The Libertarian Party held their convention over this Memorial Day weekend. After six rounds of voting they nominated a candidate for President. It's too bad they didn't nominate a Libertarian.
Bob Barr: A Life Of Accomplishments
1. While in Congress, he was a member of the Speaker's Task Force for a Drug-Free America.This task force was established in 1998 by then-Speaker Newt Gingrich to "design a World War II-style victory plan to save America's children from illegal drugs."
2. Barr advocated complete federal prohibition of medical marijuana. In 1998, he successfully blocked implementation of Initiative 59 -- the "Legalization of Marijuana for Medical Treatment Initiative of 1998" -- which would have legalized medical marijuana in the District of Columbia.
3. He authored and sponsored the Defense of Marriage Act, a law enacted in 1996 which states that only marriages that are between a man and a woman can be federally recognized, and individual states may choose not to recognize a same-sex marriage performed in another state.
4. In Congress, he controversially proposed that the Pentagon ban the practice of Wicca in the military.
5. In 2002 he voted for the Iraq War Resolution.
6. He voted for the Patriot Act.
To his credit:
Since he left Congress in 2003 he's spoken against the Bush administration, and has stated that he regrets voting for the Patriot Act. He's spoken in favor of removing troops from Iraq. He is a supporter of the Fair Tax and repealing the 16th Amendment which gives the U.S. Congress the power to levy an income tax without apportionment. And he joined the Libertarian Party in 2006.
But does that make him a Libertarian? No. It makes him a disillusioned Republican, angered by the way the federal government ballooned under the Bush Administration. Disillusioned Republicans and Libertarians are like apples and oranges. A few years of speaking out against all his previous positions does not absolve him of all his political "sins," nor does it make him a Libertarian.
His criticism of Bush earned Barr labels such as maverick, Jekyll-and-Hyde and libertarian. I've got a label for you: BS.
Go Home, Bob Barr.
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Monday, May 26, 2008
Mrs. Sue OPEC
If you did a Google search for "sue OPEC" right this moment, you would get countless matches concerning the NOPEC bill that was recently passed in the House (Is Sue a female suicide bomber? credit for that joke goes to Joe Calhoun). The bill changes the Sherman Anti-Trust Act to allow for Congress to sue OPEC. If you read the bill, you realize that Congress would be suing OPEC for things that Congress does itself. In short, this is pretty arrogant, moderately hypocritical, and mostly stupid. In his blog, my father (click the above "Joe Calhoun" link) suggested some appropriate rewriting of the bill. He is far nicer than I am, and I offer this piece of editing:
"`(a) In General- It shall be illegal and a violation of this Act for any foreign state, or any instrumentality or agent of any foreign state, to act collectively or in combination with any other foreign state, any instrumentality or agent of any other foreign state, or any other person, whether by cartel or any other association or form of cooperation or joint action--
`(1) to limit the production or distribution of oil, natural gas, or any other petroleum product;
`(2) to set or maintain the price of oil, natural gas, or any petroleum product; or
`(3) to otherwise take any action in restraint of trade for oil, natural gas, or any petroleum product;
when such action, combination, or collective action has a direct, substantial, and reasonably foreseeable effect on the market, supply, price, or distribution of oil, natural gas, or other petroleum product in the United States.
`(b) Sovereign Immunity- A foreign state engaged in conduct in violation of subsection (a) shall not be immune under the doctrine of sovereign immunity from the jurisdiction or judgments of the courts of the United States in any action brought to enforce this section.
`(c) Inapplicability of Act of State Doctrine- No court of the United States shall decline, based on the act of state doctrine, to make a determination on the merits in an action brought under this section.
`(d) Enforcement- The Attorney General of the United States may bring an action to enforce this section in any district court of the United States as provided under the antitrust laws.' We of Congress would like to take this moment to confirm to the people that we govern that we are in fact arrogant, corrupt, useless morons. Thank you, come again."
`(1) to limit the production or distribution of oil, natural gas, or any other petroleum product;
`(2) to set or maintain the price of oil, natural gas, or any petroleum product; or
`(3) to otherwise take any action in restraint of trade for oil, natural gas, or any petroleum product;
when such action, combination, or collective action has a direct, substantial, and reasonably foreseeable effect on the market, supply, price, or distribution of oil, natural gas, or other petroleum product in the United States.
`(b) Sovereign Immunity- A foreign state engaged in conduct in violation of subsection (a) shall not be immune under the doctrine of sovereign immunity from the jurisdiction or judgments of the courts of the United States in any action brought to enforce this section.
`(c) Inapplicability of Act of State Doctrine- No court of the United States shall decline, based on the act of state doctrine, to make a determination on the merits in an action brought under this section.
`(d) Enforcement- The Attorney General of the United States may bring an action to enforce this section in any district court of the United States as provided under the antitrust laws.'
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Seeing the Whole Iceberg
David Wessel and Bob Davis wrote an article in March for the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) that ran in a similar form in the Educational version of the publication last September (the education version can be found here; it's slightly different but has the same message). Both versions of the article, called "A Very Big Iceberg," focus on Alan Blinder, economics professor at Princeton. Mr.Blinder, an MIT grad, has been with Princeton since the 70s and claimed in 2001, "Like 99% of economists since the days of Adam Smith, I am a free trader down to my toes..." Having helped to "sell" NAFTA along side Bill Clinton, it appears to me (when this article and that fact are taken into consideration) that Mr.Blinder is not so much pro-trade as he is pro-bureaucracy. This makes me wonder where on his body his toes are located.
"Mr. Blinder began to talk about this in public. At a foreign-affairs forum in January 2005 he called "offshoring," or the exporting of U.S. jobs, "the big issue for the next generation of Americans." Eight months later on Capitol Hill, he warned that "tens of millions of additional American workers will start to experience an element of job insecurity that has heretofore been reserved for manufacturing workers."
Last year, Mr. Blinder wrote an essay, "Offshoring: The Next Industrial Revolution?" that was published in the journal Foreign Policy. "The old assumption that if you cannot put it in a box, you cannot trade it is hopelessly obsolete," he wrote. "The cheap and easy flow of information around the globe...will require vast and unsettling adjustments in the way Americans and residents of other developed countries work, live and educate their children."
In that paper, he made a "guesstimate" that between 42 million and 56 million jobs were "potentially offshorable." Since then he has been refining those estimates, by painstakingly ranking 817 occupations, as described by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, to identify how likely each is to go overseas. From that, he derives his latest estimate that between 30 million and 40 million jobs are vulnerable.
He says the most important divide is not, as commonly argued, between jobs that require a lot of education and those that don't. It's not simply that skilled jobs stay in the U.S. and lesser-skilled jobs go to India or China. The important distinction is between services that must be done in the U.S. and those that can-or will someday-be delivered electronically with little loss of quality. The more personal work of divorce lawyers isn't likely to go overseas, for instance, while some of the work of tax lawyers could be. Civil engineers, who have to be on site, could be in great demand in the U.S.; computer engineers might not be."
A. "Guesstimate" is an invented word, I believe the one they might be looking for is "estimate" which you can in fact find in the dictionary (definition of estimate here and you might notice that if you search for "guesstimate" on Google you get a link to an Urban Dictionary page, among other things).
B. How is "potentially offshorable" defined? (for the record, "offshorable" is not a word either) When considering "offshorability" you can't just say that something is offshorable because it's possible that it could be done overseas. There are lots of jobs that people in the United States would want done by someone else in the United States. For example, if you're getting a divorce, you're going to want your divorce lawyer to live in your city, not in New Delhi. The very basic bottom line is that there will always be consumers who want face time (without plane travel involved) and so we'll never get to a point where everything can be done overseas as such alarmist articles as this imply.
C. Now for the mushy: Why do our computer engineers deserve those jobs more than computer engineers overseas? Idealistically, with dreamy eyes, Americans want everyone to get along. We claim that everyone is "created equal" but then turn around to complain when some of our jobs go overseas. Is everyone created equal? Or are all Americans equal? I'm pretty sure the phrase says "everyone."
D. The industrial Revolution was a pretty good thing; without it computer engineers wouldn't exist because we never would have come this far. Complaints about offshoring look backwards, shouldn't we look forward?
"Diana Farrell, head of the McKinsey Global Institute, a pro-globalization research group that has done its own analysis of vulnerable jobs, calls Mr. Blinder "an alarmist" and worries about the impact he is having on politicians, particularly the Democrats who see resistance to free trade as a political winner. She insists that many jobs that could go overseas won't actually go. Ms. Farrell says Mr. Blinder's work doesn't take into account the realities of business, which make exporting of some jobs impractical or which create offsetting gains elsewhere in the U.S. economy.
Mr. Blinder counters that he is looking even further into the future than McKinsey-10 or 20 years instead of five-and expects more technological change than the consultants do.
Mr. Blinder says there's an urgent need to retool America's education system so it trains young people for jobs likely to stay in the U.S. Just telling them to go to college to compete in the global economy is insufficient. A college diploma, he warns, "may lose its exalted 'silver bullet' status." It isn't how many years one spends in school that will matter, he says; it's choosing to learn the skills for jobs that cannot easily be delivered electronically from afar."
My first instinct is to say "if you can't stand the heat, don't be a chef, get out of the kitchen, and give someone else a shot," but something else about this disturbs me more:
While I do think Mr.Blinder is an alarmist, more importantly, I think the writers of this article are alarmists. Everything I've quoted above was from the educational version of the WSJ, and while I wish it weren't true, students are easily alarmed and directly mentioning education in this article was a mistake. Most students who read this article aren't doing independent research and making up their own minds; they read this article because a teacher told them to, the teacher advocated what was being said out of enthusiasm for their subject, and the students internalized it, end of story. Those students leave that classroom in fear that they won't be able to get a job when the time comes. They panic, quietly and privately, but they panic and it's on their mind for a while. Maybe it just distracts them a little bit, or maybe it really deeply affects them and they decide not to go to college because they think it won't matter. Sure, that's an extreme case, but adolescence is a time for extremes. What hurts the American job market? Subpar workers. What creates subpar workers? Few educational opportunities (or few people taking advantage of the chances they have), lack of motivation and fear of a lack of compensation. What creates those things? Popular sentiment, just like anything else. Perception is reality and if we think that all our jobs are offshorable, eventually they all will be. It isn't free trade that damages the American job market, it's a bad perception of free trade.
"Mr. Blinder began to talk about this in public. At a foreign-affairs forum in January 2005 he called "offshoring," or the exporting of U.S. jobs, "the big issue for the next generation of Americans." Eight months later on Capitol Hill, he warned that "tens of millions of additional American workers will start to experience an element of job insecurity that has heretofore been reserved for manufacturing workers."
Last year, Mr. Blinder wrote an essay, "Offshoring: The Next Industrial Revolution?" that was published in the journal Foreign Policy. "The old assumption that if you cannot put it in a box, you cannot trade it is hopelessly obsolete," he wrote. "The cheap and easy flow of information around the globe...will require vast and unsettling adjustments in the way Americans and residents of other developed countries work, live and educate their children."
In that paper, he made a "guesstimate" that between 42 million and 56 million jobs were "potentially offshorable." Since then he has been refining those estimates, by painstakingly ranking 817 occupations, as described by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, to identify how likely each is to go overseas. From that, he derives his latest estimate that between 30 million and 40 million jobs are vulnerable.
He says the most important divide is not, as commonly argued, between jobs that require a lot of education and those that don't. It's not simply that skilled jobs stay in the U.S. and lesser-skilled jobs go to India or China. The important distinction is between services that must be done in the U.S. and those that can-or will someday-be delivered electronically with little loss of quality. The more personal work of divorce lawyers isn't likely to go overseas, for instance, while some of the work of tax lawyers could be. Civil engineers, who have to be on site, could be in great demand in the U.S.; computer engineers might not be."
A. "Guesstimate" is an invented word, I believe the one they might be looking for is "estimate" which you can in fact find in the dictionary (definition of estimate here and you might notice that if you search for "guesstimate" on Google you get a link to an Urban Dictionary page, among other things).
B. How is "potentially offshorable" defined? (for the record, "offshorable" is not a word either) When considering "offshorability" you can't just say that something is offshorable because it's possible that it could be done overseas. There are lots of jobs that people in the United States would want done by someone else in the United States. For example, if you're getting a divorce, you're going to want your divorce lawyer to live in your city, not in New Delhi. The very basic bottom line is that there will always be consumers who want face time (without plane travel involved) and so we'll never get to a point where everything can be done overseas as such alarmist articles as this imply.
C. Now for the mushy: Why do our computer engineers deserve those jobs more than computer engineers overseas? Idealistically, with dreamy eyes, Americans want everyone to get along. We claim that everyone is "created equal" but then turn around to complain when some of our jobs go overseas. Is everyone created equal? Or are all Americans equal? I'm pretty sure the phrase says "everyone."
D. The industrial Revolution was a pretty good thing; without it computer engineers wouldn't exist because we never would have come this far. Complaints about offshoring look backwards, shouldn't we look forward?
"Diana Farrell, head of the McKinsey Global Institute, a pro-globalization research group that has done its own analysis of vulnerable jobs, calls Mr. Blinder "an alarmist" and worries about the impact he is having on politicians, particularly the Democrats who see resistance to free trade as a political winner. She insists that many jobs that could go overseas won't actually go. Ms. Farrell says Mr. Blinder's work doesn't take into account the realities of business, which make exporting of some jobs impractical or which create offsetting gains elsewhere in the U.S. economy.
Mr. Blinder counters that he is looking even further into the future than McKinsey-10 or 20 years instead of five-and expects more technological change than the consultants do.
Mr. Blinder says there's an urgent need to retool America's education system so it trains young people for jobs likely to stay in the U.S. Just telling them to go to college to compete in the global economy is insufficient. A college diploma, he warns, "may lose its exalted 'silver bullet' status." It isn't how many years one spends in school that will matter, he says; it's choosing to learn the skills for jobs that cannot easily be delivered electronically from afar."
My first instinct is to say "if you can't stand the heat, don't be a chef, get out of the kitchen, and give someone else a shot," but something else about this disturbs me more:
While I do think Mr.Blinder is an alarmist, more importantly, I think the writers of this article are alarmists. Everything I've quoted above was from the educational version of the WSJ, and while I wish it weren't true, students are easily alarmed and directly mentioning education in this article was a mistake. Most students who read this article aren't doing independent research and making up their own minds; they read this article because a teacher told them to, the teacher advocated what was being said out of enthusiasm for their subject, and the students internalized it, end of story. Those students leave that classroom in fear that they won't be able to get a job when the time comes. They panic, quietly and privately, but they panic and it's on their mind for a while. Maybe it just distracts them a little bit, or maybe it really deeply affects them and they decide not to go to college because they think it won't matter. Sure, that's an extreme case, but adolescence is a time for extremes. What hurts the American job market? Subpar workers. What creates subpar workers? Few educational opportunities (or few people taking advantage of the chances they have), lack of motivation and fear of a lack of compensation. What creates those things? Popular sentiment, just like anything else. Perception is reality and if we think that all our jobs are offshorable, eventually they all will be. It isn't free trade that damages the American job market, it's a bad perception of free trade.
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
The Red Button
. . .And Other Shit Slinging From Both Sides:
From huffingtonpost.com:
"While the putatively "liberal" media hyperventilate about a few words Barack Obama uttered in San Francisco last Sunday, lost in the din were the remarks at a fundraising dinner for Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and his compatriot Representative Geoff Davis who represents the good people of Northern Kentucky. Senator McConnell called Obama "incredibly naive" and Representative Davis called him a "snake oil salesman." But the truly offensive and, yes, "elitist," statement came from Davis when he said: "I'm going to tell you something. That boy's finger does not need to be on the button."
I have two things to say about this:
First,
Mr.Davis, your foot doesn't need to be in your ass. (And neither does Obama's need to be in his, but that's old news, so I won't address it)
and, more importantly, second:
Where IS this magical red button? What exactly does it do? And how many layers of bureaucracy do you have to wade through before you can push it? Or is it like a fire alarm? Lot's of loud noise and punishment (or not) later? Do you get called to the principal's office?
Interesting facts about Mr.Davis:
He's only three years older than Barack Obama.
He was born in Montreal (awfully American, eh?).
From huffingtonpost.com:
"While the putatively "liberal" media hyperventilate about a few words Barack Obama uttered in San Francisco last Sunday, lost in the din were the remarks at a fundraising dinner for Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and his compatriot Representative Geoff Davis who represents the good people of Northern Kentucky. Senator McConnell called Obama "incredibly naive" and Representative Davis called him a "snake oil salesman." But the truly offensive and, yes, "elitist," statement came from Davis when he said: "I'm going to tell you something. That boy's finger does not need to be on the button."
I have two things to say about this:
First,
Mr.Davis, your foot doesn't need to be in your ass. (And neither does Obama's need to be in his, but that's old news, so I won't address it)
and, more importantly, second:
Where IS this magical red button? What exactly does it do? And how many layers of bureaucracy do you have to wade through before you can push it? Or is it like a fire alarm? Lot's of loud noise and punishment (or not) later? Do you get called to the principal's office?
Interesting facts about Mr.Davis:
He's only three years older than Barack Obama.
He was born in Montreal (awfully American, eh?).
Endorsement '08
From brucespringsteen.net :
"Dear Friends and Fans:
LIke most of you, I've been following the campaign and I have now seen and heard enough to know where I stand. Senator Obama, in my view, is head and shoulders above the rest.
He has the depth, the reflectiveness, and the resilience to be our next President. He speaks to the America I've envisioned in my music for the past 35 years, a generous nation with a citizenry willing to tackle nuanced and complex problems, a country that's interested in its collective destiny and in the potential of its gathered spirit. A place where "...nobody crowds you, and nobody goes it alone."
At the moment, critics have tried to diminish Senator Obama through the exaggeration of certain of his comments and relationships. While these matters are worthy of some discussion, they have been ripped out of the context and fabric of the man's life and vision, so well described in his excellent book, Dreams From My Father, often in order to distract us from discussing the real issues: war and peace, the fight for economic and racial justice, reaffirming our Constitution, and the protection and enhancement of our environment.
After the terrible damage done over the past eight years, a great American reclamation project needs to be undertaken. I believe that Senator Obama is the best candidate to lead that project and to lead us into the 21st Century with a renewed sense of moral purpose and of ourselves as Americans.
Over here on E Street, we're proud to support Obama for President.
Bruce Springsteen"
Is he a superdelegate?
"Dear Friends and Fans:
LIke most of you, I've been following the campaign and I have now seen and heard enough to know where I stand. Senator Obama, in my view, is head and shoulders above the rest.
He has the depth, the reflectiveness, and the resilience to be our next President. He speaks to the America I've envisioned in my music for the past 35 years, a generous nation with a citizenry willing to tackle nuanced and complex problems, a country that's interested in its collective destiny and in the potential of its gathered spirit. A place where "...nobody crowds you, and nobody goes it alone."
At the moment, critics have tried to diminish Senator Obama through the exaggeration of certain of his comments and relationships. While these matters are worthy of some discussion, they have been ripped out of the context and fabric of the man's life and vision, so well described in his excellent book, Dreams From My Father, often in order to distract us from discussing the real issues: war and peace, the fight for economic and racial justice, reaffirming our Constitution, and the protection and enhancement of our environment.
After the terrible damage done over the past eight years, a great American reclamation project needs to be undertaken. I believe that Senator Obama is the best candidate to lead that project and to lead us into the 21st Century with a renewed sense of moral purpose and of ourselves as Americans.
Over here on E Street, we're proud to support Obama for President.
Bruce Springsteen"
Is he a superdelegate?
Stealing Money From The Public, one Internet Purchase at a Time
The beautiful days of sales-tax-free internet shopping maybe numbered (as told by an article from news.com)
The full article is here, but the general idea is simple: politicians want more money.
"For years, politicians in state legislatures and the U.S. Congress have been arguing that the rise of e-commerce is causing them to miss out on potentially millions of taxpayer dollars. But now, with a Democratic Congress and a potentially Democratic administration next year, the arguments may gain more political traction.
Technically, of course, Americans in states with sales taxes are supposed to keep track of out-of-state purchases and cough up the necessary sales tax on April 15--the concept is known as a "use tax". But state tax collectors have long complained that in practice, that just doesn't happen, and that money has been unfairly left in taxpayers' pocketbooks.
Verenda Smith, government affairs associate for the Federation of Tax Administrators, framed the decision as a moral one of sorts: "Do you want to be a good American, or do you want to be an American who wants to cheat your government deliberately? It's a harsh way to look at it, but it's true."
Unfair? Unfair? I feel like I need to repeat it again: UNFAIR? Do I want to be a good American? Sure. Do I like paying sales tax? About as much as I like sticking nails through my toes. Do I want to cheat the government? Only if they cheat me.
Lot's of people agree that government spending is outlandish. (Do they make $17 dollar Army hammers out of gold? Where can I get some? They'd make a killing as bling on the black market.) People spend money more efficiently when they have less.We call if budgeting. Why should we increase the "budget" of an institution that spends money like a five year old? (that is unwisely and recklessly). I'm sorry, Congress, until you can figure out how to properly spend the money you have, I don't think you need any more.
The full article is here, but the general idea is simple: politicians want more money.
"For years, politicians in state legislatures and the U.S. Congress have been arguing that the rise of e-commerce is causing them to miss out on potentially millions of taxpayer dollars. But now, with a Democratic Congress and a potentially Democratic administration next year, the arguments may gain more political traction.
Technically, of course, Americans in states with sales taxes are supposed to keep track of out-of-state purchases and cough up the necessary sales tax on April 15--the concept is known as a "use tax". But state tax collectors have long complained that in practice, that just doesn't happen, and that money has been unfairly left in taxpayers' pocketbooks.
Verenda Smith, government affairs associate for the Federation of Tax Administrators, framed the decision as a moral one of sorts: "Do you want to be a good American, or do you want to be an American who wants to cheat your government deliberately? It's a harsh way to look at it, but it's true."
Unfair? Unfair? I feel like I need to repeat it again: UNFAIR? Do I want to be a good American? Sure. Do I like paying sales tax? About as much as I like sticking nails through my toes. Do I want to cheat the government? Only if they cheat me.
Lot's of people agree that government spending is outlandish. (Do they make $17 dollar Army hammers out of gold? Where can I get some? They'd make a killing as bling on the black market.) People spend money more efficiently when they have less.We call if budgeting. Why should we increase the "budget" of an institution that spends money like a five year old? (that is unwisely and recklessly). I'm sorry, Congress, until you can figure out how to properly spend the money you have, I don't think you need any more.
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