Nadya Suleman and her army of 14 zombies are set to come munch on our reality-tv-addicted brains. Would if we could simply wield The Simpsons' and Paul Anka's cure for such afflictions as octo-mom and Jon & Kate...
To stop those monsters 1-2-3
Here's a fresh new way that's trouble free
It's got Paul Anka's guarantee...
(Guarantee void in Tennessee.)
Just don't look!
Just don't look!
Just don't look!
Just don't look!
Just don't look!
Steve Bainbridge provides some good explanations why more regulation doesn't make greed go away, it just modifies the way in which it is expressed, i.e., through rent-seeking. The "invisible hand" is no longer such -- it's just busy in back rooms making deals.
Putting the government's spanner in the works is unwise for another reason. Used to be the government would shake its fists at the private sector in moral outrage, but ultimately recoil to its own domain. With an effectively limitless federal jurisdiction, finger wagging is now followed by swift, comprehensive, and mindless reform. Government would be better off had we left a few teeth in the Commerce Clause: the economy can't be your scapegoat when you can claim control of it at whim. Kind of reminds me of the image of the dog chasing the car who wouldn't know what to do if he caught it. Except there are probably more things a dog can naturally do with a car than our federal government can do with the economy.
John Derbyshire shares the details of a few of New York's 1,325 six-figure pension recipients:
From the looks of it, CEO's and public servants might soon be passing each other in their government-controlled compensation elevator ride.• James Hunderfund, an employee of Commack school district, will retire September 1 with a monthly pension of $26,353.75. (Nothing hunderfunded about his pension plan, ho ho.)
• Richard Brande of Brookhaven-Comsewogue will also be heading for the golf course September 1 with a monthly pension of $24,222.43.
• William Brosnan cleans out his desk at Northport-East Northport July 1, and for the rest of his life will trouser a monthly pension of $19,058.80.
No offense to these guys — well, not much offense — but they are small-town education bureaucrats. Not only will they be getting annual pensions in the quarter-million-dollar range for the rest of their naturals, they are getting these numbers by law. If New York State's pension-fund managers goof on the investments, or the market craters, we taxpayers have to make up the difference.
It's not just edbiz either, though of course edbiz exhibits the greatest outrages. (Can't we please just GET RID OF PUBLIC EDUCATION?) Local-gummint seat-warmers are on the same gravy train.
• Dvorah Balsam of Nassau [County] Health Care Corp., annual pension $191,380.32
• Stanley Klimberg of Long Island Power Authority: $191,380.32.
• Gerald Shaftan, Nassau Health Care Corp. again, $181,457.76.
These folk are all, as no doubt they would be proud to tell you, "public servants." The idea behind that phrase is that they are like butlers or housemaids, placing themselves willingly at the beck and call of us, the sovereign public. So how come we, the sov. pub., spend our twilight years clipping coupons in rusting trailers in the Ozarks while our servants enjoy the beach condo in Maui?
The Senate has unanimously passed a resolution apologizing for slavery and racial segregation in the U.S. and sent the measure to the House.
The resolution passed Thursday includes a disclaimer saying that nothing in it supports or authorizes reparations by the United States.Oh, you mean the apology was all a stunt. That makes sense. Apologize away, so long as it doesn't cost anything.
After sounding like a realist in his Cairo speech, Obama goes right back to calling for healthcare utopia in his radio address today:
Any health care reform must be built around fundamental reforms that lower costs, improve quality and coverage and also protect consumer choice."NY Times reports:
Who could disagree with this? All upside and no downside. Somehow, I'm reminded of the project engineer's expression: "good, fast, and cheap -- pick two."Just how he plans to achieve that remains up in the air; the address was long on broad goals and short on specifics. Mr. Obama said that he had made it clear to Congress that health reform should not add to the budget deficit.
“We’ll work with Congress to fully cover the costs through rigorous spending reductions and appropriate additional revenues,” Mr. Obama said. “We’ll eliminate waste, fraud and abuse in our health care system, but we’ll also take on key causes of rising costs — saving billions while providing better care to the American people.”
Bill Handel this week extolled Obama for picking a Latina for a high position of power, explaining how it was a carefully calculated move to help mend relations between blacks and Hispanics. Two problems with this. First, aren't distinctions based on race supposed to be bad? This is not the same argument against affirmative action as "reverse racism." Affirmative action involves the idea of "setting things right," of "leveling the playing field" to make up for years of abuse of legal and political rights and processes. That is, because whites enjoyed power and wealth off the backs of minority groups for a period of time, some degree of promotion of minority groups ought to be permitted. In this way, the argument goes, we might achieve a degree of parity that we might otherwise not achieve, and thus truly become color blind.
But the Sotomayor appointment is different. As Handel argues, there are petty grievances between two minority groups, and we have a chance to fix it by doling out positions of power to selected members of those groups. That is, the appointments are made not because one group has been disadvantaged, as is the case in the affirmative action model. They are made instead because, without the appointments, some irascible members of the groups will continue to feel slighted, and the clash between the two groups will continue. This is a different sort of racial realism. And I find it extremely disappointing. Even if such racially motivated appointments quell these conflicts (which seems highly dubious to begin with), do they deserve to be quelled? And what about the costs? Are we to sacrifice the integrity of our crucial governmental functions to placate injured egos, to balance the demands of thugs?
Decisions based on race are infuriating. There is no end to the complications that are created when we make decisions based on race in the hopes of ending the practice of making decisions based on race. The answer is much simpler than that: stop making decisions based on race.
The NY Times on California Supreme Court Justice Carlos R. Moreno's empathy:
His opinions are measured in tone but show an eye for telling detail. A 2005 case involved a dispute over child support after the breakup of a lesbian couple. In reversing a lower-court decision that denied child support, Justice Moreno described the complex interplay of laws defining parenthood and signs of intent to form a lifelong commitment, but cut through the technicalities with a mention that “Elisa obtained a tattoo that read ‘Emily, por vida,’ which in Spanish means ‘Emily, for life.’ ”Perhaps in the future lawyers will need to start asking clients whether they would consider having their requested relief tattooed across their backs. "Workers' Comp Por Vida."
Tim Sandefur links to this story, in which Lydia McGrew explains "Why I don't teach my kids that Santa Claus is real." As Sandefur synopsizes, it's because "when kids realize there is no Santa Claus they might also start wondering about God." He complains that "McGrew gives no principled reason for believing in the existence of one but not the other; no explanation of why the arguments that apply to one would not also apply to the other--nothing but a bare assertion that God is 'different. He's real.'"
I am always befuddled that otherwise hyper-intelligent folks fail to grasp that God is a fundamentally different kind of being than Santa, or the Tooth Fairy, or aliens studying Hegel on Mars. When you talk about a claim, such as the existence of God, which, when rejected, undermines the possibility of making intelligible all other claims, that’s fundamentally different than rejecting the existence of the Stay-Puft marshmallow man. As Greg Bahnsen once put it, if I reject the idea that there are so many pounds of Cocoa Puffs in the world, that claim doesn’t have an effect on many other things. But when I reject the transcendental basis for causation, induction, and an objective morality, that's extraordinary.
I've noted elsewhere that, though I'm generally a supporter of free markets and freedom of contract, I think credit cards are something like an "attractive nuisance." The present upsides are too enticing, and the latent traps are too understated. The credit card is an unnatural, unholy beast to begin with, so I have little problem with regulating them.
So, if it's so easy to bash credit cards, why does Obama feel the need to conscript "rights" talk into his rhetorical campaign against them? Fox News reports that, just today, Obama said:
Americans . . . . have a right to not get ripped off by the sudden rate hikes, unfair penalties and hidden fees that have become all-too common."Certainly, "ripped off" is a self-serving term. If credit card companies were really ripping people off--i.e., breaking their contracts--they would be liable for, well, breach of contract, and we wouldn't need new legislation. What he's really getting at is that credit card companies shouldn't be able to structure agreements that allow them to hike rates the way they do. And perhaps they shouldn't.
The federal government will use eminent domain to assemble land to build a memorial to Flight 93 and its passengers who diverted terrorist hijackers. I can think of no better way to honor the heroes who gave their lives defending freedom than to forcibly confiscate other citizens' property.
I find this just terrifying. If state revenue is now channeled through the federal government--who may attach what strings it likes--just what is the point of a federalist system of government in the first place? Will state lines soon be nothing more than a convenient way of describing one's geo-coordinates, a quaint historical quirk in a neo-nationalist megastate?
H/T Volokh
In the bookstore flipping through Why I'm A Democrat, was struck by this quote from Maira Kalman: "I am a Democrat because I have a sense of humor! And a love of people! And democracy! And strawberry cheesecake! And a love of Spinoza!" Well, that about sums up the notion of too many folks who think that political parties are nothing more than aggrandized hobby clubs tired of having to influence everyone to their point of view, and who realized that, through politics, one need only convince 51% to secure hegemony of perspective.
This seems to be the big fight of our day--not the issues themselves (we will always lock horns on issues)--but instead the means we will restort to in advancing our respective points of view. It is a dangerous thing to use our sacred constitutional system to institutionalize some sort of lemonade-stand mojo.
The Religion Clause blog reports that Israeli Deputy Health Minister Yakov Litzman "is suggesting that the disease be called 'Mexican flu' because of Jewish and Muslim sensitivities over pork products." The suggestion seems to be that Mexicans won't mind, as they are quite used to connotations with disease and pestilence; better to associate the deadly virus with them than discomfort folks who'd rather not hear about icky pigs.
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