Truthiness reigns

Everyone give a read to Colbert's material at the White House Correspondent's Dinner. Someone took the First Amendment too seriously!

More gas

This afternoon, while reading up on the news of my 'adopted state,' I discovered that waffling on the gas tax is a bipartisan affair in Vermont. Delightful.

I had to chuckle at this sentence in the article:

"There they struck a deal to pay for road and bridge repairs and match a windfall of federal transportation dollars without raising fuel taxes. Instead they agreed to bank on new estimates about higher-than-projected revenues from other taxes, such as income and sales."

Can you imagine anything like that happening in someone's home? "Hey, honey, we're going to be $60 short in our food budget this month. Do you suppose you could take that extra shift like we talked about, and I could work late this week?" "Dear, come on, let's just agree that I'll get that other job that pays more, the one I was thinking about maybe applying for."

On the other end of the sanity spectrum, sensible conservatives (an endangered species, to be sure) Charles Krauthammer and Andrew Sullivan both get it: supply and demand are causing price hikes in crude oil and gasoline.

To their credit, both men go further and embrace what we Optimates have already suggested, namely an increase in state and federal gas taxes. Krauthammer in particular has some interesting statistics about our ten-year dalliance with conservation in the 1970s and early 1980s, and the result of efficiencies on the GDP.

I think we should continue to bang the drum for increased fuel taxes, conservation credits, and more funding for public transit. Partisans of all stripes need to come to their senses (I know, I know...) and realize this is not so much a tax as an economic investment.

For example, think of the effect energy costs have had on major American industries over the past few years. In data seen here, we learn that 'per seat mile' labor costs used to be three times as high as 'per seat mile' fuel costs for our airline industry. Fuel has now caught up and threatens to surpass labor. What happens to the industry if we stay the present course?

Let me localize it to Littleton, New Hampshire. Littleton was able to attract and keep industrial and manufacturing jobs - the reverse of what's been happening elsewhere - in no small part because the town has a hydroelectric dam and therefore cheap electricity.

Certainly American workers cannot compete with the low wages that are commonplace in developing nations. But we can compete in the use of modern, efficient, and renewable energy, and drive down our overall cost. Indeed, that's been the source of America's traditionally high wages: efficiency and incredible productivity growth have kept us competitive. So the things we've been proposing won't hurt the economy in the long run - they would help it!

It continues to boggle the mind that this case isn't being made by any politician of any stripe. Again, it falls to the people to raise these issues and get things moving. I leave it to the commenters and your collective wisdom to figure out a way we can get these initiatives on the radar screen.

Happy Birthday

I would be remiss in all my duties if I did not wish Boudicca the happiest of birthdays! She turns 24 today. Please give her your love and best wishes in comments below!

No one does stupid...

... quite like the government.

The brain surgeons in our fearless legislative body have come up with some staggeringly idotic 'solutions' to the spike in gas prices. Take a gander!

Not to be outdone, the two presumptive candidates for New Hampshire's governorship have offered similar thoughts.

I wish I could even feign surprise that our leaders - and by implication, we - are coming up with this uninspired drivel for the coming energy crisis. But no, I'm not surprised, and neither are you. We expect completely uninspired ideas like this.

But let's say we actually wanted to create incentives for alternate transportation and fuels. Wouldn't we want to increase the price of gas and make excess driving more costly? Why yes, we would. So, in that spirit, I offer some minor proposals:

• Increase state and federal gas taxes by 10 cents per gallon with a phased-in approach. The extra revenue would be dedicated to public transit and related infrastructure.
• Increase tolls on turnpikes and interstates in regular lanes, while keeping carpool-lane fares constant. Again, use the funds for public transit and related infrastructure.
• Increase or create tax exemptions on fuel-efficient and alternate-fuel cars.

This may not be much to start, but I think it's better than making the problem worse. Other thoughts?

All in the same state

As many of you know, one of the reasons I like New Hampshire so much is that we're willing to go the distance to preserve every last scrap of liberty.

This has its good sides and its bad sides, of course. Recently, on this very blog, I took some hits for coming out against a bill to ban smoking in restaurants. My opposition to the bill was not because I love to smoke, of course, but because I think the government has no business regulating something like that. In the same vein, I was against a bill that mandated children to wear helmets while riding bikes.

But for every bit of 'out there' libertarianism like the kind named above, we come up big when it counts. Witness our opposition to the federal Real ID Act (link via Boudicca)!

The opposition comes from pretty much every quarter of the state's Republican Party - the religious say the card reminds them of the Mark of the Beast - and I'm happy to see it. Now let's see some other states follow our lead!

Papelbon!

How can you not love this kid?

Let's have a party

A short and amusing piece on why we need the Whig Party back (link via Boudicca). Any takers?

We're back!

Hello, hello.

The Courier's special economic review section (look for it here under 'special sections') is completed and out of the way, so I'm all yours once again.

I'm pleased to note that we've gotten a few more readers and a few more commenters in my absence, and I'm glad we had a lot of good posts and comments while I was gone. I trust this blog will continue to get better. Thanks for your help, everyone.

Iran and the Nuclear Scare

Something went by in the news today that I wonder if anyone caught. Today, Iran's oil minister, Kazem Vaziri-Hamaneh said to the Wallstreet Journal that they would NOT use oil exports as a "political weapon" in regards to nuclear development. In the same day, "Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said ... any attack on the country by the U.S. would be followed by retaliation against U.S. interests" (Bloomberg News, 04/26).

The disparity isn't all too confusing, the paradox can be resolved by what Iran is saying to the the US specifically and other nations in general. But it did pose some interesting thoughts on our current approach to Iran's interests in joining the nuclear fan club. A friend of mine asked me today: Does Iran have the right to develop nuclear power, at least as an alternative energy source?

This innocent question raised my interest particularly due to its wording-- many foreign policy experts more familiar with the subject than ourselves have thought about Iran, about whether Iran should be allowed to develop nuclear energy, about whether this is in fact its true intent. But the question above turns on the issue of "rights" and that seems to be an important factor in unravelling the ethical implications of the situation. First and foremost, the subject brings up the question of whether a nation is capable of possessing rights, something often relegated to autonomous individuals. If so, we would treat nations as entities capable of making ethical decisions or participating in a cooperative (egalitarian?) global system. But assuming nations have rights-- for the purposes of this discussion, let's say the right to liberty, such that it may choose its path as it sees fit -- have nuclear weapons changed the way we approach "rights" in the context of greater national sovereignty? That is, does any country have the "right" to develop these weapons? Of course, Iran is saying they only want to develop nuclear energy and will enrich uranium only to the point where it can be used for this purpose. But there's a lot to be said for the potential threat that this may not be true. This isn't to speculate on Iran's interests, but volatility in the region seems to suggest the agreement on mutually assured destruction need not apply here. Why do people create things if they do not intend to use them? Why build cars you don't intend to drive? Bombs if you don't intend to well... you know. Assume then that a nation's interests are exactly pertinent to building weapons of mass destruction-- do these rights exist and should they be dovetailed?

The End of the Interwebs?

On Wednesday, congress will hand over the rein of internet control to the telecommunications industry, thus legislating a corrupt conflict of interest and bringing special interest rule to a thriving, essentially lawless kingdom. Your thoughts?

The home of the free... and legal

And now for yet another Immigration Debate Post!

As I was trolling various news sources this morning, I stumbled upon this gem. (free registration is required). Some Latino pop stars "chose to re-record 'The Star-Spangled Banner' to show [their] solidarity with the undocumented immigrants and their quest for basic civil rights," said UBO (Urban Box Office, a Latin music-oriented record label), President Adam Kidron.

I find this particular quote and this particular quest quite fascinating for the questions both immediately raise in my mind:

1. Why would those who emigrated to America via legal means want to support those who made it here via illegal means? Why would someone want to enable "cheating" after reaching the goal the tougher way?

2. Is the Civil Rights Movement an apt metaphor for the current immigration debate?

In everything I've read, it appears that illegal aliens (I love the evolution of that term to the nicer-sounding "guest workers" or "undocumented immigrants") striving for "civil rights" fail to comprehend that the notion of "civil rights" relies upon citizenship status. In the 1960s, scores of African-Americans in the South who were full-fledged citizens of the United States were denied their civil rights under Jim Crow. In my book, this an entirely different ballgame. This isn't the only article to attempt to construct a parallel between the two...

And Now for Something Completely Different

I've been playing around with some modest changes to the blog appearance, and have developed a new stylesheet, that I think is much cleaner than the one we are currently using.

If you'd like to take a gander at it, it's available for review here. Let me know what you think. I'll be developing other stylesheets, as time/drive allows, and I'll announce the release of those, too.

 

That is all.

 

P.S.: There are a few options and features I've disabled because they query JavaScript from Blogger's servers. Rest assured that these features will be present in any layout changes that are implemented. (i.e.: the toolbar at the top of the page, the "email post" icon, etc.)

What makes a person an adult?

What makes a person an adult? In the thread on FAT WARS Prometheus said: “Why do we draw the line on age, but not on measures of intelligence or responsibility?" Actually we do.

In several health-related decisions this debate comes up all the time. Across the U.S. there is a well-established concept of the Emancipated Minor. Basically, there are already certain legal situations under which a child may be treated as an adult. The most interesting to me as a Pediatrician, however, are situations relating to reproductive health and confidentiality in teens. I’ll stick with New York since that’s where I live.

First - and I still find this a little bit crazy - having a child automatically makes you an adult for all medical decisions about yourself and your child. Also you can generally get access to health care without parental consent in cases of sexually transmitted disease, family planning services, emergency, alcohol and mental health treatment, or if you are married.

Second, confidentiality for teens is a grey area that gets tested all the time. We can’t provide good advice if we don’t know what kids are doing, but we can’t exactly ignore dangerous behaviors either. Parents want to know what their kids are doing. The obvious solution is for the kids to talk to the parents and vice versa but it doesn’t always work out that way. With the exception of the services mentioned above, we are supposed to make an evaluation of a teen’s maturity and work from a sliding scale or responsibility. Any behaviors that pose an immediate danger to the teen’s health are not confidential.

What are other areas where we consider children to be adults? I know they are sometimes tried as adults for serious crimes. In some cases they can join the military. What are the standards we should use?

Here's a reference I found listing a state by state summary of Emancipation Laws and here's a fairly decent quick summary of what it takes to be an Emancipated Minor in New York State.

He Is Risen

I temporarily break the hiatus to bring you the good news from John:

But Mary stood without at the sepulchre weeping: and as she wept, she stooped down, and looked into the sepulchre,

And seeth two angels in white sitting, the one at the head, and the other at the feet, where the body of Jesus had lain.

And they say unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? She saith unto them, Because they have taken away my LORD, and I know not where they have laid him.

And when she had thus said, she turned herself back, and saw Jesus standing, and knew not that it was Jesus.

Jesus saith unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? whom seekest thou? She, supposing him to be the gardener, saith unto him, Sir, if thou have borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away.

Jesus saith unto her, Mary. She turned herself, and saith unto him, Rabboni; which is to say, Master.

Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God.

Happy Easter.

 

Favorite Senators?

Happy Easter for all those that are celebrating today. My own family is not religious, but we are firm believers of any holiday that involves eating, drinking, and buying lots of chocolate. I also was reading a list on time.com this morning on who they thought were the top 10 and bottom 5 US Senators. It can be found here (sorry, blogger isn't accepting my html links this morning)

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1184028,00

I found it to be interesting, because amongst other things I never realized Ted Kennedy was responsible for creating COBRA (which any post-collegiate kid should know well). So I was wondering who you guys would pick as the best and worst senators? Feel free to judge this based on your political leanings, though it’d be interesting to see who you think is the most effective regardless of whether or not you agree with them. I’m not sure who’d I’d pick as the best, but I’m pretty sure Rick Santorum lands somewhere near the bottom, because, well, you know…

Pesach

I thought, since this is the second day of celebration (observed outside of Israel only), I thought I would take a moment to announce the start of Passover. It is a celebration of the exodus of Moses and his people from Egypt and Pharoh's tyranny.

Shalom!

Passover also marks the Last Supper, for Christians. It is believed that the Last Supper was the Passover Seder that was held the night before Christ was arrested, leading to his crucifixion and death (Good Friday), and resurrection (Easter Sunday).

Those interested in learning more can find more information about the holiday here.

A Short Dedication

This isn't directly relevant to most of you on this board, but considering we've posted on everything from restaurants, sex and TV shows to God and politics... today, I just wanted to reflect a little bit on the people in our lives. This matters most to me and Prometheus I think, but a teacher and a friend of ours passed away this week-- an incredible professor and one of the greatest persons you could ever really know. She was brilliant (and I find myself hating the word "was" all of a sudden) with a huge heart and a wonderful personality. Despite a full course load, acting as head of the department and conducting research in cryptology, there was never a time she wasn't there for you-- to talk to you about everything from math theory and algorithms to life and family. You'd hear her laugh in the morning when you got your coffee for that 9:30 class, and it'd make you smile because you'd just think "hey, this might actually be a good day." (If you ever heard this laugh, trust me, you'd understand-- it was always heart-felt, genuine and loud-- really really loud.) And despite never emailing her, losing touch for three years, feeling horrible because she fell ill and you never even knew, you realize you miss her because she had an impact on your life that you'll never be able to measure. Reading her obituary, it didn't seem right that it couldn't talk more to the person she was than the things she had done. Anyway, this isn't a post on religion or ethics, metaphysics or the a priori -- it's really just to make one small contribution towards recognizing someone who deserves better.

France's Failure: Part 2,048

It is no secret that I am not the biggest fan of the French polity (individual French people - I've been a fan of most that I've met), but my personal prejudices aside, I think President Chirac's withdrawal (log/pass=optimate/optimate) of the proposed CPE law (the youth labor contract that has had students and unions striking in France the last two weeks) illustrates the ongoing failure of the French government to govern and lead its own people.

The CPE was not perfect. Far from it, in fact. The law was a loosening of the firing restrictions imposed on companies with regards to people 26 and under. The (correct) aim of the legislation was to put a dent in France's egregiously embarrassing 12% unemployment (23% among 16-26 yr olds) by removing some of the disincentives to hiring that many French companies feel from France's highly restrictive labor laws. The move was meant to be a first step towards a much needed liberalization of France's labor laws, but was seen by students and unionists (most of whom were either not effected, or would be older than 26 by the time they graduated) as an attack on already feeble job security for youths.

The problem with the law was not that it weakened restrictions on firing too much, but rather that it did so too little, and took aim at too narrow a section of the labor market. The current laws create a rigid two tier system, with lifelong, heavily protected jobs for older professionals and an endless string of temporary jobs for those youth that can get them. The entire system needs to go, which means loosening not just the restrictions on the temporary positions held by young French, but on all jobs.

A shakeup of this sort would no doubt lessen the artificial job security enjoyed by those fortunate enough to have protected full time employment (a full third of whom work for the state), but the benefits will be twofold. First, French companies, freed from enormous costs associated with letting workers go under the current system, would be able to adjust their workforce according to their business needs, making them much more competitive globally. Second, as a result of this, companies would also be far more willing to hire new full time employees (because doing so would not commit them to paying a painful future cost should the need to downsize arise).

The benefits of a liberalize labor market are obvious, especially in a country with such high chronic unemployment as France has. Why then does the French government continue to fail in its duty to explain and sell these benefits to the French public? Perhaps the one silver lining here is that the failure of the law (as opposed to a watered down and irrelevant "success") leaves the issue unresolved, allowing the possibility of more comprehensive (and more effective) reform at a later date. If the law had stood, it might have relieved France's feeling of urgency, without doing much to solve the underlying problems. This issue is one of that common sort in governance, where a partial, or incomplete solution can be worse than no solution at all. The nature of representative government is such that you sometimes need to get all of your structural reform done in one feel swoop, before public attention and patience dissapates. Of course, that is often difficult because you have to build consensus to prosecute major change. Furthermore, the public will often be resistant to change, even when it is in their long term best interest because such change requires a short term pain. The job of leaders is to take the long view and to help explain to the people why they are necessary. The French government has failed to do this and is now facing the double price of an unreformed labor law and a loss of public confidence.

Chirac has been forced into dealing a blow to Prime Minister Dominique De Villepin's hopes of succeeding Chirac as president and strengthening his main opponent Nicholas Sarkozy (who has been distancing himself from the whole thing, even though he most likely supports some sort of liberalization as well). I'm not sure that I'm the biggest fan of either hopeful, but one thing is for certain; whoever wins will need to make a serious effort to bring France out of its self imposed delusions of isolation and into the real, global world.

Hiatus

Good morning, readers, commenters, and fellow-bloggers!
I just wanted to let everyone know that I will be on blog-hiatus for the rest of the month, to get things straightened out at work. I will probably return at the beginning of May.
Let's just hope nothing interesting happens until then. See you soon!

You Judas!

That may not be the insult we think it is, according to a translation of his gospel.

Light 'em up!

By a vote of 12-11, the New Hampshire State Senate killed a bill that would have banned smoking in all restaurants and bars throughout the state. Patrons can continue to go to dining establishments and smoke if that restaurant chooses to allow it.

I wrote a brief - brief - opinion piece in the Courier before the bill came up to vote recommending that it be defeated. I thought it was over-broad and generally too strict. Since the bill failed by one vote, will I flatter myself that I influenced the outcome? Of course I will!

Comments Sidebar as Design Experiment

Hello OptiLand!

I applied a little formatting to the recent comments sidebar, to try to improve scanability. I'm interested to know, what everyone thinks of it... not in a "lookhowgreatIamandallthecoolhtmlcrapIcando" kind of way, but does it help you see the general recent comments "landscape"?

 

Thanks

 

P.S.: Congratulations to Pascal's Bookie for having the longest name, thus setting the width of the block that holds the poster's name.

Universal healthcare

The state Legislature of Massachusetts has just passed a fascinating bill (link via Sullivan)that would mandate every citizen of that state to purchase health insurance, much in the same way that it mandates automobile insurance for car owners.

Interestingly enough, Republican Gov. Mitt Romney has said that he will sign the Democratic Legislature's bill into law, and double-interestingly enough, both sides agree it's a move toward personal responsibility!

Read the article and let me know what you think.

Buy it

I encourage everyone who has not seen it to buy the now-released Brokeback Mountain DVD. I encourage those who have seen it as well. A great, great movie. Feel free to comment on its merits below.

Eminent Domain and the Environment

An interesting post on taking private land and its possible effect on the environment over at Volokh. Give it a read.

A Modest Request...

I would like to request that people start using paragraph

<p></p>

tags in their posts. These harmless tags are not allowed in comments, but fortunately, it seems that the hard-return-to-line-break conversion works a little better in those circumstances.

This will raise the level of readability of everyone's posts, and will make everyone's experience, here in OptiLand, a little better.

Thank you for your cooperation.


The Management ;)

More immigration frustration

After my first (somewhat unpopular) post on the subject, I'm going to venture into the breach in a bit more controversial fashion. I'd like to discuss how I think our impasse with illegal aliens is having a negative effect on other communities in the United States, namely low-income, urban African-Americans and low-income rural whites.

In this post, I outlined the relationship between labor supply, illegal immigration, and minimum wage laws. Namely, that employers who wanted to flout wage laws had an easy recourse to do so by employing non-citizen labor.

Based on that thinking, I get very frustrated when I hear Bush trot out the canard of "these are jobs Americans won't do." It's rather the case that they won't be offered them because their wages mandated by law have priced them out of the market.

At the same time, we hear that our economy would collapse if we removed the lynchpin of illegal labor because there would be no one to work at these jobs. Again, this presumes that there is absolutely no available labor for the tasks, something we know isn't true; it's merely that there exists no legal labor, creating the illusion there's none whatsoever.

Let me bring this back to my original paragraph by citing Kaus (scroll up to post titled 'Clinton's Acheivement'). Mickey rightfully notes the chronic unemployment and underemployment of young black men was in part mitigated by the incredible job market in the late Clinton years. In short, Kaus says the labor market was so tight that employers had to go beyond the pool of illegal labor and employ inner city blacks.

Doesn't it stand to reason, then, that deprived of pool of illegals, they would hire underemployed African-Americans? Going a step further, since these underemployed people are citizens, wouldn't they have to pay them a fair and legal wage?

Let us also consider the sociological effects of this. As seen here, marriage is becoming an increasingly iffy proposition, especially in African-American communities. The columnist hints at a possible correlation between the decline in marriage and the loss of blue-collar employment for black men. In short, she says, "linking one's fate to a man makes marriage a risky business for a black woman."

But if these men were not just employable but employed, I have to believe that dynamic would change somewhat. Jobs would lead to wealth creation, to a more stable family setting, to lower crime rates, and to many other good things that come with employment. Everything I just wrote is just as true for underemployed rural whites, I should add.

It seems to me a great many social ills could be addressed if we acknowledge the reality of what our dependence on illegal labor is actually doing to our fellow unemployed Americans.

MLB is back

Here we are in the afternoon April 2, and baseball resumes in about two hours with the Cleveland Indians at the Chicago White Sox. Our dear Boston Red Sox start play against the Texas Rangers tomorrow.
Care to put your reputation on the line and give me season predictions? Go to it!

Good eats!

Boudicca and I went to the new Thai place in North Conway last night, the Bangkok Cafe, and we could not have been more pleased. It's a cozy atmosphere, the waiter was a fine citizen, and the food was delicious and bountiful. Highest recommendation.
Note to our fellow bloggers familiar with the area's Thai cuisine: Bangkok Cafe ranks on par with Siam Orchid, and above both the Spicy Lime and Thai Star.
I've got a crazy idea for the commenters: I want to hear about your best and worst "out-of-the-way" dining experiences. Is there a good Hungarian restaurant that you know about? A terrible Indian place to avoid? Let's hear it!

Girls Gone too wild?

I've been wanting to ask this question for a while but more important matters would always steal away my time. Reading this article tonight jogged my memory.

Is starring in pornographic materials degrading or empowering for women?

I trust that everyone will maintain their respective levels of maturity and remember that, as a result of the newfound popularity of our blog, the readership has grown (i.e., please don't include lascivious details you wouldn't want to mention in front of your 2nd grade teacher).

Stop me if you've heard this one already...

I saw this on the bulletin board, over at MySpace... yes, admittedly, I'm a member of the ubiquitous and somewhat infamous social networking website...

10 reasons gays shouldn't marry...

...according to who have no use for a brain.

1) Being gay is not natural. Real Americans always reject unnatural things like eyeglasses, polyester, and air conditioning.

2) Gay marriage will encourage people to be gay, in the same way that hanging around tall people will encourage you to be tall.

3) Gay marriage will change the foundation of society; we could never adapt to new social norms. Just like we haven't adapted to cars, the service-sector economy, or longer life spans.

4) Straight marriage has been around a long time and hasn't changed at all; women are still property, blacks still can't marry whites, and divorce is still illegal.

5) Straight marriage will be less meaningful if gay marriage were allowed; the sanctity of Brittany Spears' 55-hour just-for-fun marriage would be destroyed.

6) Straight marriages are valid because they produce children. Gay couples, infertile couples, and old people shouldn't be allowed to marry because our orphanages aren't full yet, and the world needs more children.

7) Obviously gay parents will raise gay children, since straight parents only raise straight children.

8) Gay marriage is not supported by religion. In a theocracy like ours, the values of one religion are imposed on the entire country. That's why we have only one religion in America.

9) Children can never succeed without a male and a female role model at home. That's why we as a society expressly forbid single parents to raise children.

10) Legalizing gay marriage will open the door to all kinds of crazy behavior. People may even wish to marry their pets because a dog has legal standing and can sign a marriage contract.

(one of the saddest parts about our society is that these arguments, before the humorous common sense, are the real reasons why people can't accept gay marriages.)

I thought it rather clever... but for all I know, this is old hat... I can't keep up with everything. But I know a good and clever point when I see one.

 

That is all.