Convention Bloggers Disappointing?

CNET's Charles Cooper notes that to his disappointment, most convention bloggers did not live up to the promise of insightful analysis:

Most of the blogging entries I have read ranged from the insufferably pedantic to the sublimely mediocre. There were exceptions, of course, but the see-me, hear-me tenor of their reporting was only exceeded by the vapidity of the banal commentaries peddled as analyses.

First, who was he reading? The ones I read were mostly quite good. Matt Welch and Tim Blair of Reason and Pat Belton of Oxblog did an exceptional job liveblogging the convention. In the article, Cooper does not mention a single blogger he read and provided no links to explicate what he was talking about. Partly, I think that this is precisely the problem with traditional journalism (CNET being an online version of it). They do not have to provide sources or link to entire articles or speeches they are quoting. They get to cherrypick what they print. Bloggers who do that, on the other hand, will have a difficult time getting high readership with that approach.

Second, what advantage does he see in the mainstream media coverage? Is he talking about MSNBC falling over itself to praise Kerry (by having Joe Trippi, Dee Dee Meyers, Carl Bernstein, Mike Barnacle, and Pitchfork Pat Buchanan, who has gone over the deep end of populism, serve as the pundits at the convention)? Or is he discussing the LA Times which provided such insightful editorializing as "John Kerry will be a great commander-in-chief because he served in Vietnam" (paraphrasing)? At least the bloggers who included banal reports of what happened were reporting on the facts rather than facts filtered through the pink-colored lenses of the liberal media (with pleasant surprises on the part of WaPo and NYT (see last post)).

UPDATE: David Appell relates similar sentiments as Cooper. InstaPundit asks, "compared to what?"

Roundup Of Kerry's Speech

First impressions on Kerry's speech. Not bad, pretty decent actually. A number of people mentioned how boring it was. We ought remember that he is boring in general. So, I think that this speech was actually a net positive for him. I had a number of problems with the speech. He was terrible on outsorcing (mainly, just plain wrong). He had some good one-liners on Iraq. But again, he provided no specifics and some of his proposals, though nice, seem pretty impractical. He attempted to attack Bush from a Hawkish position. Funny given that he's a dove ("I'm an anti-war candidate").

Here are a number of responses to the Kerry speech from other blogs and media sources.

New York Times: I am shocked at how relatively even-handed this Times editorial is. Criticizes Kerry for pandering, not enough specifics and other issues. I am pleasantly surprised.

Daniel Drezner has mixed reaction to the speech. Right now, the probability of him voting for Kerry come November is 54%. I think that the outsourcing bit is too much and Drezner ought realize that despite Bob Rubin standing next to Hillary, there is still a significant division between the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) and the rest of the Dems who are extremely liberal. Remember MoveOn.org? Michael Moore? The Unions? Hollywood? He'll have to be beholden to somebody for getting him elected. Just something to keep in mind if things like outsourcing and economics matter to you.

New York Post: They really hit on a number of important points and problems in Kerry's speech, particularly about the War on Terror. I think that libertarian hawks who lean Kerry like Daniel Drezner and Jacob T. Levy, ought to give this a look and really consider the logical inconsistencies within his positions and between his positions and his actual voting record in the Senate on Defense.

InstaPundit has an excellent roundup on the Kerry speech. Especially, read the comments section. Though most are quite pessimistic, they form a nice counterbalance to the television media which was just gushing with praise tonight.

Virginia Postrel has great posts all night. Look at this one, this one and this one in particular. Again, she does an excellent job of demonstrating the real differences between the Dems and Republicans on national security. I think she hits the nail right on the head. I hope Dan Drezner and Jacob Levy are both reading her.

Patrick Belton (Oxblog) was LiveBlogging the Convention. He has an overall positive take on the speech, though with some reservations regarding outsourcing and some other sentimental pandering.

The Washington Post called the speech a "missed opportunity". In my view, this is the money line from the editorial:

any in the hall last night, the intelligence lapses in Iraq prove the wrongness of Mr. Bush's preemption strategy, and Mr. Kerry seemed to agree, saying that "the only justification for going to war" would be "a threat that was real and imminent." Yet a President Kerry, too, would face momentous decisions based on inevitably imperfect information, whether about Iran or North Korea or dangers yet to emerge. How would he respond? Will it always be safe to wait for a threat that is certain and imminent?

Enjoy.

More Minimum Wage Talk

Jon Berry gives a detailed explanation of why raising the minimum wage or having one at all is a costly venture. (Although, Jon, I'm not sure whether you mentioned that businesses are more likely to expand without a minimum wage, instead of only showing why they would be forced to cut down/not start with one). I don't think the justifications for raising the minimum wage given in the Slate article are very convincing. However, one of the stronger arguments I have come across in favor of it is that having a minimum wage actually boosts the economy because it raises the expenses of having a business and consequently ends up transferring labor and capital to the most profitable businesses (i.e. the ones that can afford to hire at that rate).

In other words, since profits are reduced in unproductive activities and increased in highly productive activities, it is alleged that aggregate efficiency improves, in addition to equality. In fact, Moene and Wallerstein have a great article on this entitled Social Democracy as a Development Strategy, which tells the story of certain Scandinavian countries that were able to achieve substantial economic growth while pursuing strategies of wage compression and industrial relations led by national union confederations. Apparently, the "Nordic Miracle" was also heavily dependent on a strong export sector, which they achieved by embracing free trade.

It does seem frightening to me that such a centralized system of government was even attempted. And the argument about moving labor and capital from unproductive to highly productive activities isn't fullproof: it seems to me that any economy that wants to have a long-term chance of surviving should allow smaller businesses to have a chance to grow (which the minimum wage prevents), because otherwise, competition is eliminated, innovation is eliminated, and more importantly, the middle class does not have a chance to rise and progress (since they can't start new businesses). This is why I would never attempt the Nordic experiment myself. Nevertheless, I do think that conservative economists have a responsibility to explain its results.

Iraq, Hezbollah, and WMD?
This report of nukes found in Tikrit may be false (via Instapundit). But this one, of an explosion in a Hezbollah training camp caused by weapons smuggled from Iraq might not be. Israel claims that Iraq shipped chemical, biological, and other weapons of mass destruction to Syria on the eve of the war. Somehow, these got into the hands of Hezbollah. You don't say, Syria at the center of WMD proliferation? Naaaah. Never! Here's the money quote:

Western intelligence experts believe that the explosion was connected to an Iraqi arms shipment that reached Hezbollah a few days before Monday's blast. Two different explanations might account for the explosion. According to one theory, it resulted from a test that Hezbollah attempted with one of the weapons, perhaps a trial missile launch. Alternatively, a mishap might have occurred when Hezbollah tried to store the arms in a bunker.

Last week, Ha'aretz reported that Iraq gave Hezbollah medium-range missiles. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said last week that Israel believes Iraq also transferred chemical and biological weapons to Syria in order to keep them from the attention of United Nations inspectors.

Stay tuned.

Iran, Iraq, al-Qaeda, Oh My!

In the wake of recent allegations by the administration, denials by the new CIA chief, and various back and forth regarding the connections between Iran, Iraq and al-Qaeda, I believe a number of points have been missed. Most people believe that Iran and Saddam were mortal enemies because of their very bloody war in the late 1980's. Most also believe that Iran and al Qaeda would never ally because Iran is predominantly Shi'ia, whereas al Qaeda was an ally of the predominantly Sunni Taliban, a great opponent of the Iranian regime. Furthermore, Iraq and al-Qaeda would never ally since Iraq is a secular totalitarian regime bent on excercising Arab nationalism, while al-Qaeda is a religious extremist group that would condemn Iraq's secular regime under Saddam. Well, these analyses are too simplistic. What people do not realize is that all of these groups, for wherever their internal differences may lie, are actually united in one pursuit: defeating America and driving Jews out of Israel.

I have been recently researching (using mostly online sources) the possible connection between Saddam and Al Qaeda via Hezbollah. It was largely inspired by reading about the case of William Francis Buckley, the CIA station chief in Beirut who was abducted by Hezbollah thugs in 1984 and eventually killed after a year of torture. After some digging around, I realized that there is a distinct and important connection between Iran, Iraq, Syria, Hezbollah, and Al Qaeda. Here is so far what I have been able to glean from the documented history of Hezbollah, Al Qaeda, and Saddam Hussein.


Hezbollah's History

I will briefly sketch out how this group was founded and the significant acts of terrorism that it has sponsored against the United States and Israel.

Hezbollah was founded in 1982 by Shiites who felt slighted by Lebanon's largely Sunni and Christian political structure and inspired by the Iranian Revolution of 1979 (see here for a more complete history of the early period of the group). Then, in 1982, Israel invaded Southern Lebanon under the direction of then-Defense Minister Ariel Sharon in response to the firing of missiles into Israel from the Lebanese border by PLO militants and the attempted assassination of the Israeli ambassador to the UK. This mobilized Hezbollah against Israel in the sense that it became clear that Israel was not just going to enter Lebanon and leave once the PLO was defeated (which is in fact what happened, since Israel did not pull out of Lebanon until 2000). Go here for a further discussion of the early 1980's Lebanese history.

Throughout much of the 1980's, Lebanon was mired in a civil war with various muslim factions supported by Syria's Asad regime (see this account from the Library of Congress on this part of the Lebanese civil war). Finally, when the war ended in 1991, a consensus government formed in Beirut in which the various religious and tribal factions got to serve in the government. Hezbollah also got a piece of the pie. It currently has members in the Lebanese Parliament and receives support from the government itself, for which it provides border security along the Southern Lebanese border with Israel. Today, Lebanon is largely a surrogate of Syria (due to the presence of approximately 25,000 Syrian troops in the country), which helps explain Beirut's coziness with Hezbollah. Recently, the Christian President of Lebanon, Emile Lehoud has said of Hezbollah: “For us Lebanese, and I can tell you a majority of Lebanese, Hezbollah is a national resistance movement. If it wasn't for them, we couldn't have liberated our land. And because of that, we have big esteem for the Hezbollah movement.” So it is also interesting that a Christian President of Lebanon would be a strong ally of the Shiite Hezbollah. But wait, there's more.

The terrorist acts attributed to Hezbollah include the bombing of the US embassy in Beirut on April 18m 1983 and the subsequent simultaneous bombings of US Marine and French peacekeeper barracks on October 23, 1983, the hijacking of TWA flight 847 on board which was U.S. Navy diver Robert Stethem, whom they summarily tortured and executed. Further acts of terror by Hezbollah include 1992 bombing of the Israeli embassy in Argentina, as well as numerous acts of terror within Israel. Furthermore, Hezbollah and Iran run terror training camps in Lebanon, Syria, and even the border between Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil. In these camps, members of Iran's Revolutionary Guards provide guerilla and terror training to not just Hezbollah, but other terrorist groups, such as ETA (the Basque separatists), the Chechens, and various other "freedom fighters."

The mastermind behind many of these terrorist acts has been Imad Mugniyah, the head of Hezbollah's intelligence and security apparatus. He is considered one of the most ruthless men in the world. Before Sep. 11, he had been responsible for more Americans killed than Osama bin Laden. On several occasions, the U.S. had the opportunity to capture him, but was unable to for various reasons. There is currently a sealed indictment against this man in U.S. federal court. Since 1968, he and bin Laden are believed to have been responsible for 70% of all deaths of Americans due to terrorism.


The Connection to Arafat, Islamic Jihad, and Al Qaeda

While it is true that initially, Hezbollah with its largely Shi'ia makeup was hostile to Arafat and the PLO, there is clear evidence of cooperation between Mugniyah and the Fatah wing of the PLO, of which Arafat is the head. For example, Mugniyah was the head of Force 17, the security forces for the Fatah movement. So, two groups which on paper seem like opponents, are in fact collaborators in the quest to defeat the common enemy.

Mugniyah has also been fingered in the arms-smuggling operation that implicated Arafat was caught in 2002, when a ship carrying large numbers of illegal arms attempted to unload its wares (likely from Syria) into the Palestinian Territories.

What we also know is that Hamas and Islamic Jihad has been active in terrorism against Israel. Furthermore, after the leader of Islamic Jihad, Fathi Shaqaqi, was expelled from Egypt in 1981, he moved to the Gaza Strip. In 1988 Israel expelled him to Lebanon, at which point he began developing close ties with Syria, Iran, and Hezbollah (Read more details about this development here). The same year, Islamic Jihad moved their offices to Damascus and its fighters were now trained by Iran's Revolutionary Guard, the same people who trained Hezbollah. These facts seem to establish that Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah now cooperate with eachother in the war against Israel.

Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama Bin Laden's number two man, is the founder of Islamic Jihad and many experts contend that Al Qaeda and Islamic Jihad are, essentially, one and the same organization. The two groups have recently cooperated in militia resistance in Bosnia and Kosovo, Chechnya, and the Far East. It is also believed that Imad Mugniyah (of Beirut fame) is the middle-man between Hezbollah and al-Qaeda. There is evidence to suggest that he was one of the men behind the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia and the bombing of the USS Cole. Ali Mohammed, one of the men captured after the embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, has testified that he arranged for the security for a meeting between Mugniyah and al-Qaeda planners in 1993. The State Department, no friend of the Saddam and al Qaeda cooperation argument, lists Mugniyah as being part of the Al-Qaeda terrorist network. Although Hezbollah denounced the September 11 attacks, it has been very cozy with al-Qaeda (see Council on Foreign Relations fact sheet).

One thing is clear from these facts alone: Iran is an important (if not the MOST important) player in international terrorism, al Qaeda, and September 11th, as has recently been reported.


Connections with Saddam

Many people doubt Al Qaeda's alliance with Iraq because Iraq, run by the Ba'ath Party of Arab Socialists, was a largely secular government, whereas Al Qaeda is a hardcore Islamist group. Saddam based his hatred for the US on Arab nationalism. By contrast, Al Qaeda bases its hatred for the US on Muslim nationalism. So, these two would never align, right? If only the world were so simple.

Such simplistic explanations could not account for Hezbollah's alliance with the PLO against Israel. Nor could they account for al-Qaeda's cooperation with groups that have close ties to Iran. So, why should we expect Iraq to be any different? It seems as though most of the terrorist groups and state-sponsors of terrorism in the Middle East have been essentially drawing from the same pool of resources and cooperating wholeheartedly to defeat Israel and the United States. It is certainly true that most of these groups have been opponents in the past. Yet, that does not mean that they cannot cooperate now.

Iraq's connection to the whole Hezbollah - Islamic Jihad gang is a little more interesting and subtle than the connection between Hezbollah, al Qaeda, Syria, and Iran.

For example, we know that Saddam had funded and harbored Abu Nidal (although it is reported that he probably killed him as well), the murderous Palestinian radical group which broke off from the PLO and has engaged in various internal mischief within the PLO by assassinating various PLO officials. Fatah issued a death sentence in the 1970's (although recent evidence by former Romanian intelligence officials suggests that this was a ploy and that Arafat had created Abu Nidal Organization himself).

What we also know, however, is that U.S. intelligence had warned after the Gulf War, that Iraq had taken into its custody a number of Shiite terrorists (including Mugniyah's brother-in-law) who had been in Kuwaiti prisons. Saddam then used that leverage to obtain cooperation from Hezbollah and Mugniyah in terrorism against the US. Furthermore, elements from Force 17, the Palestinian group in which Mugniyah played an important role, were harbored and received assistance from Saddam's regime in the early 1990's.

Furthermore, we also know that Saddam has been paying money to the families of suicide bombers in Israel, many of them recruited by Hamas, others by Islamic Jihad, and others by Hezbollah. For example, Mugniyah is known to have organized suicide attacks in Israel. So, what we have is a one-two punch between an al-Qaeda and Hezbollah joint operative and Saddam. The first recruits teenagers to die in a holy war against evil Zionist invaders and the other one then pays off the teenagers' families after the deed is done. How convenient. Now, we know that Mugniyah is in Iraq helping to stir unrest, engaging in plots to kill Iraqis and foreigners alike.

Obviously, many of the specifics of these connections are not clear since many documents (such as Mugniyah's U.S. indictment) are sealed. But the old belief that the various factions of Middle Eastern terrorism would not cooperate because of internal divisions and religious dissentions is ridiculous. One major characteristic that they all have in common is hatred for the United States and Israel. One ought not even assume no connection between Iraq and Iran. Yes, they did fight a bloody bitter war in the late 1980's. But there is no reason to believe that they did not interact and cooperate in operations of mutual interest, such as the destruction of Israel and murder of Americans. We know Iran funds Hezbollah which is allied with al-Qaeda and Islamic Jihad. We also know that Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, and various PLO militants have received support from Saddam. And finally, no one doubts the various meetings that have occured between Iraqi intelligence officers and members of al-Qaeda (read Stephen Hayes' preview of tomorrow's 9/11 commission report over at The Weekly Standard).

The academics and people over at Foggy Bottom have been telling us that these various groups could not ally because of internal conflicts (like how many of Mohammed's cousins could dance on the head of a pin). Wait, what's that? Do I hear someone say the word, "groupthink"?

Don't mess with us.

Thanks to Patrick of OxBlog for the pointer to a story of Aeroflot (main Russian airline) flight attendants getting wasted on board and roughing up a passenger. If only terrorists recieved the same treatment in this case.

A (belated, long) response to Dan’s minimum-wage post

I agree with the Landsburg article Dan cited at about one place: the end, where he calls for the abolition of the minimum wage in favor of the Earned Income Tax Credit. (There is a taxation and transfer scheme far superior to the not-so-bad EITC, too, but that’s the subject for my next post.) I cannot speak too much as to Landsburg’s methodological critique of past minimum-wage studies (though Chickpea Eater is helpful in pointing out Eugene Volokh’s post on that very point), but I find some of his premises very troubling.

1) Even if an employer is forced to fire a worker due to a minimum wage increase, writes Landsburg, it “was a minimum-wage job in the first place. Losing a lousy job might not be a whole lot worse than keeping it.” I, for one, am irritated by the presumption of Landsburg that eliminating these jobs is not really a burden on those people put out of work.While only a very small percentage of minimum wage earners are the primary breadwinners for their households, many families receive badly needed supplemental income from the minimum wage labor of mothers or teenagers. Where do minimum wage advocates (starting from premises much like Landsburg’s) get off claiming that it’s better to hook families on government handouts instead of letting them work for a couple extra thousand a year?
2) Landsburg follows up with the claim that the minimum wage workers who keep their jobs “presumably grateful to the politicians who raised their wages.” I’m also sure that union workers are grateful for the increased wages that come from forcibly keeping some out of the labor market, but this doesn’t mean that labor unions aren’t a gaping sore on the backside of the American economy. Less obviously, though, it’s not a given that workers will appreciate the meddling. Workers who make more than the minimum wage to begin with certainly won’t be happy, as they suddenly find themselves burdened with the tasks that used to be done by the workers beneath them. They must sweat more than they did previously, simply to earn the same amount of dollars. Furthermore, even if an employer manages not to fire any of his suddenly more expensive minimum wage workers, odds are very good that he will work them harder than before, producing more value in order to keep up with the increase in costs. What if a worker prefers his earlier deal, where he got paid wages commensurate with the amount he was willing to work? What if he doesn’t want to trade more sweat for an extra dollar an hour? Why should the government force him to work harder or be fired? And as Tyler Cowen has pointed out, it may be easy to raise the minimum wage, but it’s a lot harder to legislate against the employer turning the air conditioner off, or doing any one of a thousand things to cut costs in response to mandated wage increases.
3) “In fact, the minimum wage is very good for unskilled workers.” Nonsense. Raising the minimum wage makes skilled labor relatively cheaper. Maybe at $6/hour you’d hire a receptionist, but if the minimum wage is $9/hour, you might as well hire a secretary who can type, too. Less skilled workers will have a harder time getting jobs. Furthermore, “unskilled worker” is a misnomer. Every job teaches skills, even if those skills are the very basic skills of simply holding down a job. Punctuality, knowing how to follow instructions, cleanliness and various social skills are picked up through any job, regardless of wage. It’s quite conceivable (except perhaps in the minds of us over-educated types) that a person may possess skills lesser than what are needed to supply an hourly value equivalent to the minimum wage. Except for some mentally disabled, however, no one who gains actual job experience, regardless of the wage he commands upon entry, stays at such a low skill level. With experience, a worker will very quickly increase his value to any employer. Instead of letting each person begin with wages commensurate with his skill, minimum wages deny entry to many people, withholding from them badly-needed chances to earn at least a little money, and more importantly, improve the value of their labor through experience. Eliminating the minimum wage would also cut down on abuse of immigrant labor, since they could be paid on the books at wages commensurate with the value they provide, while also getting to be incorporated into the legit economy (though taxes make that less of a bargain, admittedly).
4) Where does the government get off claiming it has knowledge as to where “space” exists for cost increases to employers that won’t result in layoffs? How could it be anyone other than the individual business owner who knows where the “spaces” are? And why is increased unemployment the only factor we should be considering politically? What about declining job quality for the workers who still have jobs, or increases in prices stemming from the increase in business costs? And what about the businesses that never get started because of the minimum wage? Radically decentralized information such as cost structures is information that is best acted upon by, oddly enough, the individual actors who possess that information. This is precisely why capitalism works and why socialism (even “socialism lite”) does not.
5) Also, briefly, Landsburg’s claim that transfer payments make politicians accountable is laughable. This is a simple concept: the costs of the payments are distributed amongst the entire body of taxpayers, so that few individuals feel any burden heavy enough to complain about it, but the recipients are a minority who get concentrated benefits, for which they will clamor loudly. This is where Social Security, corporate welfare and other forms of pork barreling get their aggravating staying power.

Like Landsburg and Dan, I can also oppose the minimum wage on the grounds that it’s an unjust transfer payment, though I suspect I take a far narrower view of the justice of income transfers than do they. What do I propose as an alternative to the minimum wage? That’s the subject for my next post.

The Blog Not Taken
 
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two Google queries diverged, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the comic sense.
 
Yes, it's that time again:
 
right winged shirts guest of companies in lybia
roger me anti-semitic
hong kong wholesale t-shirt
where to get fake ids in nyc
they call conservatives racists
Statistic Research Consentual Incest Birth Defects
feygin congress transcript
tracking grain of rice prisoners cuba
Fascism means war
MILD PSYCHOSIS
kerry pronounce idear
WHY IS THE SECRET SERVICE GUARDING THE SAUDI EMBASSY
nobody ever lost money hl mencken
political test left right liberal crack legalize sex stalin hitler   
G-Dub is My Homeboy T-shirt 
 
That last one speaks for itself.

Governators and Swaggering Bastions
 
Arnold's assessment of filibustering Dems in the CA Legislature made waves.
 
Schwarzenegger was speaking at a food court in a shopping mall in Ontario when he said to the enthusiastic crowd: "If they don't have the guts to come up here in front of you and say, 'I don't want to represent you, I want to represent those special interests, the unions, the lawyers'...if they don't have the guts, I call them girlie men."
 
He won't apologize. After all, those terminators are asking for it.
 
More coverage here, where State Senator Sheila Kuehl, one of five members of the Legislature’s five-member Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Caucus, points out that, “it’s ironic that the governor would try to find a metaphor for weakness when his real problem is that we’re being too strong."
 
Begging to differ: here, here, and here.
 
In other news, the YFP's print archives are coming up online, as the great Oasis song goes, "Faster than a (swaggering) cannonball (of ideology)." Check them out with their respective Features: Commencement 2004 (Multi-Party?), April 2004 (Conservatism Now), and October 2003 (Is Bush a Hippie?). And, as always, there's more where that came from.

NLRB Votes That Grad Students Are Students, Not Employees

In a case involving Brown University teaching assistants, the NLRB voted 3-2 that allowing graduate students to unionize would jeopardize the current system of American education. Read it all in the article.

Thank G-d; maybe GESO will quit now. NYU, where I am a graduate student (but not a member of the union) might let the current union contract expire next year and not recognize the union any further. Let's just all hope that this will happen. A telling quote from the NYT article from the regional head of the United Auto Workers (which administers the NYU graduate student union):

"I understand that they say it would be too disruptive to the great American education system," Mr. Wheeler said. "Once upon a time, they said that unionizing would be too disruptive for American manufacturing. They were wrong then, and they are wrong now."

Wheeler is dead wrong in both comparing education of graduate students to manufacturing cars and on the substantive issue of whether manufacturing was disrupted by unionization.

Even if unions can claim a relationship of economic coersion inherent in the business world which makes any relationship between labor an management necessarily adversarial, the same cannot be said of graduate students. For one, their relationship with their advisors, mentors, and head professors are necessarily collaborative. The advisors are there to guide the graduate students' dissertations. The head professors of courses the grad students TA are there to make sure that the graduate students become effective teachers once they receive their Ph.D. and obtain an academic position. All of these relationships involve the professor having an almost fiduciary duty to act in the best interests of the graduate student (see here for discussion of a case in which a U of Chicago graduate student had her research stolen by her mentor). Management, however, has no such duty to the employees at a factory. Unionization will make this inherently collaborative enterprise in fact adversarial. I think that this will significantly hurt the education of graduate students and make cases such as the one of Dr. Chou at U of Chicago (linked to above) more likely.  The student-faculty relationship will become inherently competitive, with each side trying to get as much as they can from the other.

Second, unionization has certainly disrupted American manufacturing. The demand for higher wages and greater benefits has led to the exportation of many manufacturing jobs abroad where workers are willing to work for less. For example, General Motors' UAW contract makes GM cars much less competitve with, say, Japanese makes that are both less expensive and higher quality. Remember the UPS strike that crippled shipping in this country in the mid-1990's? How about the air traffic controllers' strikes? Now, one can claim that these disruptions are worth it in order to promote the welfare and interests of the workers. But to honestly claim that unioniozation did not disrupt American manufacturing is just false and dishonest.

Let's just hope GESO shuts up once and for all... Don't hold your breath.

Europe? Meh.

Virginia Postrel has linked to an excellent essay by Bruce Bawer, an American journalist living in Europe. Bawer effortlessly dispatches the notion that Europe is somehow more “cultured” or “enlightened” than we. This sort of essay could easily degenerate into exactly the kind of behavior that Bawer faults European (and American, for that matter) tastemakers for, but he manages to remain even-handed, including a discussion of American “empire” that shouldn’t make conservatives bristle.

Which Olsen twin are you?

Who would have guessed? It turns out that I'm:


Apparently, I'm the hot one. Take the quiz yourself! Some famous Mary-Kates here and here.

I Never Even Applied To Electoral College 

I don't think that Gene's concerns about state and local identity can justify the 7000% advantage in Senatorial representation that every citizen of Wyoming holds over every citizen of California.

He's right, of course, that not every Congressional district can be the same size. But that doesn't mean we should look the other way at outrageous disparities in representation.

But what about the libertarian response to the dissolution of states proposal? Why, on a libertarian analysis, should the state of California not be able to dissolve into smaller states? I think this is interesting because, appearances to the contrary, it doesn't really cut across Democratic/Republican lines. (Don't think that citizens of Orange County or upstate New York are thrilled that their presidential votes are subject to the veto powers of Los Angeles and New York City.)

No, Trust Me, Take The Red Pill

Both Gene and Kira in her comment believe that my proposition:

Which makes you more uncomfortable?
A) The gradual incorporation of religious ideology into the institutions of a nominally secular state?
OR
B) An increase in the top marginal tax rate of somewhere between 1% and 5%?

...is biased because I'm comparing "a fundamental shift in the role of religion in our society on a macroscopic scale" to "one small public-policy decision." This is indeed what I'm doing, but the reason that the question is not biased is that it reflects that actual choice before voters in this election and for the foreseeable future. I concede that the way I framed the question was unnecessarily abstract, so let me try to do a better job.

The reality of the American system of government and economics is a compromise between social democracy and capitalism. None of us will ever live to see Franklin Roosevelt's welfare state dismantled (though it may be rendered obsolete by technology), nor, since Reagan brought the top tax right out of the stratosphere, will the debate over rates of income taxes ever extend to much more than an argument about the extent to which, within a few percentage points, income taxes ought to be graduated. John Kerry may be proposing an increase in the top marginal rate. He certainly wouldn't do any worse than President Bush at expanding the size of government--and let's seriously give up on the notion that the Republicans, who control both the presidency and Congress, and have facilitated the largest expansion of the government since LBJ, are a party whose values are in line with those of libertarians. Something all elephant-sympathizing libertarians should take into account is that the middle class tax burden has actually increased under the Bush administration, and although it's hard to pin Kerry down on any position, my understanding is that he at least pays lip-service to cutting taxes for the middle class.

So let's take stock of the options the two parties offer us:
A)
i. Public financing of religious organizations
ii. A Justice Dept. that spends tax dollars prosecuting pornographers
iii. A loosening of electoral restrictions enabling churches to participate in campaigns while retaining their tax-exempt status
iv. An FCC determined to root out "offensive" material from television
v. DOJ lawsuits to overturn medical marijuana laws
vi. Aggressive campaigns to prevent public initiatives on drug decriminalization from succeeding
vii. At the state and local level, initiatives to enable the teaching of creationism in biology classes, as well as the removal of any discussion of evolution from public school curricula
vii. The consistent use of religious rhetoric as a means of garnering votes, racheting up national religiosity, and continuing to make the election of atheists impossible for all practical purposes

OR

B)
i. An increase in the top marginal tax rate somewhere between 1% and 5% and a reinstatement of estate taxes, both of which could be at least partly offset by tax cuts for middle and low income earners, as well as reductions in corporate welfare
ii. Some sort of addition to the federal health care entitlement, unlikely to be significantly larger than Mr. Bush's Medicare expansion

I'll close with a related question, which I do not mean to pose rhetorically: if a president were to cut taxes on middle and low income earners, and raise taxes on upper income earners by the same percentage relative to the respective abilities of all three groups to pay taxes, so that, say, 70% of the people had their taxes cut and 30% had their taxes raised, would the result be an overall increase in freedom from government interference?

Response to Gene's Response

Referring to my assertion that the FMA "not only prohibits gay marriage, but also 'any legal incidents' of marriage rights ... [i.e.] domestic partnerships and civil unions ... Gay couples are to have no legal rights whatsoever," Gene writes:

This is false. Gays can still form contracts and name their partners as executors of their will or beneficiaries or whatever else they want to do. Lack of the granting of a license to be married does not deny them the right to marry. Marriage is both a legal and a social institution, each of which has its separate sphere. For example, the Catholic church prohibits contraception, whereas the legal institution makes no such prohibitions.

Gene is correct to point out the distinction between marriage as a civil instititution and marriage as a religious/social institution, but he is mistaken in his placement of the division between the two. A marriage in an Episcopalian church, say, that includes a legally valid marriage license is not the sum of a legal contractual relationship and a union recognized by the church; rather it is the sum of a union recognized in civil law with a union recognized by the church. Divorce is prohibited by the Catholic church, and divorce proceedings in Judaism require a hearing before a Rabbinical panel; nevertheless, persons married in a RC church or a synagogue are free to resort to civil proceedings in order to dissolve their marriage, and if they do so, they are no longer married in the eyes of the law. They are still, I would assume, married in the eyes of the church/temple and perhaps even in the eyes of God. The result we can confidently predict is that they would remain married in the abstract, while a contractual agreement between them was dissolved.

This is relevant because civil marriage is something other than the ability to "form contracts and name their partners as executors of their will or beneficiaries." (I would ask that we recall, however, the law recently passed in Virginia stripping gay couples even of that very modest concession.) I'm guessing that Gene is not adopting the Ralph Nader position that the word "marriage" should be confined strictly to social relationships, and that the legal aspect of both heterosexual and homosexual partnerships all have equal standing as civil unions. I'll continue this line of thought after excerpting a bit more of Gene's post, but before the jump, I want to pose the following questions: Why exactly is it that gay couples should not have any legal standing as couples? The current language of the FMA prohibits civil unions (I don't see how Gene could argue with that point), so the legal relationship between gay partners would be precisely identical to the relationship between business associates or benefactors and beneficiaries. Let's table, for a moment, the question of whether any two people have a fundamental right to marry. The fact is that heterosexuals do, in the language of contemporary discourse, have a right to marry, and to be recognized in civil law as something other than executors of each other's estates. So why is it something other than arbitrary discrimination to deny that right to gay couples?

After quoting me as saying that the movement for gay marriage rights is not about getting the government to validate one's love, but that any of the proposed marriage substitutes are psychologically inadequate because the marriage's legal rights are secondary to the emotional bond it forges, Gene believes he has caught me in a contradiction:

Well, that seems to be a logical contradiction. If "the rights concordant with a valid marriage license, are secondary to the psychological bond forged by marriage" as he claims, why is it that one would need government recognition of this. That doesn't make sense to me. The FMA does not ban gay people from marrying eachother in say an Episcopalian church or a Reform synagogue. They can still live together and have honeymoons to South Beach and bridal showers (who's the bride, by the way?) and bridal registries at Barney's and what have you. They can still have the "psychological bond forged by marriage" if they love each other as much as Dan claims they do. And if that psychological aspect of marriage is so much more important than a marriage license itself, who cares if one has the legal documents or not if they are secondary to begin with? Dan is undermining his own argument here.

Let me begin by asking whether heterosexuals would be willing to give up the civil recognition of their marriages as superfluous to the psychological bond between them and their spouses. Probably not. And that's because the recognition of a couple as married in civil law is a part of the psychological bond of marriage. No matter how elaborate a ceremony any two people have, if their arrangement consists of nothing but empty words, then it is instantly reversible. In contrast, the bonds of civil marriage consist of an abstact, yet permanent and substantial commitment to another person that cannot be quantified in terms of legal rights and obligations. This point goes back to my earlier comments about the distinction between civil and religious marriage: the emotional attachments of marriage do not belong solely to the province of religion (or softer spirituality, or whatever); rather, civil marriage is an abstract entity that creates a deep psychological bond, above and beyond the "legal incidents of marriage," which is nevertheless a secular bond.

So, am I reversing my earlier claim that this is not about government validating love? First, if I am doing so, then it is only to the extent that gay couples neither need nor are entitled to any more or any less government validation of their love than straight couples. But I don't think that I have contradicted myself. The value of civil recognition of one's marriage is not to make the government part of the basis of one's relationship, or to give it regulatory power over one's relationship; instead, the utility of civil recognition of a marriage is to use the liberty afforded by civil law to enter voluntarily into a deep and theoretically permanent relationship with another person. And gay people are no less entitled to utilize their liberty as citizens than are heterosexuals .

I next posed the following question: "If you were suddenly told you were not allowed to marry the person you love, would you be satisfied to know that it's actually okay, since you don't need government validation of your relationship? Or could it be that you would be robbed of something fundamental to your identity?" And Gene answered thus:

Doesn't the same exact argument apply to siblings getting married or a parent marrying their child? Why not allow that to happen? I want to hear a defense of incest. That would make this blog much more interesting.

Well, I need to immediately express my gratitude that he did not employ the Rick Santorum strategy of comparing homosexuality to bestiality, but merely incest. It seems to me that Gene has inadvertently highlighted one of my strongest points about the arbitrarily discriminatory nature of excluding gays from civil marriage. Namely, but for the fact that they are homosexual, there is no criterion that straight partners wishing to marry one another must meet in order to obtain a marriage license that gay partners would fail to meet. It is illegal for relatives of the opposite sex to marry; and it would continue to be illegal for relatives of the same sex to marry.

Those who wish to draw the comparison to incest or polyamory fail to grasp the nature of the discrimination under discussion. Heterosexuals who commit incest may indeed be barred from marrying their cousins, but they still have the right to marry someone that they love, even if they may not marry anyone or everyone that they love. Homosexuals are prohibited from marrying every single person with whom they fall in love. Moreover, incest and polyamory refer to the objects of particular individuals' love (or actually lust, I would think) at particular moments in time; homosexuality refers to the manner in which some people are capable of falling in love, to the exclusion of all others. Homosexuality is a form of love, not a taboo sexual relationship, and I have yet to hear an argument as to why it is any less valid than heterosexual love.

There are, finally, practical reasons (which may be too obvious to be worth mentioning) for keeping both incest and polyamorous marriage illegal, mainly having to do with rape, abuse, and in the former case, birth defects.

Last point: I don't know what I was thinking in referring to the 15th rather than the 14th Amendment. As Eric Idle said in a Monty Python sketch in which his character couldn't pronounce the letter "c," "What a silly bunt!"

How To Play Nice

As a reminder to fellow bloggers and readers of this blog:

The fastest way to get someone who disagrees with you and whom you are attempting to convince to stop listening is to refer to them or their position as stupid, evil, or a piece of trash. It is rare that an idea is so heinous and atrocious that there is nothing redeeming about it, no kernel of truth that it might capture, however evil and misguided it might be.

IMHO, little is more evil than Soviet Communism and German Fascism of 1935-1945, yet each of these were founded on ideas that had some aspect of truth about them: the callousness of the tsars in the case of Soviet Communism, and the excesses of Versaille in the case of Fascism.

So it would be best to politely acknowledge the other side's points and disagree. That does not mean that one ought not to care about one's ideas. Rather, it is merely to emphasize that the other person's argument is often helpful in arriving at a better critique of your position.

Graduate From the Electoral College? Never!

Dan's little statistical analysis, while heartwarming to this math graduate student, is misleading and rather silly. By his reasoning, each Congressional district ought to contain the same number of people, right? But that never happens since populations aren't distributed homogeneously. So you inevitably end up with some Congressional districts with lots and lots of people and others with fewer. For example, according to the 2000 Census, the average size of a Congressional districts is to be 646,952 people. New York's smallest district, District 30, has 563,256 inhabitants, whereas its largest district, District 7, has 684,573 inhabitants. That would make District 7 21.5% bigger than District 30. Obviously, Dan admits that at the end. But still, how is this fair?

Dan forgets that we are not merely a democracy, but rather a republic, formed by a number of states signing a compact. His argument about populations is a legitimate criticism. But those who designed our system had good reasons for the Electoral College. We have a system of many checks and balances that has served us well for many many years. It would be a mistake to abandon it now. The Electoral College recognizes an important state-centered aspect of our nation and this is, I think, nearly as important as having democracy itself. Recognizing states as political entities allows us to have a nation of localities rather than merely of a bunch of people who have no local affiliations or allegiances, particularly in politics. I think that eliminating the Electoral College will slowly eviscerate any sense of state and local pride, history, and identity.

Many other governmental systems recognize this important feature of regional representation. For example, parliamentary systems such as Great Britain's are similar to the Electoral College in the sense that the Party that gains the largest coalition rules Parliament and appoints the Prime Minister. Are all of the Parliamentary districts apportioned to perfection? Certainly not. But England's counties, though important to its cultural identity, are not as important as states and their individual natures are to America's. We are called the United States of America for a reason. Let's not make that name about as indicative of national structure as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, which was less of a union and more of a straight-jacket.

I'll Take The Blue Pill
Dan gives us libertarians an interesting choice between the welfare state and the religious state. Ought we be more uncomfortable with an increase in the marginal top tax rate of the order of 1 to 5% or the "The gradual incorporation of religious ideology into the institutions of a nominally secular state?"

Well, this question is biased, as Kira alluded to in her comment. These are not comparable choices. One is a fundamental shift in the role of religion in our society on a macroscopic scale. The other is one small public-policy decision. More proper choices would be:

Microscopic changes
A) Bush's faith-based initiatives
or
B) An increase in tax rates.

Or:

Macroscopic changes
A) The gradual incorporation of religious ideology into the institutions of a nominally secular state
or
B) The gradual nationalization of the banking industry.


Well, in both cases, I would say that I'd be more uncomfortable with choice (B), which I do not think indicates that I don't know what "liberty" is. And again, as Kira mentions in her comments to this post, we would need to know what the gradual incorporation of religious institutions actually mean. Is the end result Medieval Europe? Or is it Virginia of the 1780's? Or the Protestant midwest of the early 1920's?

In Response to Dan's Gay Marriage Post

Dan writes:

The FMA in its current language not only prohibits gay marriage, but also "any legal incidents" of marriage rights; in other words, no civil unions or domestic partnership agreements. That's the whole point. Gay couples are to have no legal rights whatsoever.

This is false. Gays can still form contracts and name their partners as executors of their will or beneficiaries or whatever else they want to do. Lack of the granting of a license to be married does not deny them the right to marry. Marriage is both a legal and a social institution, each of which has its separate spheres. For example, the Catholic church prohibits contraception, whereas the legal institution makes no such prohibitions.

I agree with Dan on the final question. But I think that he is over-reaching in his argument. I do not think that not allowing the states to recognize civil unions is a denial of anyone's civil rights simply because recognition of one's marriage by the government is not a right (then why not let siblings get married or five people get married or a father marrying his daughter, etc). But for public policy reasons which I have stated before on this blog, I believe that states should grant licenses and legal recognition to same-sex couples. But screamin' and hollerin' isn't going to get you very far with trying to convince people.

Dan then writes:

No two people marry one another so that the government will recognize their love for each other; they marry because marriage is the most binding commitment of love that any two people can make. The "legal incidents" of marriage, i.e. the rights concordant with a valid marriage license, are secondary to the psychological bond forged by marriage--which is why any substitute for marriage is so deeply inadequate.

Well, that seems to be a logical contradiction. If "the rights concordant with a valid marriage license are secondary to the psychological bond forged by marriage" as he claims, why is it that one would need government recognition of this? That doesn't make sense to me. The FMA does not ban gay people from marrying each other in, say, an Episcopalian church or a Reform synagogue. They can still live together and have honeymoons to South Beach and bridal showers (who's the bride, by the way?) and bridal registries at Barney's and what have you. They can still have the "psychological bond forged by marriage" if they love each other as much as Dan claims they do. And if that psychological aspect of marriage is so much more important than a marriage license itself, who cares if one has the legal documents or not if they are secondary to begin with? Dan is undermining his own argument here.

Finally:

Gay people want merely for their love to be given the same legal standing as we give to the love between heterosexuals, and they don't want and can't force any religious group or intolerant community to accept them. As citizens, they are entitled to 15th amendment protections. As human beings, they are entitled to a certain level of respect and decency. If you were suddenly told you were not allowed to marry the person you love, would you be satisfied to know that it's actually okay, since you don't need government validation of your relationship? Or could it be that you would be robbed of something fundamental to your identity?

Doesn't the same exact argument apply to siblings getting married or to a parent marrying his child? Why not allow that to happen? I want to hear a defense of incest. That would make this blog much more interesting. Oh, and by the way, the Fifteenth Amendment says:

Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
Section 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Now, I may be wrong, since I am not gay nor an expert on gay psychology or identity (maybe we should ask James Hormel this question), but I didn't think that sexual orientation is a race, color, or previous condition of servitude. Unless one were to of course interpret "previous condition of servitude" in some strange sadomasochist context. But we don't want to go there.

I believe that what Mr. Koffler is referring to is the "privileges and immunities" clause of the 14th Amendment:

Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

For an interesting discussion between Professor Bainbridge of UCLA and Richard Epstein of U of Chicago of the application of this clause to the gay marriage debate go here.

Re: Judaism

I didn't compare the hatred for gays expressed by leading advocates of the FMA to traditional anti-Semitism incautiously or hyperbolically.

"There is a master plan out there from those who want to destroy the institution of marriage to, first of all, begin to take this issue in a few select courts throughout this country at the state level."---Sen. Wayne Allard, in a classic line of conspiratorial Jew-, I mean "fag-baiter." No one has a master plan, and no one wants to destroy marriage. Some people merely want to get married.

Meanwhile, the rock upon which the church was built, Rick Santorum, had this to say: "Marriage is hate. Marriage is a stain. Marriage is an evil thing. That's what we hear." Would he care to attribute that statement? No one wants the right to enter into something that is "hate," "a stain," "or evil."

The haters have been reduced to hysterical lying and slander. They are going to suffer an ignominious and embarrassing defeat today. Good.

Double-you-tee-eff

I quote from recommended article:

"The FMA does not eliminate the "right" of gay people to marry."

Well, yes it does. Unless they're supposed to enter sham marriages with members of the opposite sex.

"It does, however:

1) Promote the right of children to be raised in married, healthy homes with both genders as role models."

A constitutional amendment banning divorce would affect far more children than will ever be raised by gay parents. Strange that no one is proposing such an amendment. Could it be that this actually doesn't have quite so much to do with the rights of children? Of course it is the case, since gay people who want to get married want their kids "to be raised in healthy, married homes." Ah---but the crucial "with both genders as role models" proviso. Let's start putting the children of single moms and dads into foster care right now and banning them from adopting children until they find a spouse. In fact, let's create a regulatory body to make sure unmarried people don't have unprotected sex.

"2) Give gay couples more liberty by preserving the privacy (and free markethood) of their relationships."

The FMA in its current language not only prohibits gay marriage, but also "any legal incidents" of marriage rights; in other words, no civil unions or domestic partnership agreements. That's the whole point. Gay couples are to have no legal rights whatsoever.

Is the privacy of heterosexual couples endangered by marriage, let alone their mere right to marry? The fact of the matter is that the desire, ability, and financial capacity to have children have no bearing whatsoever in the validity of a civil marriage. There is no criterion that heterosexual couples meet for obtaining a marriage license but that gay couples would fail to meet---save that they are gay. That is the very definition of arbitrary discrimination. The right to marry is one of the most fundamental civil rights of all citizens, on the same level as the right to vote and the right to serve in the military (hey, there's another discussion). No two people marry one another so that the government will recognize their love for each other; they marry because marriage is the most binding commitment of love that any two people can make. The "legal incidents" of marriage, i.e. the rights concordant with a valid marriage license, are secondary to the psychological bond forged by marriage---which is why any substitute for marriage is so deeply inadequate.

Love between gay people is every bit as deep, genuine, and complex and love between heterosexuals---or as shallow and insincere. Gay people want merely for their love to be given the same legal standing as love between heterosexuals, and they don't want and can't force any religious group or intolerant community to accept them. As citizens, they are entitled to 15th amendment protections. As human beings, they are entitled to a certain level of respect and decency. If you were suddenly told you were not allowed to marry the person you love, would you be satisfied to know that it's actually okay, since you don't need government validation of your relationship? Or could it be that you would be robbed of something fundamental to your identity.

Gay men and women aren't some foreign community living in isolated enclaves along the coasts. They have parents, siblings, nieces and nephews. They want to be a part of their own families; they attend the weddings of their brothers and sisters, and don't deserve the insult of some watered down substitute. Their love isn't any less real.

Oy, I'm All Ferklempt

Playing the Jew card never gets old, does it? But to answer the burning question: no, I do not endorse the belief that gays are inhuman, but I do endorse the FMA. And as a libertarian, Dan, you should too.

And now, boychick, I am to duck out before I get too deep. Because as the good book says, "If you spit in the air, it lands in your face."

They look so natural together
Just like two newlyweds should be
Is there a canopy in store for me?

Footnote: The idiocy and malice underlying "think of the children" arguments is explained here.

Bigotry That Dare Not Speak Its Name

I'm not really sure if Diana is endorsing or just calling attention to this hateful screed. Most of the arguments one encounters against civil rights for gay people fall into one of two categories: 1) overt denunciation of homosexuality and homosexuals; and 2) some sort of "proof" that equal rights for gays will be the downfall of society in x, y, and z ways. I tend to think that the latter is a sublimated version of the former.

But it's rare, and in a way, refreshing, to read an attempt to straddle both positions, to simultaneously dehumanize fellow citizens as well as claim that their integration into pre-existing social structures will destroy society. A fisking, then:

"My daddy's name is Donor." [A photograph shows a young boy wearing a shirt with that caption.] This T-shirt made by Family Evolutions, a company that specializes in products for homosexual parents, really says it all. The child is the son of the company's founders, a lesbian pair.

Look at this boy, and look at his T-shirt (click on it for a larger view). That's what the homosexual-marriage campaign is about.

Really? That's what it's all about? So all those gay people who claim that they want to be able to have their love recognized in civil (and secular!) law, and to be able to refer to their loved one as "husband" or "wife," rather than the infantilizing "girlfriend/boyfriend" or bloodless neologism, "partner," are just lying? All that they actually want is to dress little children in slogans that offend traditional cultural sensitivities, or maybe all that they actually want is to create children out of test tubes. Surely it has nothing to do with love, or equal protection under law. Dawn has got some explaining to do, furthermore, when it comes to her views about children conceived through advanced fertilization technologies. Are children born to loving heterosexual parents under these circumstances somehow inferior to other children? If an infertile man and his wife go to a sperm bank in order to have a child, is that child's father's name "donor"? No! It's just "dad," and it refers to the father who raises the child. Something tells me Dawn wouldn't be so quick to express this sort of disdain for the children of heterosexual parents. So her claim amounts to a claim that homosexuals, and not their children, are deficient. Let's read on.

It's not about letting a new social norm be accepted alongside the old. It's about upending the norms, so that instead of a mother and father, a child simply has Parent A and Parent B. It's about making fatherless or motherless children the rule?and not the exception.

In reality, the movement for gay marriage rights has nothing to do with enforcing the coexistence of a new social "norm" [Dawn really needs to learn what normativity means, but I'll give her lazy vocabulary a pass for now] with an old one---that would be the outcome of the codification of civil unions or domestic partnership arrangements. It's not about upending social conventions either. On the contrary, the movement for gay marriage rights is a movement to normalize gay relationships, to bring them within the sphere of "normal" domestic life from which they have so far been excluded. Then comes the innuendo: gays are furtively trying to rob children of their mothers and fathers, just so that their twisted social experiment can succeed. Note that a child who is raised by two men or two women has Parent A and Parent B, not dad and dad, or mom and mom, let alone individuals with their own identities, life experiences, and love for their children. Would Dawn make the same claim about single moms or dads? Do their kids have just Parent A? As for the final clause---about making something the rule rather than the exception---does even Dawn buy this? Homosexuals constitute somewhere between a 20th and a 10th of the population. They will never be the majority---unless, as the more articulate advocates of homosexual civil rights understand, the purpose of the movement is to erase the need for a distinction between gay and straight, and let simple love be the token of a family.

Most of all, the homosexual-marriage campaign is about the selfish interests of adults?not what's best for children. Look at the face of that little boy. He's old enough to have some idea of what it means to have a daddy named Donor. Do you think he's happy about it? Do you think he considers that worth celebrating? Or did his lesbian parents stick him in that T-shirt because they thought they'd have some harmless fun at his expense? Besides, he makes such an adorable shill.

Ah of course, the old trope about selfishness at the heart of homosexual relationships. If we were talking about heterosexuals, it would be manifestly obvious that the desire to have a spouse and a child no matter what the difficulties in obtaining necessary fertilization treatments is anything but selfish. But since we're talking about gays, it must be that they are creating a test tube baby merely to exploit for their own selfish and (naturally) perverse ends. Again, would Dawn feel the same way about the child of a man and woman who was conceived through anonymous artificial insemination because his or her father was infertile? And, one must finally ask, how exactly can she justify imputing a covert agenda of God-only-knows-what-depravities to all homosexuals based on the apparently coarse actions of two individual lesbians? The answer, of course, is that such an argument is only compelling to a paranoiac already convinced that the Homintern is trying to subvert society.
Finally, the jewel of the piece:

The Family Evolutions Web site includes an advice column, "Ask Evolved Moms, which currently has a question from a lesbian mother-to-be, asking if she should circumcise her son. She writes, "To me the penis has never exactly been a beautiful thing regardless of which way it looks - so what do we do?"

If you're a man who grew up with a father, you must be thanking God right now. Clearly, there's more going on in that lesbian's question than simple lack of knowledge. Underneath it is a sense that the child isn't really her child?it's this strange creature that's being dropped in her lap.

I can't think of a heterosexual mother of a son, whether biological or adoptive, who doesn't love her child's body simply because it's his. To think of women who have such a visceral distaste for the male body, not to mention a weird lack of maternal feeling, raising sons on their own?it would be ludicrous if it weren't a very real tragedy.

Ah, of course, I was forgetting that lesbians hate men. And I, as a man, am certainly shocked to learn that there are women who don't think penises are beautiful. For a woman not to love the penis...why that's just downright un-American. Somehow I don't think that confusion over whether or not to circumcise their son disqualifies lesbians as parents. They only have two choices. And neither one is wrong. It's hard to get worked up about something as farcical as this logorrhea eventually becomes; but we have to remember, Dawn actually means every word of it, she really thinks gay people are inferior in fundamental ways, unfit to be parents, undeserving of the full array of civil rights guaranteed to all other citizens, and yet (this is two-fer that characterized traditional anti-semitism) engaged in a cunning and successful plot to undermine the society in which they live. Of course, unlike Jews, it's not quite so easy to treat gays as if they're an alien force. Even Republicans have gay family members. You'd think they'd be a little more compassionately conservative.

The Dawn of a New Era

As the nation prepares for tomorrow's vote on the Federal Marriage Amendment, Dawn Eden weighs in on the potential problems that gay couples as parents would cause for their children. Via the righteously indignant E-Pression.

A State That's Untouchable Like Eliot Ness

If you have the sense in your gut that the electoral college is an outdated piece of trash that has no place within a democratic system in which senators are elected, and non-property owners, women, and minorities can vote, but don't yet know quite why, recite this statistic to yourself over and over again:

33.7 million people live in California. California has 55 electoral votes.

26.6 million people live in the 17 smallest states (population-wise) and DC, combined. Altogether, these states and district get 67 electoral votes.

What does that mean? If you live in California, your vote for president is worth a fraction of the vote of someone living in Vermont or Delaware. It gets even worse in the legislature. Wyoming and California have precisely the same number of senators; so every single citizen of Wyoming gets something like 70 times more representation in the Senate than every single citizen of California. 15th Amendment, no?

(Incidentally, I challenge any defenders of the present system 1) to explain how this is fair; 2) anticipating the typical boilerplate about how smaller states wouldn't count if not for the electoral college, explain why it's necessary to violate the equal protection of the citizens of populous states in order to protect citizens of small states; and 3) explain how (2) isn't exactly the same logic that makes some of us find many affirmative action policies so repulsive.)

Fortunately, salvation is at hand. All that populous states have to do is game the system the same way small states have been doing lo these many years. And that can be accomplished simply by dissolving the large states into smaller states. This blogger blazes the trail, detailing how California could divide into 23 separate states that would all be more populous than Wyoming.

Just imagine: effectively 46 senators from California, 20-30 from New York, etc., and finally, something like every citizen's vote for president counting (almost) the same. (Of course there would still be disparaties, but a 25% difference in the raw value of a vote is different in kind as well as degree from a 7000% difference.)

A simple question for libertarians:

Which makes you more uncomfortable?
A) The gradual incorporation of religious ideology into the institutions of a nominally secular state?

OR

B) An increase in the top marginal tax rate of somewhere between 1% and 5%?

If the answer's B, you don't know what liberty is.

A Liberal Libertarianism

I agree with both the premises and conclusions of Landsburg's argument against the minimum wage. If we are going to do something for low-income workers---and let's just assume that we should---the way to do it is through tax incentives, which not only generate at least as much wealth for them as minimum wages, but will also spread the cost of that wealth creation more evenly and fairly among the general population. Moreover, it would create incentives for workers in the lower tax brackets to be more productive.

This leads me to present, in admittedly highly generalized terms, a vision of a libertarian economy and polity that I think is both more appealing and more likely to be a success than antecedent forms, which tend to range from rabid AynRandism (I refuse sully the word "objective" through that association) to mild pro-Republicanism on fiscal grounds.

Conceding that some form of taxation is necessary for the maintenance of a nation-state (and also the supra-national states that are likely to emerge in the future), the question is how should a government go about securing income. Most libertarians believe in some kind of flat tax or national sales tax. I couldn't disagree more. Those proposals are hideously punitive towards the working and middle class. The idea that assigning an arbitrary percentage of everyone's income to be taxed, or else some atmospherically high duty on all transactions, is the sort of thing that, if put into effect, inspires third-estate revolutions [what are you doing for Bastille day?--ed.].

The ideal libertarianism, instead, is an economy free of price controls of all sorts (this includes minimum wages), free of any sort of protectionist barriers to trade, and supported by a single, heavily graduated income tax (which I suppose would have to be apportioned in some manner along state and federal lines). No more sales taxes, tolls, or tarriffs. Gone, too, would be the payroll tax, a mechanism by which the government gains income for itself by digging deeply into the pockets--and putting a stamp on the paychecks--of people who can least afford to surrender any more of their own income to the treasury. Getting rid of payroll taxes would carry the ancillary benefit of forcing a more honest debate on taxes; Republicans could no longer make the Clintonian claim that low-income earners do not pay income tax, which may technically be true, but is deliberately and entirely misleading, since the payroll tax is a tax against income.

Let the free market reign, or ring, whichever's correct.

Wages, etc.

Steven E. Landsburg has an interesting article in Slate that first discredits the Republican myth that the minimum wage is bad for overall employment, and then provides a good argument against minimum wages.

On the first point, the notion that increases in minimum wages (JFKerry, for; G-Dub, against) will hurt employment among minimum wage-earners is based on the seemingly logically sound premise that higher labor costs for minimum-wage employers will force them to cut back on jobs. Studies done in the ballpark of 20 years ago seemed to confirm that. But Landsburg explains why those studies were statistical outliers of the vast majority of available data, and that labor economists now believe that minimum-wages have a minimal impact on overall employment; consequently, an increase in the minimum wage will not kill off many jobs, and those it does affect were pretty crummy jobs. I suspect that the reason the anti-minimum-wage logic doesn't pan out is that minimum-wage employers still have their own requisites for overall labor power, and that the sorts of increases in labor costs resulting from minimum-wage increases are not among the most important factors in the calculus by which an employer determines how many laborers he wants on his payroll. There is going to be a certain number of workers without which his business cannot function, while conversely, a minimum-wage increase is unlikely to be the critical mass in moving an employer to decide to eliminate jobs. The employer would probably have arrived at that latter decision whether or not the minimum wage had been increased.

Moreover, if the minimum wage were to be decreased (or, as has been the case, did not keep up with inflation), such a development would actually create an incentive for minimum-wage employers to cut jobs. Why? Suppose an employer were able to project that cutting X jobs, the (hypothetical) maximum number of jobs that could be cut without a loss in productivity, would save him $Y per year. He might not feel that $Y is enough of a savings to justify such a move (let's say he's got some sympathy for the workers). However, tell him that with an unadjusted minimum wage, he stands to save $Y + the factor of the rate of decrease in wages over a period of years, and that might just be enough to get him to start cutting jobs.

Okay, enough with Republican mythology. What does Landsburg have against the minimum wage? Precisely the fact that it's too good for minimum-wage earners. It constitutes a redistribution of wealth toward low-income earners, but unlike other wealth transfers, which are funded through taxes and hence spread out over the entire population, minimum wages literally transfer wealth from low-wage employers and their consumers to minimum-wage earners. It's morally equivalent to imposing a tax on people who hire unskilled labor without bearing any political risks for doing so (I don't think an overt tax proposal along these lines would garner any support), as well as on consumers, whose interests are the very interests that determine electoral outcomes.

As a sidenote, Landsburg's article provides a kind of contrapositive argument against supply-side economics. That too is an ideology of speculative behavioralism masquerading as economics. There is no way to know for sure that tax refunds specifically favoring the wealthy are going to stimulate anything along the lines of job creation, reinvestment in the economy, etc. The supply-side argument postulates that such rebates create an incentive for a "trickle-down" (I'm not using that term pejoratively) effect; yet work in the social sciences indicates that whatever incentive is created is largely outweighed by other tendencies among the upper income brackets, and that the trickle-down effect is therefore minimal. This is not to say that government cannot generate economic growth by, let's call it, re-privatizing some of its tax revenue; rather, it indicates that the wealthy are by no means the ideal segment of the population for targeting tax cuts.

Prince Charles Troubled by Grey Goo

The BBC reports today that Prince Charles is worried about the possible risks of advancements in nanotechnology. Though he acknowledges its potential benefits, including "enabling the construction of much cheaper fuel-cells, or new ways of combating ill-health," he also "[does] not believe that self-replicating robots, smaller than viruses, will one day multiply uncontrollably and devour our planet. ... Such beliefs should be left where they belong, in the realms of science fiction."

This conflicting message continues when he calls nanotech "a triumph of human ingenuity" at the same time as he likens its risks to that of the fateful drug thalidomide, which was originally developed to combat morning sickness but eventually found to cause birth defects as a tragic side effect. Prince Charles would be surprised, he says, if nanotech did not "offer similar upsets" in parallel with thalamide's record.

But is nanotech really so risky? Is it really something to write off as the realm of science fiction? The NSF begs to differ:

Imagine a medical device that travels through the human body to seek out and destroy small clusters of cancerous cells before they can spread. Or a box no larger than a sugar cube that contains the entire contents of the Library of Congress. Or materials much lighter than steel that possess ten times as much strength.

They don't exist yet. But scientists believe that they can create them in the not too distant future, as a result of basic research on nanotechnology, the manipulation of materials at the atomic and molecular level. Many observers believe that nanotechnology will benefit humankind in the 21st century in numerous areas, each with an impact as much as antibiotics or plastics did in the 20th century.

Nanotech: friend or foe? We report. You decide.

To Kvetch, or Not to Kvetch?

Let the market run free long enough and who knows what avenues it will open. This Madonna-inspired new shtick irks me somewhat, but I'd rather have ChosenCouture.com selling, as this NYT article puts it, "kitsch like "Moses Is My Homeboy' T-shirts,"
than Neo-Nazi cults spreading the message of violence against Jews.

The commercialization of religion may be somewhat revolting to Orthodox Jews, but is there really anything we can do about it?

If Only Forrest Gump Could See Us Now

"Consumers have not benefited from "dumped" shrimp prices," says Eddie Gordon, President of the Southern Shrimp Alliance. Clearly, the only fair thing to do is to impose a tariff on the cheaper priced shrimp from abroad. Can't go wrong with protectionist-laden higher prices -- what was that about being good for consumers, again?

Via Cacciaguida.

Death and taxes? Death to taxes!

Why haven’t more people seized upon the FairTax yet? A national sales tax of 23% would replace every single federal tax levied on us, from income to death. In their FAQ (read it all - it’s like crack for your inner politikon zoon), the FairTax advocates explain that their tax would be revenue-neutral – that is, it would bring in as much as all of the various federal taxes do now. Furthermore, such revenues would be more stable than those from current, largely income- and investment-derived taxes, since consumption fluctuates much less from year to year. Even more importantly, this 23% tax rate would fully fund a monthly rebate to every family and individual in the country, covering all tax expenditures up until the poverty line (adjusted for the size of the family, naturally). Consequently, necessities will not be taxed at all. What’s more, only new goods and services will be taxed – neither used goods nor intermediate goods or services (e.g., wholesaler-to-retailer sales) will be taxed.

The benefits from this sort of tax scheme seem to be enormous. Most obviously, the massive costs associated with tax compliance – a not so cool $250 billion or so annually – will largely disappear. The only tax question anyone will be asked is how much new stuff did you sell this year? Of course, this means that the IRS will become utterly obsolete. Since we will no longer have to fret about taxes on April 15th, we can celebrate more important holidays on that date, like the portentous birth of the glorious Great Leader Kim Il-sung (b. 4/15/1912). General Kim, I don’t care what they say – you’ll always be my Eternal President.

Most importantly, a national sales tax will fix the dangerously perverse economic incentives that our current tax scheme promotes. Under the FairTax (sounds like a new freeway toll lane, doesn’t it?), you pay no taxes whatsoever on income that you save. Our current tax system punishes workers for adding value to the economy, even though any benefit anyone gains from money he or she makes comes from spending it, not earning it. This is best understood by the fact that any money you don’t use for consumption goes into investment, which is what causes economic growth and adds jobs in the first place. It’s absolutely crazy to be penalizing the generation of wealth that goes into investment – even the fattest of the fat cats gain no direct benefit from investing. Stocks and savings are neat only because of the future consumption they may permit, not because investment is pleasurable in itself, finance nerds excepted. The result? Massive gains in capital formation. Of course, that means that wages will rise, too, since the single most important historical factor in determining wages has been the amount of capital available to each worker. The United States will become an incredible tax haven, more so than it already is; when we lowered the top marginal income tax rates from 70 to 28 percent in the 1980s, foreign investment increased by half a trillion dollars. What would happen if we eliminated income taxes in this country is just sick.

Also very important is that Congress will lose a lot of its power to cater to special interests and lobbyists. By eliminating exemptions (simultaneously by taxing all retail products and no intermediate or used products), the FairTax would prevent politicians from being subtly able to hand out all sorts of subsidies to industries they prefer.

As for the concern that retail prices will rise, consider the fact that the current tax scheme already places all sorts of taxes on retail goods. Consumers pay with after-tax dollars. Corporate taxes on the manufacturers of retail goods invariably get passed on to consumers anyway. Taxes on retailers themselves get passed along, too, or no retailer would survive - retail profit margins tend to be vanishingly slim. The FairTax promotes transparency, too, so that the federal government can no longer hide the multifarious ways in which it taxes us invisibly.

So, where’s the downside here? Feel free to tell us what you think about the FairTax proposal in your comments. I know it seems too good to be true, but it really looks like it could work. Besides, with the massive inefficiencies, distortions and corruption in the current system, how much worse could it get?

Been a long time gone

Will post substantive stuff soon-ish, but there's plenty going on here to bide your time till then.