what it should stand for, being freedom and democracy and all of those good things). I'd just like to point out the occasional parallel between our hatred of North Korea and its hatred of us.

And as for Kim Jong Il's thought processes: as I said before, I'll never comprehend them. But even though the widespread confinement and suppression and indoctrination of his people is obvious to our eyes, I wonder if he believes, as I hope our leaders do, that he is doing the best for his country...

Deep Thought

What kind of shouting matches would have happened if the FreedomWorks/"birthers" wackjobs were at the Laura Ling/Euna Lee homecoming press conference? Would they have demanded to see evidence that they actually were captive in North Korea or complained about the "wasteful spending" it cost to get them home?

Also, John Bolton is criticizing the rescue because we're rewarding bad behavior. It remains to be seen how using public diplomacy to rescue imprisoned Americans rewards North Korea. America brought its daughters home, and it only took us a few hours of time. I think we came out on top. This might even lead to a new era of engagement with North Korea, opening their people to American culture and the regime to criticism. But no, John's right; we should have sheepishly just let our citizens rot in North Korean jails. What a tremendous display of power that'd be!

Let's just say that if John Bolton got captured, I think he'd have a different opinion.

A Democratic Governor of South Carolina?

Maybe

The only Democrat statewide office holder (State Superintendent Jim Rex) is mulling a run at the office currently held by Mark Sanford. He's a longshot candidate but it would be interesting to see if South Carolina would abandon their Republican leanings to move Rex into a higher office.

To win the race, Rex will have to overcome a major obstacles. First of all, he only has $9,000 on hand. The South Carolina Republican Party is a powerhouse that will surely have an easy time raising money for their candidate. Fundraising is going to be key for a competitive Rex candidacy. If he can't fundraise, the Governor's Mansion is going to stay with the GOP.

Can the Democrats win it? Maybe. Jim Rex did once get elected by the voters of South Carolina. And of course Mark Sanford isn't helping the state GOP with his recent antics. But Sanford is term-limited so it'll be the job of the state GOP to distance themselves from him.

If Rex wins, it could send a major message nationwide. If South Carolina is willing to put a Democrat in its most powerful position, then the GOP is in major trouble.

(By the way, I'll try to resume my analysis of the U.S. Senate races shortly. I've been really busy lately. Sorry for the delay.)

Read My Lips: Your Taxes Are Going Up

Your taxes are probably going up in the next couple of years. In the past, President Obama has insisted that taxes are only going up on those making more than $250,000 a year. But I don’t see how he can keep the pledge...

To read the rest of this post, go here.

Why They Taught Us That In School

75. 8. 2. 81. 49. 74. 7. 5. 8. 2. 36. .19.

These are the numbers that describe the indescribable.

Seventy-five: how many years it's been in Westchester County since something this horrible occured. Eight: the number of people killed. Eighty-one, forty-nine, seventy-four, seven, five, eight, two, thirty-six: the ages of the people killed. And, finally, .19: the estimated blood alcohol level of the driver...

Diane Schuler was that thirty-six-year-old driver; until a few days ago, she had the pity if not sympathy of many who heard about her case. It seemed that she had suffered from some kind of unavoidable disorientation, possibly brought on by an underlying medical condition, and driven her minivan- with her daughter and son and three nieces in it- the wrong way on a busy road, killing everyone but the one boy in the minivan and also ending the lives of the three men in the Trailblazer driving in the other direction.

The case was viewed as a horrible tragedy, and so it remains. But now another word is being used to describe the case: homicide.

Ms. Schuler cannot have purposefully set out to kill herself and seven others, can she? But equally so she must have known the dangers of consuming so much alcohol (and apparently marijuana as well) and driving, especially with five young children in the vehicle.

And so the question we are left with is: Why? Why would Ms. Schuler put her children and nieces in such danger- a danger that so recently and awfully transformed into a fatal reality?

As of yet, the question remains unanswered. All we can do is hope that Ms. Schuler's five-year-old son recovers fully and that the families of those killed can find an answer.

For the moment, there's one important lesson to take from this disaster. It's an age-old adage but, considering recent events, needs repeating.

Don't drink and drive.

Princeton Prof: I don't oppose gay marriage... but my boyfriend does!

A conservative friend of mine sent me an opinion by a Princeton professor in the August 3 edition of the Wall Street Journal entitled "Gay Marriage, Democracy, and the Courts: The culture war will never end if judges invalidate the choices of voters."

In this op-ed, a Mr. Robert George lays out a new manifesto to gay marriage opposition.
His argument is as follows:

1. Legislatures should decide "rights" issues, not justices, despite the fact that this has rarely ever happened.
2. Roe v. Wade inflamed the culture war, not because conservatives ideologically opposed the decision, but because of the "judicial usurpation of authority vested in the people and their representatives."
3. Parallels between gay marriage bans and inter-racial marriage bans are offensive to gay marriage opponents. Probably because they are stark, morally unambiguous, and easily applicable.
4. The government should regulate marriage because "marital intercourse often does produce babies." We all know that non-marital intercourse never does.
5. Social norms regarding marriage including including permanence, exclusivity, and guaranteed sex -- which have never ever changed -- preclude homosexuals.
6. Gay marriage will lead to polyamorous relationships.

While the article is amusing and I suggest you read it before diving into my rebuttal, it is too full of innuendo, unfounded declarations, and tortured syllogisms to be taken seriously.

Missing in Robert George's commentary is the most essential thing he has to prove: that the government has a logical interest in regulating gender in marriage. Absent a good reason, government regulation would be an arbitrary intrusion into the privately enjoyed rights of citizens, thereby violating the Due Process and Equal Protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment. In paragraph 10 of his op-ed, he tries to argue that marriage is "a matter of vital public concern" on the grounds that "marital intercourse often does produce babies." However all intercourse may produce babies -- the sex is the critical part in reproduction, not the marriage. Even if marriage was the critical component, George fails to elaborate on why that would necessitate government intervention. Chocolate, massage oils, scented candles, and Barry White albums also lead to babies, should we regulate them too?

Further, George offers a nice and pretty history of marriage as a cultural and religious institution, completely ignoring that for this discussion we can only focus on the legal conception of marriage. Marriage affirmed in courts of law are fundamentally contracts legally incorporating two individuals as one. As George himself shows, procreation is not a pertinent reason for marriage today as many married couples refrain from reproduction and in some places, reproduction within a marriage is the exception rather than the norm. Instead the essential benefits granted by marriage are shared assets and custody in decision-making. If a loved one goes into a coma, their spouse has the legal standing to make medical decisions on their behalf. While married couples may or may not have children, they will always enjoy these benefits and therefore we can only conclude that these rights are the real essence of "legal marriage"-- as a contract.

We could even use the reductio ad absurdum on his argument: if he says that two guys should not be able to get married, why can they if one undergoes gender reassignment surgery? How does taking hormones or cutting off your penis have anything to do with the norms George so strenuously defended? Yet that's the law. George is also drawing from a cultural history in which gays didn't exist because any who came out were killed. Drawing legal precedents out of such primordial soup to deal with gays today is not sensible.

And to his point that gay marriage will lead to polyamorous marriage (or bestiality marriages, as his more openly bigoted comrades suggest): if the legal conception of marriage is a contract incorporating exactly two individuals into exactly one entity, such "slippery slopes" are not possible. Even with all his scare tactics, why should we care what other people do in their own homes? Unless it affects me, I don't care about Mr. George's private behavior; why should he care about yours or mine?
Other contested issues George casually presents as being resolved:

• While it is true that some pro-choice activists would disagree with the reasoning behind Roe (notably Justice R.B. Ginsburg), that's only because they wish the court went even further. Roe drew on a largely implicit "right of privacy." If it had been based on the equal protection of the 14th Amendment, bans on abortion restrictions would have been absolute and non-negotiable. Basing it on the right of privacy opens the door to changes and limitations, thereby encouraging the anti-choice movement.
• The Courts have always been the safeguard of rights against the angry will of majorities. George is arguing for majoritarianism, not democracy, when he says that rights should be settled in the legislature instead of the courts. Intrinsic in the very idea of democracy is the notion that while the people are sovereign, they individually enjoy protected rights that cannot be alienated by the will of the masses. See: Brown v. Board.
• Judges are impartial umpires in the vast majority of cases that require the simple application of stare decisis, but in the few interesting Supreme Court cases, the law itself is ambiguous and it is up to the individual justices to interpret it as they will.
• Permanence and sexual exclusivity do not define marriages currently affirmed in the US and therefore applications of his norms argument is archaic.

Like many positions of social conservativism, opposition to gay marriage is just a visceral reaction to the gross feeling they get when they see two dudes kissing, and not some principled position on government theory or common law. Don't let them convince you otherwise.

Is the Recession Over?

The economy is getting better. Or at least, its getting worse at a slower rate than before. In the second quarter, GDP declined by only 1%. So does this indicate the economy’s going to get better soon?

To read the rest of this post, go here

Reining In the Leash

Some people might have dared to think that the relationship between the United States and Great Britain had equaled out a little bit since both Prime Minister Blair of GB and President George Bush of the USA both left office. But as we found today, that's not quite how it works.

Blair was mocked for being Bush's "poodle." The citizens of Great Britain weren't very happy with him (their proud and fearless leader on a leash held by George Bush? always a fun thought) and the citizens of America seemed to have only either contempt or pity for him (neither, of course, desirable for a world leader). He might have had good points but many people missed them completely because once he had been compared to a yipping lap dog, well, his image tanked.

Today, however, we're in a new age where America doesn't get to tell Great Britain what to do... right? I thought the whole show-that-political-muscle we're-the-superpower-not-you thing was done with when Bush left office. Apparently not...

You see, the British High Court will soon be ruling on a case concerning torture. This wouldn't concern America but for the apparent fact that CIA documents admitting the use of torture by the States' military are included in the body of evidence used in the case.

Hillary Clinton doesn't like that.

So here's the deal: America minds its own business and admits to torture, Great Britain rules on its case in peace, and the world is all the better for some honest-to-goodness okay, we-did-something-wrong from America.

Or...

What's actually going on: Hillary threatens the British by saying the USA will withhold important secret information unless the British cave and withhold the accounts of torture from their courts' record and from the public.

Okay, first of all, that's a nasty, nasty threat- pretty much like saying the US will kill British operatives by not giving them the information they need. And second, why are we making it? The British are our allies; they seem to be admitting their torture boo-boo; why can't we?

I guess someone's still mad about that whole colonial thing...

Should We Tax Employer Health Benefits

One of the provisions in the recent healthcare proposals that have attracted some Democratic and Republican support is the proposal to tax employer health benefits, which I wrote about previously. I saw an interesting article in the Washington Post last week on the subject.

To read the rest of this post, go here

Separate But Equal (Again?)

There is a small park in Wichita, Kansas, adorned with memorials to honor veterans who have passed on; there will soon be one more memorial. The planned statue eternalizes an American soldier, a veteran of Vietnam, standing with his arm around a South Vietnamese comrade.

However, this new memorial is different...

This latest addition will not be placed with the other statues but apart, separated by a six-foot mound. Why? Because some American veterans objected to the placement of a statue including a South Vietnamese soldier in their memorial park. The park was to honor the memory of American servicepeople only, they said.

American soldiers fought alongside South Vietnamese in the Vietnam "operation." Though the war effort failed (and rather horribly), the Vietnamese-Americans living in Wichita wanted to express their appreciation for the Americans' alliance by creating the proposed memorial.

Apparently they're not quite as allied as they had thought.

And so the plans go forward for the statue to be erected, but only on the condition that it is apart from the others, and under mild protest- from a few American veterans still concerned about preserving the American purity of the park, and from Mayor Carl Brewer, who expressed his anxiety about anything that promoted the concept of "separate but equal," or in this case, separated by a berm but equal...

I gladly honor the memory of American veterans, but I believe that the South Vietnamese, as our allies, have the right to be honored alongside our veterans. And like the good mayor, I am distinctly concerned at the thought of anything "separate but equal"-- because there's a reason that phrase is enclosed in quotes.

What Was the Point of Beerestroika?

Maybe the biggest news event last week was the beer summit between Henry Louis Gates, President Obama, Joe Biden, and Sergeant Crowley, following the arrest. There are a couple of questions from the summit...

To read the rest of this post, go here.

What Happened Yesterday

Yesterday, Saturday, August 1, 2009, something happened that should make us rethink the way the world works. Something happened that should make us change the way we live. Something happened that should make us cry.

Three soldiers were killed. (American. In Afghanistan. Three soldiers. Killed...)

But will this make us cry?

A few people might. The soldiers might have had fathers, or mothers, or wives, or cousins, or friends... and they did, they must have, but to me they're unknown soldiers for now. And what worries me is that it's all well and good to lament the unknown soldiers-- but shouldn't we know them? And will we truly lament?

1172 coalition soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan since 2001, the year the war began. One thousand, one hundred and seventy-two. And yet we're not crying...

2118 Afghan civilians were killed in 2008 alone. Two thousand one hundred and eighteen! And yet we're not crying!

And 4648 American soldiers and 1,033,000 civilians have died in Iraq since 2003... the year of the invasion, in case you'd forgotten.

And where are our tears? Where is our memory? Where are we, while so many die?

I'll climb off my soapbox- but only to ask you to remember the three soldiers killed yesterday in Afghanistan...

Madison and Mahmoud

"Liberty is to faction what air is to fire," James Madison wrote in Federalist Paper No. 10, way back in those nice just-post-revolutionary days. He also wrote that there were two ways to destroy factions, and that one was to destroy liberty. That way, of course, he rejected-- our founding fathers were rather partial to liberty (see: the American Revolution).

But apparently not everyone is still as partial to liberty as our founding fathers were. Take, for example, the current rulers of Iran. Recent actions taken by that "government" (must leave the quotes on for now, considering the overwhelming doubts surrounding the recent Iranian presidential election; a governing body who rigged such an election in its favor would hardly deserve that name) include the levying of charges against over one hundred "opposition" figures.

These "opposition" figures, so termed for the sake of clarity, I suppose, are members of the party opposing the currently ruling party of Iran. From what I can tell, they're up on charges simply for questioning the election results. Now, I wasn't there when they counted the election ballots (just as I wasn't present in Florida in 2000, ahem), but correct me if I'm wrong here- in a country that has a supposedly fairly elected president, shouldn't the people be allowed to question the election results?

It seems that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, one of the powers that be in Iran (I can't in good conscience call him president), has decided that, indeed, it is perfectly fine to eliminate liberty in the name of eliminating factions.

But the things is, factions can't be eliminated anyway. I mean, look at Iran! They tried taking away liberty and it didn't work too well... Because, let's just admit it, liberty can't be taken away completely and neither can factions. And according to James Madison, the best way to control factions from producing too much damage to society as a whole is to operate under the republic system. In other words, republics work better than systems half-trying to put up a facade of republicanism (...Iran).

I realize that Mr. Ahmadinejad doesn't have to listen to James Madison, and reasonably so, since the two are from different countries and cultures and time periods. However, James Madison is one of the commonly accepted authorities on republics and how they work and why they work... And as Iran's governing body seems determined to masquerade as a partial republic, perhaps Mr. Ahmadinejad should take a leaf from Mr. Madison's book.

I realize that Mr. Ahmadinejad would hate this idea if he ever read it. But what he should understand is that this particular Western blogger isn't trying to convince him to let fair elections progress just because she's obsessed with Western ways. No, I'm actually thinking that a true republic in Iran would work just a bit better. After all, killing people in the streets and suppressing protests sure isn't working for him.

Long story short, Mr. Madison's right about this faction thing and maybe Mr. Ahmadinejad should give his advice a try...

REVIEW: 500 Days of Summer.

The poster clearly states that "this is not a love story, it is a story about love." However, nowhere in the entire movie do we see, on-screen, anything that approximates love. Tom, the main character, falls for Summer, his boss's new secretary, and spends the rest of the movie trying to be with her. From what we see, Tom's affection for Summer can only be labeled as lust, because she is an emotionless flake devoid of any guiding rationality or common interests with Tom-- save, perhaps, in a singular obscure band. All this is made even more puzzling by the fact that, objectively, Summer (played by the curiously named Zooey Deschanel) is not very attractive. Despite his better judgment and the no doubt torrent of advice he likely received from his friends off-camera, Tom continues to pursue the relationship even though it can only lead to disaster.

Aiding Tom in his quest for low-hanging, rotten fruit is his prepubescent sister. The 12-year-old, bolstering the complete unbelievability of the movie, is an expert at love and relationships and despite the fact that she is probably still completing grammar workbooks in school, is able to offer perfectly-written sage-like advice whenever needed. If people in their 50s can't speak intelligently about love, I think it is fair to say that such a girl has never existed in human history, and therefore this "true-to-life" movie is fatally flawed by her inclusion. Further, since Tom works full time and likely graduated from college, he is probably more than 10 years his sister's senior, making for quite an odd and unexplained family dynamic.

Lastly, the movie ends with the Summer "day-clock" resetting to day 1 with the beginning of a new relationship, an outcome I forsaw but was hoping to avoid. Tom is still clearly emotional over Summer and instead of dealing with his feelings, he merely compartmentalizes them as he starts a new relationship. Therefore the moral of the story seems to be that feelings cannot be overcome, only ignored, and that the best solution to a bad break-up is a rebound.

Simply put, don't believe the hype: 500 days of summer is not about love or any other function that would normally happen on planet earth. It is 95 minutes of waiting because when the imaginative method of storytelling is removed, nothing of significance happens in the plot.

See it
Rent it
Consider it
Skip it

Why True Capitalism and Anarchy Don't Exist, Or, Why We Should Let the Government Regulate a Little

Anarchy is, simply put, the absence of any rule or regulation. Some would label the capitalistic economic system anarchic (I won't call it our system because we, of course, don't live in a society of strict capitalism, contrary to popular opinion). After all, pure capitalism leaves no room for regulation or rules or laws, does it? The rich and enterprising grow richer and are not mandated to help the poor; they have no obligation apart from their own humanity to feel compassion.

But even if we did, we could never escape some kind of regulation...

In every society and every economic system there is a leader, and there are followers; there is an optimal life, and there are less than optimal lives; there are things that must be done, and rules that must be obeyed. In a world of true capitalism one would always end up applying the always-useful old-fashioned dog-eat-dog code. This code would serve as a primitive form of law. In other words, capitalism cannot be anarchic because someone always triumphs, and the triumphant all too often form a sort of governing body. And governing bodies, in one way or another, always regulate...

What I mean to say is that there is no true anarchy, and there is no true capitalism. Capitalism and anarchy both are like most ideological things: somewhat beautiful and ruthless but forever unattainable.

Perhaps if both are so unattainable it would be better for us to stop striving for them. By which I mean to say that many Americans nowadays wish for the good old days back when the government didn't regulate the economy or even the very, very good very, very old days back when we all threw tea into the ocean to get rid of government regulation of the economy- but these wishes are useless, because attempting to find a system (even a capitalist system) with no regulation is impossible. Someone will always rule; we will always be regulated. That someone regulating us might as well be our good old elected officials, instead of the highest bidder.

Therefore, maybe we should all stop complaining about government regulation and instead find a way to make it work. I would suggest finding out the details; I am of course referring to our great government's latest attempt at regulating health care. I think you knew that because that's all anyone talks about these days, that and Michael Jackson.

So. Don't moan about how this country's losing its edge to socialism; if you want to do something useful, write a letter to your Congressperson and try and find us the most recent copy of that health care plan!

Or, write a letter to the Webster's Dictionary people letting them know that, solely for the purposes of general morale and not letting the American public subscribe to pipe dreams, they should delete "capitalism" and "anarchy" from the dictionary.

Was a Nurse Forced to Perform an Abortion?

A pro-life Catholic nurse is in the news for allegedly being forced to provide an abortion. The nurse in question is Catherina Cenzon-DeCarlo. Here’s how the situation unfolded...

To read the rest of this post, go here.

What the Media Can Do

The news media is a very important thing. That goes without saying. From the newspapers, television, radio and Internet (yours truly can't forget that last one), we obtain our knowledge of what's going on in the world. We get the facts.

But we also get so much more.

Almost every source is biased, whether to an individual (-cough- Sarah Palin's website) or to a party or a party's general ideology (i.e., most major news stations and oftentimes this blogger's posts). But we can sometimes calculate for bias, if we pay enough attention. No, the media has a power yet more subtle that can oh-so-quietly change our minds. Because the media can, instead of openly endorsing a certain school of thought, lead our minds in certain directions...

Take today's New York Times headline, for example: "New Poll Finds Growing Unease On Health Plan." This is of course true, and the poll legitimate; if it wasn't we'd lose faith in the Times, wouldn't we? But the part that makes me a tad uneasy (and a bit in awe of the Times' not-so-slight subtlety) is that just by reading this headline, I almost felt myself growing more uneasy about the health plan. Why? Because we as Americans and as people are generally influenced by majority rule. If the Times says the majority is becoming uneasy, then we become uneasy.

Of course the news must be reported and discomfort with the giant healthcare reform probably is indeed the trend of popular opinion; but isn't it true that by choosing which popular opinions and which stories to report the media can influence our thoughts on certain issues? If, for example, the Times had run a story explaining the complete confidence President Obama has in his health plan, perhaps the American public would have found more confidence instead of less in the aforementioned health reform.

This, my dear readers, is what the media can do...

The Democrats Are in Trouble

The Democrats are in trouble. New polls show them losing ground when matched up with the Republicans. An NPR poll showed Republicans leading Democrats in the generic congressional vote by 1%. A Rasmussen poll had the margin at 3%. At the same time, the NPR poll gives President Obama a 53% approval rating while Rasmussen gives him only a 49% rating, with 50% disapproving.

To read the rest of this post, go here.

Obsession... Taken Too Far?

Apparently, old-fashioned romance has been replaced... by pillowcases. According to a few manga-character-loving Japanese, called "2-D lovers," they turn to depictions of video game characters to fill the space of a human loving partner.

There has long been a trend among the Japanese (and many others) to appreciate manga and the characters within it. Otaku, as it is called, is a sort of obsession with manga and anime and accompanying video games; the 2-D lovers are an extraordinary extension of that culture.

People who fall in love and think they have relationships with inanimate objects are called "objectum sexual" and have been around for a long time. Example- the lady who fell in love with the Eiffel Tower...

But apparently these "2-D lovers" are different. For one thing, the images they worship are actually human, as opposed to the Eiffel Tower; and for another thing, the images are often of children.

When I read of this phenomenon in the New York Times magazine today, my first reaction was to cringe back and think it was some kind of joke. Then I remembered that "objectum sexual" oftentimes have little choice in their preferences. But then I read on...

It seems that some if not most of the "2-D lovers" (that is, the actually 2-D kind) are images of prepubescent children. I don't know about you but I leave people to their own preferences- but only until child pornography is involved. Then I object. Strongly.

By writing on this subject I don't hope to dissuade the "2-D lovers" from their lifestyle, because I realize they'll probably never read this post. I simply think that such a story is worth a mention... and a thought. When do freedom of expression and of lifestyle stretch too far? 

I'd say, when kids start being involved.

REVIEW: Hopelessly Devoted @ Capital Fringe

Never before have I seen a show that was so irreverent while being so tasteful. "Hopelessly Devoted" features a Chicagoan comedy duo reflecting on the the lighter side of the catholic experience. Their show consists of a series of skits ranging from one-liners to 10 minute impromptu productions involving, if at first unwillingly, members of the audience (just their luck, they got an atheist). The bits span jokes to embellished real life stories, the fanciful to the so seriously real you can't help but laugh.

The enjoyment of the show comes from the duo's ability to relate to the audience and the universality of their experiences. They are common people who can perfectly capture the mundane suffering of catholic life perfectly and in ways that show pride in their religion. The saying goes that comedy is tragedy plus time and no where is that more in evidence than here. The writing is tight and their delivery is perfect. For likely being a regional plug that changes from place to place, their Georgetown v. Catholic University skits were very well received. The couple even dated at one point making their catholic-husband-and-wife bits all the more believable, if (as they point out) slightly awkward.

Hopelessly Devoted was the best comedy act I saw at the Fringe and well deserved the praise other media outlets have given them. For people of every religious affiliation, this pair is a must see.

The Moral Case for Universal Healthcare

I thought Ezra Klein of the Washington Post had an interesting post yesterday. In it, he wondered why Democrats were not making the moral case for healthcare as much as the economic case.

To read the rest of this post, go here.

Off to the Races!- Breaking News in North Carolina

The most confusing wing of a political party is the North Carolina Democratic Party.

Why do I say that?

Because they have yet to realize that they need to capitalize on their party's momentum and get Richard Burr out of the United States Senate. You may remember in my last blog post when I mentioned that Mike McIntyre was the party's best known potential candidate? Well, he decided to decline to run today. That's right, a man who polled within 5 points of the incumbent with a full 16 months before the election decided NOT to run.

In fact, the primary is in 10 months and there are TWO announced Democratic candidates, neither of whom are considered serious candidates or have even held elected office. The list of Democrats who have declined to run pretty much includes almost every prominent Democrat in the state. Former State Senator Cal Cunningham, State Senator (and current chair of the Duke University Board of Trustees) Dan Blue, Chapel Hill mayor Kevin Foy and Secretary of State Elaine Marshall are the only prominent Democrats who have yet to make a decision.

Here are some facts about these candidates:

• Marshall and Blue have already made failed attempts at the Democratic NOMINATION for the Senate.
  
• Recent polls have Burr ahead of Marshall 43%-35%
• Foy may be hurt by his public opposition to gun control and being mayor of the city that Sen. Jesse Helms once said a wall should be built around in order to contain its liberalism.
  
• There's nothing too bad about Cunningham: He left the North Carolina Senate in 2002 because of partisan redistricting, joined the military and served two active duty tours in Iraq. He served as a lawyer and was deployed to serve as legal counsel. He's also only 35. The downside is that he has only two years of political experience, which could prove to be a non-factor given that the last Democratic senator to occupy Burr's seat had no experience whatsoever. Before knowing anything about his political beliefs, he looks like the most viable remaining candidate IF he can gain name recognition. The most recent poll that pairs him with Burr has him losing 46%-27%. Granted this poll was done in February but I can't see much of a change happening since then.

Note that none of these people have announced yet, they are merely doing what McIntyre was doing prior to today, "considering." They could very well turn the opportunity down and continue in their current careers.

How vulnerable is Richard Burr? A recent poll done by Public Policy Polling showed that only 34% of North Carolinians approve of the job that Burr is doing with 35% disapproving and the rest unsure. In a race between Burr and a "Democratic opponent," the Democrat leads 41%-38%.

Of course, it's worth mentioning that Kay Hagan similarly denied plans to run against Elizabeth Dole before ultimately announcing her candidacy on October 30, 2007. In fact, it took a whole 3 and a half weeks for Hagan to change her mind. Maybe the prominent North Carolina Democrats playing the same game this time. If they are then they are wasting valuable fundraising time and time to gain more name recognition. In a hotly contested race, time is valuable. A concept seemingly lost on the North Carolina Democrats.

Been a busy week for me, I'll try to get the South Carolina/Florida edition of "Off to the Races!" up by the end of the week. Let me know what you think of the circumstances surrounding the North Carolina Senate race. Maybe I'm just confused because I decided to write a blog entry at midnight.

Out of the Mouths of Babes

So there's this girl named Phoebe. She lives in San Francisco. And this year, she helped raise enough money to feed more than 17000 people.

And she's five years old.

Apparently Phoebe was being driven to preschool one day and saw a homeless person outside her window, begging for money to buy food. She asked her teacher about it and her teacher explained what some would call the facts of life: Some people don't have anywhere to live. Some people don't have enough to eat. Some people don't have any money or property or Barbie dolls.

That explanation should be enough to bring tears to anyone's eyes, and thoughts of action to anyone's mind. The extraordinary thing about Pheobe is that she did take action. The five-year-old started a campaign to collect cans in order to collect the accompanying five-cent deposits. She wanted to reach a goal of one thousand dollars earned. (In five cent increments! One thousand dollars!)

She ended up reaching a grand total of $3736.30, almost quadruple her original goal. Since a few good Samaritans from the area were kind enough to offer to match her funds, Phoebe's efforts led to a total of almost thirty-four thousand dollars in food being donated to the San Francisco Food Bank.

And Phoebe is only five. I mean, if your heart isn't touched by this story, shouldn't your pride be rattled? A five-year-old can raise thirty-four thousand dollars to feed the hungry in only a few weeks! Shouldn't we as adults be able to do ten times more?

Out of the mouths of babes oft times come gems... Let's follow Phoebe's example, because her story sure is a gem.

To see a video of Phoebe and the people who helped her along the way, follow this link:

http://www.gnn.com/article/preschooler-feeds-nearly-18000-with-cans/592963?icid=webmail|wbml-aim|dl6|link3|http%3A%2F%2Fwww.gnn.com%2Farticle%2Fpreschooler-feeds-nearly-18000-with-cans%2F592963

Fuzzy Math

Watch Bill O'Reilly explain why Canadians have a longer life expectancy using some iron-clad math.

What Republicans Got Out of the Sotomayor Hearings

Sonia Sotomayor will be confirmed to the Supreme Court. That is a given, as I’ve detailed before on this blog. So what, if anything, did Republicans get out of the confirmation hearings?

To read the rest of this post, go here.

THE DARTMOUTH: The Way it Was.

My contribution to The D today:

Of the recent celebrity death parade that has streamed across newspaper headlines and the bottom of CNN, none of the late American icons has had such a profound effect on the course of American history and thought as broadcasting legend Walter Cronkite. After his passing on July 17, notable reporters from a bygone generation poured out to pay respects to their distinguished colleague, and younger news anchors have done the same for him as their esteemed mentor.

Absent in this period of retrospection and public mourning have been the voices of today’s youth. Yet oddly enough we are the ones who gobble down more news than Cronkite in his heyday could likely handle, who can use the Internet to customize flows of information from a diverse network of decentralized sources, instead of relying on a single news network as our parents once did.

Now I can’t really offer any meaningful “remembrance” of Cronkite — he retired before I was born. But what I can do is speak to the legacy he has given us, the generation his viewers begot. Keep Reading.

What We Want

"We want to live, and our children not to blow up."

This is a quote from Mr. Pindrus, the former mayor of Beitar Illit, one of the settlements expanding precariously close to the currently (and only relatively) accepted Israeli border on the West Bank. He is a Haredi, an ultra-Orthodox Jew currently living in the Palestinian-Israeli war zone that most of us cringe back from on the evening news.

The paradox of Palestine is a quandary that has haunted both Jews and Arabs, and the rest of the politically active world, for decades. To put it simply, quite a few people want to live in those hotly contested 10000 square miles, and most of them seem to want to hurt each other very badly.

But things might not be quite as they seem in that respect.

Many Jews are outraged at the Palestinians' actions. Many Palestinians are similarly outraged at the Jews' actions. (I think they should all be outraged at Britain's actions in promising both groups the same piece of land after World War One, but I guess that part got forgotten in the shuffle.) There are religious and socioeconomic differences aplenty that contribute to the ongoing (and ongoing, and ongoing) conflict.

But if I could take a closer look at the root of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, maybe I would see one simple thought: "We want to live, and our children not to blow up." That is a sentiment with which I can sympathize, indeed a sentiment with which every human on this earth can sympathize.

Maybe I'm wrong and it's all down to religious differences and whether the gates we walk through have pearls on them or not... But regardless, when I read Mr. Pindrus' words in the New York Times today, I was struck by just how similar all we humans are, and just how awful it is that we end up killing each other's children.

Because, really, we just "want to live, and our children not to blow up." 

Here's the NYTimes link: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/27/world/middleeast/27settlers.html?pagewanted=4&_r=1&ref=todayspaper

REVIEW: The Honest-To-God True Story of the Atheist @ Capital Fringe

Somewhere between the Viagra advertisement and the bleeding plastic nativity scene statue, they lost me. The Honest-To-God True Story of the Atheist attempts to explore one man's godly doubt through a series of seemingly unrelated and certainly underdeveloped skits bound together by a single plot. If you ever read about the urban legends on Snopes.com, a lot of the plot will not be new to you. In cases, the dialogue is word for word.

The plot centers around one atheist's rebellion against gods and expressions thereof using rather unlikely premises and 100% impossible results. Think fantasy without the funny. We're told that the atheist's story ends not with the ending he would have wanted for himself, but instead with the ending we would want would want for him. And while it is no conclusion Walt Disney would have wrote, he does find faith in something, though I'd label it consumer confidence.

The actors clearly have the ability to be funny, but choose to exercise it sparingly. I found some parts of some skits extremely enjoyable, but they were tempered by long periods of awkward seriousness and absolute dryness. There is no philosophy in the show, nor is there really any "atheistic" content, which wouldn't necessarily been a bad thing hadn't they labeled it a "comedy," which it clearly wasn't.

The Gadson Review Tackle's The Latest Developments in the Gates Saga

The arrest of Henry Louis Gates has ballooned into a much bigger controversy than I expected, so I couldn’t help weighing in on the latest developments. There are a few issues I want to address...

To read the rest of the post, click here.

The Melting Pot (Present Day)

Let's face it. This country doesn't really have the best history in dealing with immigrants, both legal and illegal. There was that whole nasty discrimination thing in the 1840s (German- and Irish-Americans loved that) and then there was the Gentleman's Agreement in 1908 that basically ruined anyone Japanese's chance of coming to the States. And then there's today. We newly enlightened Americans are letting our foreign cousins in without discrimination- right?

Apparently not.

Illegal immigration is a crime. That's true. But is it really the worst crime? I don't think so. I think a more serious crime is the discrimination that millions of people face because they are suspected or proven of falling into the "illegal immigrant" category. After all, how would you like it if you decided to move to another country to avoid war and poverty and fatal illnesses- and not only was it impossible to get papers, but even if you got them you were shunned and despised by the native-born residents of that country?

I would guess it's not a pleasant feeling.

I don't know about you but I kind of thought that once President Obama took office, the immigration situation would be at least slightly resolved. I thought we'd see a few more bouts of amnesty granted to the "illegals" already living in this country, and then some immigration reform passed that would make it a lot easier to come in, or at least easier to stay.

But of course then the recession showed up, and then distrust of foreigners skyrocketed even more than it already had, and then there were (as always) those constantly-present jingoists who insist that because America is America and because apple pie and football are important only Americans can live here.

And hey, it would be nice if we could fix up the bureaucracy enough to let in the immigrants without making them wait ten thousand years. But that's going to take a while. And meanwhile we, the enlightened American citizens of the post-racism age, might want to think a little bit more about what we could do to help our neighbors.

Keeping Up Appearances

Every country's government has a line they will not cross. For the government of the United States of America, this line is apparently the use of the military to arrest suspected terrorists with US citizenship. Apparently that violates the Fourth Amendment-- no unreasonable searches and seizures without probable cause.

Okay, sounds good. We like our constitutional rights. The problem with this is that while using the military to arrest citizens is off-limits, using the FBI to arrest them and then transferring them to military custody for "interrogation" is completely fine.

I'm referring to the case of Jose Ibrahim Padilla, a United States citizen arrested on United States soil. He was first detained by FBI agents- that part was very important to President Bush- and not by US soldiers. In 2002, against his vice president's wishes, President Bush decided that it was not allowable for US troops to arrest other US citizens; FBI agents could still exercise that power.

Padilla's detainment was justified by the Iraq Resolution of 2002, which states that the president can "use all necessary force against... such nations, organzations, or persons"; supposedly Padilla also qualified officially as an "enemy combatant" and was thus stripped of certain unalienable rights.

What worries me about the whole situation is President Bush's reason for keeping the military, for all appearances, restrained. While soldiers weren't actually knocking on citizens' doors, Bush could pretend that citizens were afforded their constitutional protections. But Padilla was held without any formal charges against him. And he was transferred to military custody. So, what's the difference?

Appearances is the key word here. If the troops had started banging on our doors we'd have known we were living in a military state controlled by our governing body's will. As it was, the government managed to convince us that we were still safe, with our constitutional rights intact.

All of this leaves me with two thoughts: one, that perhaps paying attention to appearances is the only reason President Bush wasn't faced with complete widespread civil unrest in this country, back in the Dark Ages of his and Cheney's reign (did those phone taps ever get lifted?); and two, that maybe we should start paying more attention to the removal of our constitutional rights.

I'm Just a Bill... Yes, I'm Only a Bill...

There's been so much debate about this new health care reform bill. Everyone seems to have a strong opinion and be rather vocal about it, too. But there's just one small problem...

...How many people have actually read it?

I know I haven't. I tried to find it online today, determined to sit down and read at least a few parts of it. It may be one of the most important initiatives of this country's government in years, and I felt it would be unconscionable of me to remain in ignorance. But when I surfed the Net trying to find the House and Senate drafts of the bill, I realized that one was 852 pages long, and the other 615. Which makes sense, I suppose, given the bill's complexity-- but how many people have read every single one of those 1467 pages? Or even, for that matter, one of them?

It turns out that not only was I wrong that there were easily accessible drafts of the bill out there (they took me a while to find), but according to House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D- Maryland) I was also wrong in my opinion that my Congressmen and -women had read those drafts themselves. Apparently the bill would end up with "very few votes" if every Congressperson had to read it before voting. Okay, so I don't have the strongest faith in the United States government, but up until today I'd at least given them credit for reading legislation before voting it into law!

Even President Obama seems to not have read the whole lengthy text, which is somewhat understandable in that it is hundreds of pages long- but not at all understandable in that he is its most vocal and prominent advocate. Shouldn't he be aware of what he's promoting? Shouldn't we all be aware of the content of a bill that could change the way this country operates- possibly permanently?

Now, I'm not saying I'm against the reform; but neither can I endorse it, for the one good reason that I haven't had the time to read all 1467 pages yet. I'd be happy to lend my support or (perhaps more likely) my constructive criticism- but if I haven't read it I can't really report on it, now can I?

This whole situation reminds me of fourth-graders on Thursday nights, searching for CliffNotes because they haven't read the book on which they're supposed to be writing a report.

Only this is a whole lot more important.

Here are the long-sought and hard-won URL addresses for drafts of the bill from the House of Representatives and the Senate, respectively:

REVIEW: The Terrorism of Everyday Life @ Capital Fringe

Don't let the poster fool you. There is no scary green man in a gas mask, only this kindly-looking wrinkly one with an unusually dirty mouth and an even dirtier mind. Half stand-up comedy show, half one-man jam session, Ed Hamell's Terrorism of Every Day Life is a witty, vulgar, and honest look at the way life spends its time scaring us sh*tless.

Hamell is clearly polished; he's that old kind of comic that is well rehearsed at being spontaneous. Drifting from story to story -- from a childhood encounter with a potty-mouthed member of The Beatles, to his awkward adolescence, to having to ask the difficult questions of his own son -- Hamell is always cool, always authentic. He sometimes turning away from the microphone, mid-joke, to tell the audience things as if they're not on the record, things our parents in the next room wouldn't want us to hear. Not an easy task, especially when you're talking as fast as you can to complete your bit in only 60 minutes. (he did)

When Hamell's not being our cool uncle, telling us all the nasty (and funny) truths from which our parents have for so long been protecting us, he's blasting the life out of his worn guitar. For a guy that looks like a retired Mr. Clean, he rocks impressively hard and really keeps the show moving, varied, and engaging. He even has a naughty song or two that will make things between the girls sitting around you just a little bit awkward. His act is definitely worth seeing (without children, for the love of god). He even won an award at the large and illustrious Edinburgh Fringe Festival and he doesn't even mention it (well, maybe once or twice).

The Naked Family At The Mall

Your bizarre news for the day.

1. In its continued attempt to become the classiest state in the union, Florida installs a naked sculpture of a family outside a Delray Beach mall. Question: does the statue's meaning make it any less strange for it to be outside a mall and near a school?
2. Goat crowned King of Ireland.
   
3. NC cops get free Corvette and use it to pull over speeders. I bet they fight over who gets it everyday.
   
4. Naked activist wants to attack the Queen of the Netherlands, has a gun.
5. 16-year-old strippers? Sounds good, legally that is.
   

The Taxman Cometh

This will be a long and slightly-econny post, so skip to the end if you want to avoid the thought process.

President Obama announced this week that he was considering a tax on “far-out transactions”, probably because everyone's quite peeved at Goldman's ostentatiously large compensation reserve. It’s not very clear yet what falls under the category of “far-out”; are we talking about all classes of derivatives, new financial instruments that have yet to be invented, or simply anything that the layperson can’t understand? The last might pose a slight challenge to our financial system, but it seems like this would be a good plan if we can set up a few caveats.

One of the nice underpinnings of this plan is that it reverts to the idea of rational choice models and incentive alignments. Codified regulation has always been a tricky proposition, especially when it comes to the financial system. What works for the courts and public life won’t necessarily work for the banks and the funds. Finance necessarily moves at a much faster pace than everyday life, rendering a system of law and arbitration less useful. The more elegant solution would be to tell financial institutions: Eat what you want, as long as you pay for your own dinner (and hospital costs if you get food poisoning).

In its current, inchoate form, the proposed exotic-instruments tax might basically be that banks pay an extra tax on revenue generated from origination, structuring and sale of such instruments. This doesn’t seem like it would be too hard to implement, as long as we can adequately define what comes under the category of exotic instruments (more on that later). We also would tax only institutions that originate the products, not upstream or downstream entities. For example, Company A has a cool stream of revenue coming in from intellectual property royalties. Bank B decides that it could package this stream of royalties and sell off tranches to different investors. We’d tax Bank B, on the idea that they’re the one creating the risk and that the effect would be shared across the supply side in the form of higher bank fees. If Bank C buys Bank B’s stuff, and repackages THAT with something else, that’s when we’d tax Bank C as well.

Some might argue that this effectively chills financial innovation and creativity. This, however, is precisely the idea: That institutions are forced to internalize the systemic risk their activities create. It seems like a win-win situation (in a closed system; no time to discuss external competitors). When tax payments are squeezing profits from these instruments such that the marginal cost of origination and risk-assumption outweigh the tax-effected profits, we should get a lower level of risk. BUT when banks decide that, hey, this fancy new idea we’ve come up with is absolutely so profitable that even post-tax, its still a great idea, we’ll have something in the kitty to plug the hole if they screw up. And if they don’t, maybe that’s Obama’s next 10 years of healthcare funding right there.

All of this is, of course, a superficial application of Econ 1, so it’s not going to be perfect analysis. Here’s the other main challenge: How do we know what an “exotic instrument” is?

The problem with simply saying that we’ll let rational actors decide whether or not something is profitable, is that the externality blade cuts both ways. An overly broad definition of “exotic” would, in the short-run, reduce the level of beneficial innovation as well. Yet a too-narrow definition of such would be equally useless, bogged down by endless petitions and searching for loopholes. One compromise might be to capitalize off our existing infrastructure.

We already have a mechanism in place for evaluating the risk of securities on a periodic basis: Our much maligned notables, the ratings agencies. A tax could be applied based on the ratings that securities receive, with higher supply-side taxes on more risky securities. So let’s take a real life example at look at the securitization of California’s IOUs. The first time a securitization like that is performed, ratings agency A will assess the relevant factors, including a projection X years out, and rate the security. Proceeds from that will be taxed at a proportional rate. However, let’s say New Hampshire likes the idea and decides to try the same trick. Assuming that 1) new information has come to light or 2) the increase in securitized IOUs somehow makes EVERYTHING more risky, all the outstanding IOU-backed securities get downgraded, but only NH-issues get taxed since California already paid their dues. “Good” innovation, in the long-run, will become cheaper to issue, and “bad” innovation will become more expensive.

The nub of this is that it comes back down to the ratings agencies, which have, to put it mildly, not done a great job. The second piece of the plan might be to set up a government-sponsored ratings agency, which would remove all the incentive problems associated with agencies and the banks they rate, and also incentivize them to clean up their act. It’s hard to see how independent raters could stay in business if they had to compete with a government agency and the immense legitimacy it would possess. It also gives the government a great degree of control over the growth of the financial sector, which is going to be absolutely wonderful or stupid as hell, depending on the size of your paycheck.

I like the idea of a ratings-based tax because it straddles the middle ground between free choice and paternalism. Under the current system, we try to control demand by disseminating information on securities and letting consumers make their own choices. However, markets are imperfect, people are irrational, and greed always wins. Banks are simply do not have to pay enough for their crappy securities. Which is why we’re suddenly seeing such an active market in high-yields, despite investors having been kicked in the ass a few months ago. Conversely, imposing a ban on securities is much too rigid and will be full of loopholes that smarty-pants bankers will exploit. Combining market forces with some state-directed supply control will fine tune financial markets and possibly provide some much needed revenue for all the people with restless leg syndrome we need to treat in the future.

The taxman cometh to solve our problems?

Sins and Assassins

What’s so bad about assassination, anyway?

Cheney probably shouldn’t have instructed the CIA to keep secrets from Congress. But it seems unlikely that he did it because he enjoyed telling people ‘I know something you don’t~’. Rather, it’s far more likely he foresaw that Congress, and the public at large, would somehow impute a glaring disconnect between targeted killings using Predator missiles, and targeted killings using actual people.

This distinction is clearly problematic. As a general rule, we now have a sliding spectrum of acceptable wartime actions, where selective strikes such as remote-drone eliminations are excellent (as demonstrated our gleeful reporting of such through media channels); mass, anonymous war with civilian casualties is “regrettable”, and targeted killings are barely a step above from war crimes.

The moral argument against assassination is shaky at best. From a utilitarian perspective, collateral damage on both sides should be dramatically reduced, were we to use trained teams to take out targets, rather than carpet-bombing an area or blowing up those unsuspecting wedding caravans that so frequently traipse across Afghanistan. Unless there’s some sort of moral imperative to give targets a fair chance (and even then, it’s not obvious that you have a better chance against a missile than an assassin squad), the alternative that reduces loss of innocent live would dominate.

Maybe then, we should consider the slippery-slope argument. If a major world player were to publicly sanction the use of assassination to resolve conflicts, it might lead to two detrimental outcomes. First, said player might end up using targeted assassinations more and more, on less and less important targets. Second, countries all over might follow this lead and establish targeted killings as a norm, leading to a War of Assassins (shoutout to those who get the reference).

But this again begs the question: Why is this bad? For the first scenario, we would need a persuasive reason to believe that the ability to legally use this option would dramatically increase the illegal use of the option. If the government could legally take out dictators in the Middle East, they, having tasted of the forbidden fruit, would be unable to restrain themselves from using it on, say, Rush Limbaugh. This seems unlikely, for the same reason that legalizing police sting operations hasn’t translated into policemen lurking in toilets waiting to catch ALL of us (only horny senators).

For the second, I’ll take a radical stance. Having assassination become a norm might actually be a pretty good thing. Are we fed up to the ears yet with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in? At a first approximation, you would have less young people dying, since surgical strikes would be the order of the day. But what’s really interesting about it is that it might offer a great disincentive to leaders all over the world who wage war. The barriers to entry for creating an assassination squad are simply so much lower than that of raising an army, developing nuclear weapons, or even planning a terror strike. The main problem probably lies in insertion of the squad into the target location. However, one possible consequence of the normalization of “targeted killings” might be that leaders take significantly more care in their relationships with each other, since the possibility of extrajudicial action is increased due to the lower cost of conflict resolution through violent means. Another way of putting it would be that leaders are now forced to bear the full cost of the negative externalities generated by their actions.

What She Said

I normally don't look to CNN's iReport for engaging commentary, but I think this woman really hits the nail on the head with the Henry Louis Gates controversy.


Here's her basic argument

1. Gates's neighbor likely racially profiled him, but the police did not. Gates should direct his anger at his spiteful neighbor instead of the dutiful police officers.
2. The arresting officer did not act wrongly, but likely was swayed emotionally in his decision to arrest Gates by Gates's extremely rude and confrontational behavior.
3. We, the American public, don't yet have all the information and therefore should not prejudge the situation. Obama was wrong and ignorant to say the officer acted "stupidly."
   
4. Gates's economic class is being ignored in favor of talking about his race. The correct question to act is not "Would a white man would have also been arrested?" (I'd say, yes they would... I watch a lot of "COPS"), it is, "Would a poor black man have been similarly let off?" The news media rarely focus on the plight of poor black victims of racial injustice.
   
5. Race politics are dominated by "pseudo-black leaders" and academics who profit off of and exploit tensions instead of ameliorating them. Gates has based his career on this and is now moving to cash in on his present situation.
   

Thoughts?

Is Healthcare a Right?

In the discussions about healthcare reform, some conservatives are making an interesting claim. They say that healthcare is not a right, and that we are not obligated to provide it. For an example of such an argument, read this article.

To read the rest of this post, go here.

Goose Egg.

SPOTTED: at the 2009 College Democrats of America & the Democratic National Committee Youth Council at Tabaq in Washington D.C.-- Congressman Tim Ryan (D-OH). The 36-year old, 4-term, single (ladies...) representative was very approachable, earnest, and easy-going. At the behest of a few USC people who wished to shake his hand but lacked the basic alcoholic confidence to go up to him, I introduced myself and the group and he and I proceeded to talk, quite naturally, for about 10 minutes. Here's the recap.

• Responding to my question of what the chance is that the health care bill would pass Congress before the August recess, he put his hand to his eye in the shape of a zero. Even if the House busted their hump and passed their version on time, Ryan believes the Senate would drag its feet and screw up anyway.
• After learning that I work in counter-narcotics, he simply said "legalize it."
• And he seemed quite receptive to my shameless promotion of the Merida Initiative. (something from work. google it.)

Ryan seemed like a great guy and Tabaq is well worth checking out, especially the green-house-esque roof deck that lit up with every lightening strike. Very cool.

A Tale of Two Court Cases

There are two sides to every story, or so the ancient adage tells us. But hardly any story is so straightforward, as every five-year-old and most of our politicians should know by now. Black and white don't exist, only shades of gray...

But in this crazy supposedly-post-racism era, it seems, oddly, that black and white do still exist- and are loaded words, especially in the courtroom.

Take, for example, the two recent court cases surrounding fire department exams, one in New York City and one in New Haven. In the New York City court case, decided on Wednesday in a federal district court, it was ruled that tests used by the Fire Department of New York were discriminatory to minority test-takers; here I quote presiding Judge Nicholas Garaufis: "These examinations unfairly excluded hundreds of qualified people of color from the opportunity to serve as New York City firefighters." The good judge wrote in his ruling that the FDNY was still "monochromatic" even in the face of an overwhelmingly diverse population. And this from the melting pot of America?

On the other hand, the recent Supreme Court case Ricci v. DiStefano concluded with a verdict in New Haven's white firefighters' favor- tests cannot be thrown out simply because the fire department fears lawsuits from minority applicants when the tests yield disproportionate racial results. Incidentally, our new Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor had originally ruled in favor of the tests' dismissal (which makes her situation just that more complicated, especially since she is Hispanic). Also incidentally, Ricci v. DiStefano was a 5-4 decision: five traditionally conservative justices to four traditionally liberal justices (which makes the situation still decidedly old-fashioned in a way-- remember back when the liberals wanted equality for minorities and the conservatives dragged their feet?).

What does this tell us? For one, that accusations of racism have become a double-edged sword; it used to be that minorities were discriminated against in almost all cases (see as an example New Haven). Now, some think that whites are discriminated against, in prevention of discrimination against minorities (take a look at New York).

The race card is definitely not as simple to play as it used to be, that's for sure.