John McCain Should Do the Honorable Thing…..

….and resign, then run for his seat again in a special election if he wants to keep it. He has been one of my senators for almost 10 years and I have voted for him, reluctantly, and not usually as my first choice. He only represents Arizona’s interests for one year out of every six, the year leading up to his next reelection. For the other five years he seems to relish his role as “the Maverick,” and does what he damned well pleases, despite what the people of the State of Arizona tell him they want. He always knows better and seems to be more concerned wth Senate “comity” than doing what is right. He’s exhibit number one as to why the 17th amendment was a bad idea. 

Today, after Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, who is acutely aware that he answers to the people of Texas, not the Senate Majority Leader ( who happens to be with the other party, BTW) spoke for 21 hours against funding Obamacare (actually 21 hours starting yesterday), Senator McCain delivered what might as well have been the Democrat response. Mike Walsh at PJ Media has the basics. Here is the main point:

• his disgraceful attacks on Cruz, including his reach-across-the-aisle, dog-in-the-manger response today, this should be the end of Senator John McCain as a voice of influence in the Republican party. Ditto his mini-me, Senator Lindsey Graham. Indeed, the entire Old Guard of business-as-usual “comity” fans passeth. When you care more about what the other side thinks, it’s probably time either to switch teams or step down.
• There is new leadership in the GOP, whether the party wants to admit it or not: Cruz, Rand Paul, Mike Lee, Jeff Sessions, and the others who stepped into the breach to spell the senator from Texas.
• The Cruz faction in the Senate, and its allies in the House (whose leadership is now up for grabs) must now press their advantage. The louder the Democrats squawk, the more they are wounded; the one thing they’ve long feared is a direct assault on their core beliefs as translated into actions, and the deleterious effects of Obamacare, just now being felt by the population, are the most vivid proof of the failure of Progressivism that conservatives could wish for.
• Win or lose, the battle is now joined: First the struggle for the GOP and then the battle for control of Congress and the presidency. Cruz just struck at the kings he could reach — the Republican “leadership” — and has most likely dealt them a fatal blow. Now the Tea Party hordes must back him up by eliminating his opponents (who tend to be geriatrics, and thus “leaders” by longevity rather than talent or commitment) through the primary process wherever possible. If he can carry off this coup, he and Senator Paul will very quickly find themselves elevated from back-benchers to commanders.

Finally, this:

• Any party that cannot successfully sell freedom and personal liberty doesn’t deserve power. The trick will be to explain — by word and deed — that the Democrats’ Manichean choice (Big Brother or the orphanage) is a false one, that less can be more, and that the restoration of a Republic of self-reliant citizens will benefit all Americans — not simply the government class and its clients.

The last bullet point is absolutely correct. If the Republican party can’t recognize that, sell it, articulate it and convince us all that they BELIEVE in it, it’s all over.

Jonah Goldberg on the Myth of Live-and-Let Live Liberalism

First, the term Liberalism, as used in the US, is anything but in the sense of classical liberalism. It is statism/progressivism. Jonah does make this point in the National Review Online article here. That said he uses the news that the DC City government is about to issue 66 pages of rules regulating the tattoo and piercing industries to illustrate the point that when it comes to intrusive and largely unnecessary regulation, you are going to find a liberal-run big city, state or national government entity behind it.   From the article:

There is a notion out there that being “socially liberal” means you’re a libertarian at heart, a live-and-let-live sort of person who says “whatever floats your boat” a lot.

Alleged proof for this amusing myth (or pernicious lie; take your pick) comes in the form of liberal support for gay marriage and abortion rights, and opposition to a few things that smack of what some people call “traditional values.”

The evidence disproving this adorable story of live-and-let-live liberalism comes in the form of pretty much everything else liberals say, do, and believe.

Social liberalism is the foremost, predominant, and in many instances sole impulse for zealous regulation in this country, particularly in big cities. I love it when liberals complain about a ridiculous bit of PC nanny-statism coming out of New York, L.A., Chicago, D.C., Seattle, etc. — “What will they do next?”

Uh, sorry to tell you, but you are “they.” Outside of a Law and Order script — or an equally implausible MSNBC diatribe about who ruined Detroit — conservatives have as much influence on big-city liberalism as the Knights of Malta do.

Read the whole thing.

Is There a “Right” to Healthcare?

According to the late professor of Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Duke University, John David Lewis there is not, at least as interpreted by Jared Rhoads at The Objective Standard where he reviews a newly published essay that appears in a Medical Ethics text; Medical Ethics, 2nd Edition, edited by Michael Boylan. The key part from Rhoads’ review:

Lewis describes two basic and conflicting views of rights in America today. One is the idea of rights as entitlements to goods and services. The other is the idea of rights as moral prerogatives to freedom of action.

The first view holds that if a person has an unmet human need—a need that could be satisfied by some good or service—then it is incumbent upon others who are able to satisfy that need to do so. In other words, needs impose duties.

Lewis explains that this view fails in two important ways. First, because human needs are boundless, the consistent application of the notion that needs impose duties would lead to an endless creation of duties, and to ever-increasing government control over the lives of citizens, precisely because there is no end to the needs that one person may demand that others satisfy.

The other main problem, Lewis explains, is that imposing duties upon one person in the name of satisfying the unmet needs of another inescapably violates the rights of the first person. Applying this to health care, Lewis writes, “There is no right to medical care because there is no right to coerce medical professionals to provide it.”

The correct conception of rights, Lewis explains, is that rights define the scope of an individual’s freedom of action against which others may not infringe. Health care cannot be a right because health care consists of goods and services that are provided by medical professionals—people who have a right to think and act in pursuit of their own happiness and values just as anyone does. “To claim a right to medical care,” explains Lewis, “is to claim nothing less than a right to run the lives of those who must provide the care.”

I agree with this view. We often use the terms “rights” and “entitlements” interchangeably but they are not any more interchangeable than apples and oranges are. The Lewis essay being reviewed is not linkable but Rhoads’ interpretation is consistent with another (or the same? I don’t know.) Lewis essay, found here. Again, the key part:

These two concepts of rights -- rights as the right to liberty, versus rights as the rights to things -- cannot coexist in the same respect at the same time. If I claim that my right to life means my right to medicine, then I am demanding the right to force others to produce the values that I need. This ends up being a negation of personal sovereignty, and of individual rights.

To reform our health care industry we should challenge the premises that invited government intervention in the first place. The moral premise is that medical care is a right. It is not. There was no "right" to such care before doctors, hospitals, and pharmaceutical companies produced it. There is no "right" to anything that others must produce, because no one may claim a "right" to force others to provide it. Health care is a service, and we all depend upon thinking professionals for it. To place doctors under hamstringing bureaucratic control is to invite poor results.

The economic premise is that the government can create prosperity by redistributing the wealth of its citizens. This is the road to bankruptcy, not universal prosperity. The truth of this is playing out before our eyes, as medical prices balloon with every new intervention, and we face the largest deficits in human history.

If Congress wants to address health care issues, it can begin with three things: (1) tort reform, to free medical specialists from annual insurance costs of hundreds of thousands of dollars; (2) Medicare reform, to face squarely the program's insolvency; and (3) regulatory reform, to roll-back the onerous rules that force doctors, hospitals and pharmaceutical companies (who produce the care that others then demand as a "right") into satisfying bureaucratic dictates rather than bringing value to their patients.

Carried to its logical conclusion, the idea of unmet human needs being “rights” necessarily says that if I need food, another person is obligated to provide it if I can’t (or won’t). If I need shelter, another is obligated to provide me with it, etc. I would also argue that if this view of rights prevails then for actual Constitutionally enumerated rights such as oh, say, if I can’t afford to pay for a gun when the Constitution says (and it does) I have the right to keep and bear arms then I should be able to coerce the government into (read; the taxpayer, otherwise known as you, if you’re in the ~53% of the population that actually pays any) providing me with said gun. Do we really want to go there?

 

Read the whole thing(s).

Just Say ‘No’ to Syria Intervention

I just sent the following to my Congressman and Senators:

I'd like to go on record as being against a military intervention, however limited it may be. I base this on the following reasons:

1. There is no vital US interest at stake, unless you count salvaging President Barack Obama's credibility as a vital national interest, in which case it's already too late.

2. The human toll has already surpassed 100,000 dead from being shot, blown up or hacked to death. Why is it that ~1,400 people being killed by gas suddenly too much? They are not any more dead than the people who were killed by other means.

3. It is far from clear that the anti-Assad forces are all good guys. In fact it seems like the opposition has been thoroughly infiltrated by Al Quaeda and other jihadis who are not our friends and never will be. If we intervene we will, in effect, be providing air support for our sworn enemies.

4. Nobody can help but feel for the innocents caught in the middle of all this but the unintended consequences possible with an intervention will not necessarily lead to fewer civilian deaths and could make the situation even worse.

Please vote 'no' on any resolution giving President Obama any sort of authority to intervene militarily in what is a Syrian civil war. It is hard to stand by and do nothing in the face of the horrors we are seeing, but that is what we must do.

Regards,

Obama made an unforced error when he made his unscripted, off-the-cuff red line comment but that bell can’t be un-rung. The mistake has already been made. To intervene militarily in this internecine conflict would just compound the error and gain absolutely nothing in return while providing yet one more grievance for our enemies to nurse.

Economics–It Isn’t Called the Dismal Science for No Reason

Forbes has a good article on why America doesn’t need monetary policy, or  economists. More damage has probably been done to our economy and our markets by attempts to centrally plan our economy than could ever be done by leaving markets to their own devices. From the article:

Let’s be blunt. Whatever economics is, it is not a science. Unlike physicists, who can predict an asteroid’s closest approach to earth within a few miles when it is still 100 million miles out in space, economists can’t accurately predict this quarter’s GDP. Indeed, they are still arguing among themselves about what “really” happened 83 years ago.

In light of the economics profession’s track record, it is hilarious to hear pundits and politicians say things like, “Most economists agree…” as if this mattered.

Read the whole thing.

Texting and Driving–Lives Can Be Changed Forever, Or Ended “From One Second to the Next”

I’ve never understood why people text one another rather than talk. It seems to be a pretty that having a 5-10 minute conversation via text is a pretty inefficient way to have a 30 second conversation.  This video, via Slate, is a very powerful statement on the hazards of texting and driving. Lives can be devastated, or gone, in the blink of an eye due to one person’s inattention to what they should be doing; paying attention to the road. Talking on the phone while driving also increases the hazard, but I think texting is exponentially more dangerous.

If you are in the habit of texting while driving, or you know someone who is, you should watch this and see if you think any text is so urgent as to be worth yours or someone else's life.

 

 

 

Detroit. An Economics Lesson on How Not to Do It.

Over at The Market Ticker, Karl Denninger has a primer on how not to run a government.

If you increase tax rates then you decrease economic surplus.  This inevitably slows economic expansion; it mathematically must.

If you make political promises that can only be met through increased tax rates, now or in the future, you begin the process of slitting your own throat.  That outcome is inevitable when you agree to political promises that have escalating expenses over time as pensions, medical benefits, salary "step" increases, bond issues that have a payment schedule longer than the useful life of the asset bought and similar.

This is a must read article.

Bill Whittle Has More on False Narratives and Yellow Journalism

In his latest Afterburner video Bill Whittle unpacks the Martin/Zimmerman case with further examples of yellow journalism, outright false reporting, omission of key facts, etc. Anyone who relied on the MSM to follow the case could very well come away thinking that last week’s not-guilty verdict was not the right one. Watch this video and then ask yourself if you think you are being well-served by the MSM or whether you are being manipulated and deceived..

Race Baiting and Lies in America–Some Perspective from Michael Yon

Former Green Beret turned freelance combat journalist and author Michael Yon points out that 17-year olds are not “children.” Yet a false narrative is being presented in the MSM and by certain professional race-baiters that Trayvon Martin was just some innocent young child who was gunned down in cold blood by a racist wannabe-cop, George Zimmerman. Based on the evidence presented at Zimmerman’s trial for second-degree murder a jury concluded otherwise. There was a lot more evidence that was not presented at trial that would tend to support the verdict even more strongly.

Michael had a similar experience as a newly qualified 19 year-old Green Beret when a man tried to assault him in a bar and Michael, who believed he was fighting for his life, the man had threatened to kill him, intercepted and countered the man’s first and only punch. Michael punched back and, so he thought, knocked the man out. In fact the man died and Michael faced a 6-month ordeal, replete with much of the same yellow journalism we are seeing today before being cleared.

Please do click through and read the whole thing. Whether you thought the Zimmerman verdict was just or not, you’ll learn something.

(full disclosure, I have met Michael Yon in person, once, and consider him a friend)

Megan McArdle Is Back (Again), Now at Bloomberg

If you aren’t reading Megan McArdle every day, you are really missing out on some very thought-provoking writing in the areas of business and economics. I have been following her writing since she was blogging from a trailer at the bottom of Ground Zero where she was working for a disaster recovery firm. She progressed from there to The Economist, The Atlantic, The Daily Beast and now here.

For just one example of her insightful writing, look at this post on minimum wage jobs, “McDonalds Jobs are Drive-Thru, Not Dead End.” An excerpt:

Even if it were possible to mandate that everyone in the country make almost the median income, this would come with a cost; I’d guess that most economists would agree that such a hike in the minimum wage would cause fairly significant job losses. The direct cost of labor at an average McDonald's is about 25 percent of payroll, according to Burgerbusiness.com, and of course, everything else they buy also has a substantial labor component. If everything at McDonald's cost, say, 30 percent more, they would sell fewer burgers and need fewer staff.

The real question no one has actually answered is whether every job should pay you enough to live on your own, or whether it’s OK for there to be jobs that are mostly a temporary arrangement, a waypoint en route to somewhere else. It doesn’t strike me as obviously wrong for those jobs to exist -- especially when the alternative may be no jobs at all. Even if I did think it was wrong, I’m not sure what I’d do about it. You can make McDonald's pay people more per hour. You cannot keep McDonald's from cutting those hours.

Read the whole thing.

What the Left Touts as Progress Is Really Regression to the Past

Writing about Libertarianism over at the National Review, Jonah Goldberg makes the following very good point about the Left and statism:

It’s a little bizarre how the Left has always conflated statism with modernity and progress. The idea that rulers — be they chieftains, kings, priests, politburos, or wonkish bureaucrats — are enlightened or smart enough to tell others how to live is older than the written word. And the idea that someone stronger, with better weapons, has the right to take what is yours predates man’s discovery of fire by millennia. And yet, we’re always told that the latest rationalization for increased state power is the “wave of the future.”

That phrase, “the wave of the future,” became famous thanks to a 1940 essay by Anne Morrow Lindbergh. She argued that the time of liberal democratic capitalism was drawing to a close and the smart money was on statism of one flavor or another — fascism, Communism, socialism, etc. What was lost on her, and millions of others, was that this wasn’t progress toward the new, but regression to the past. These “waves of the future” were simply gussied-up tribalisms, anachronisms made gaudy with the trappings of modernity, like a gibbon in a spacesuit.

Read the whole thing. 

The Solution to the Problem of Poor Smartphone Battery Life

Everyone who owns a smartphone knows that if they have one shortcoming in common, it’s battery life or, actually, the lack thereof. You’re lucky to get a full day’s use out of it with even moderate useage.

I just found a very handy device at Amazon that provides nearly the perfect solution for this problem It is the Yubi Power YP520A external battery charger, which is actually a battery itself. It stores up to 5600 mAh of power and has a short cable with adapters for mini and micro USB and Apple. Just plug it into your phone and it will recharge it. It’s compact enough to slip into your pocket and frees you from having to tether yourself to a wall outlet, if you can even find one.  I gave mine a quick test after it was delivered the other day, after first fully charging it up off the USB port of my laptop, and found that it took my phone from about 45% to 75% power in about two hours. I haven’t tested it to full charge yet and will report back if I get around to it any time soon. The best thing was that I could still carry my phone around with me while it was charging. I carry it in a case on my belt (Yes, I know, I’m a nerd). I just put the phone in the case USB port down (the case is partly open at the bottom), plugged the ~9” cable from the charger in and dropped it into my pocket.

There is also an 8400 mAh model, the YP840A that can recharge two devices at once:

Tyranny In Our Time

President Obama’s cousin, Dr. Milton Wolf has a must-read column in the Washington Times today about how Obama is using federal government agencies to harass, intimidate and even punish political enemies. Case in point, the evolving IRS scandal in which we are learning that the IRS has been targeting conservative organizations applying for 501(c)(4) tax-exempt status with onerous and largely irrelevant information demands, sitting on their applications until they give up. An excerpt:

Americans are beginning to recognize the disturbing similarities between President Obama and the fallen Richard Nixon, but the comparison that may matter more is between Mr. Obama and King George III.

“He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance,” in the words of the Declaration of Independence.

King George’s assault on the Americans’ natural freedoms was oppressive, intolerable and deserving of a revolution. The truth is, the intrusion, restriction and outright harassment that our government subjects us to today is far beyond what the colonists faced from their tyrannical king. If it was tyranny in 1776, then, by God, it is tyranny today.

Consider the enormous coercive power of the Internal Revenue Service and its lust to wield it. The IRS admits to systematically identifying and harassing political dissidents who dare to disagree with the political bosses. The IRS created what could be considered an enemies list starting with conservative Tea Party groups. It targeted any group calling itself “patriot” or daring to teach the Constitution or Bill of Rights.

Read the whole thing.

Judge Jeanine Piro On the Benghazi Hearings

Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and Leon Panetta need to be held to account for the Benghazi debacle. Incompetence is the best-case scenario here and I don’t think any of them is that truly incompetent. Watch.

Nobody Knows How to Make a Pencil or Why Government Locks In Failure

Kevin Williamson has a great article over at National Review Online talking about how in the private sector everything gets better and cheaper all the time, e.g. mobile phones, and how

“We treat technological progress as though it were a natural process, and we speak of Moore’s law — computers’ processing power doubles every two years — as though it were one of the laws of thermodynamics. But it is not an inevitable, natural process. It is the outcome of a particular social order.”

He goes on to show how competitive markets allow for competitors to come and go, rise and fall, and how important it is for failure to be possible as contrasted with institutionalized failure when politics takes over and government tries to pick winners and losers:

“Politics creates the immortal corporation. Amtrak and the U.S. Postal Service are two institutions that would have failed long ago if not for government support — subsidies for Amtrak, the government-chartered monopoly on letter delivery for the postal service. The cost of their corporate immortality is not only the waste associated with maintaining them, but also the fact that their existence prevents the emergence of superior alternatives.”

It comes back to “the knowledge problem” or as Hayek put it, the fatal conceit that a small group of people or an individual can have all the knowledge necessary to direct an entire industry (think healthcare, e.g.) or an economy. This article is one of the best discussions of this I have seen.

Read the whole thing.