Consequences for Dole's Religious Extremism

No need to go into detail, but the chickens came home to roost for Lizzy Dole. Dole decided to go the holier-than-thou attack route and accused her opponent of being "godless". And North Carolina voters realized she was a little creepy, and voted for Kay Hagan for Senate instead.

Could this signal the end of using Americans' faith as a wedge issue? As Karl Rove said, I am not fortunate enough to be a person of faith, but I don't think that people who are care for this kind of exploitation by politicians. At least the ones in North Carolina don't.

California Gay Marriage Ban Passes

Gavin Newsom said it best when he stated that California now has the dubious distinction of being the first U.S. State to take away a right that has previously been granted. Proposition 8 passed tonight, writing into our state constitution the refusal of the right of marriage to same-sex couples. The California Supreme Court had previously allowed this right, and now it's been
revoked. Newsom added that, regardless of your moral position as a voter, you can't ignore that California's economy has been so strong for so long because it attracts talented, hard-working young people of all walks of life, gay or straight, and this intiative is saying, "Regardless of your ability, we don't want you." I don't appreciate intrusive moralists, acting as part of a national campaign based in Virginia and organized by fundamentalist elites, taking this social reverse-engineering project upon themselves. This is incredibly disappointing and embarrassing for my chosen home state, a state I'm very proud to call my home.

There are two reasons people often provide (and conflate) in arguing to take away this right. The first is the consequentialist argument. It says: marriage is a fundamental building block of society, and if we allow gay marriage to alter the institution, we'll irreversibly damage society. Guess what? Massachusetts already has it. Spain has it. Canada and other U.S. states have civil unions, and civilization hasn't ended in any of those places. Sorry - the consequentialist argument is dead on arrival.

The other approach to morality is absolutism. The absolutist argument is that gay marriage is wrong because it's wrong, period, no matter the consequences or lack thereof. I have yet to meet a single person making this argument who isn't making it out of religious convictions (and sure enough, the Bible does say to kill gay people). The problem here is that religious convictions are fine, except where they're hurting your neighbor even when your neighbor isn't doing anything that demonstrably hurts you. If, as Jefferson said, he is neither breaking your leg nor picking your pocket, you have nothing to say about him. And real small-government Republican officials agree.

I think it says something that this effort to take away a civil right is one of the few victories of conservatives on Election Day 2008. Do conservatives really want to be known as a force for big intrusive government? It seems the answer is a resounding yes.

Meine Frau im Oesterreich

To lighten the mood a little - just Saturday morning I dropped my wife off at San Francisco International for the start of a three week vacation, and I must've had a lot on my mind. I didn't even send with her a list of "take a picture of this or don't come back" sites. So on the way back from the airport I'm thinking "Something important came from Austria...what was it..." and then almost ran off the freeway.

So, I emailed the poor woman a list of things to see if she somehow gave a damn (after all, it's her trip, not mine), first and foremost being the restaurant where von Mises et al debated economics over beers - but not forgetting Boltzmann's grave marker with "S = k ln W" on the headstone, or the Wittgenstein House, or the spot where Sobieski broke the Ottoman siege of Vienna in 1683. Unfortunately in 1242 Austrians must have been unsentimental because there's no marker showing where the Mongols turned around. Either way, with luck she'll abide my last-minute thinking (meine Frau ist eine gute Frau im dies weg) and I'll be able to share some photo souvenirs with you. (Note: she didn't go to that restaurant but she did get a shot of Boltzmann's grave.)

(Update: she got to Boltzmann's grave, but not to the famous pub. That's okay, when I visit Vienna, then I'll see it myself.)

Obama: Reform, Don't Nationalize Healthcare

There's a reason that the quality of care draws physicians from around the world to practice in the United States. There's a reason we've been the scene of innovation in medicine and continue to be the leader in medical research.

The problem with America's healthcare system can be traced to a patchwork of inconsistent regulation and entitlement programs distorting the market and preventing people from getting the care they need.

Obama has been criticized as a modern-day product of the Chicago Democratic Machine. In one sense this is an opportunity. Our First Lady-Elect is the VP of Community Affairs at the University of Chicago Healthcare Center. Isn't this the same University of Chicago that is the home of Austrian economics in the United States? Milton Friedman's University of Chicago? I am in particular looking at noted University of Chicago healthcare expert Tomas Philipson. Professor Philipson, if I were you, and I did not already have connections to her, I'd be making some phone calls to the First Lady. We need you.

Obama: Do NOT Pull Completely Out of Iraq

I'm on record with my high opinion of people who cheered for the Iraq War like it was the second Superbowl of 2003, and now that they realized war means people get killed and there's no re-set button, they want to pull out (see cover article).

I think the following three statements summarize 95% of Americans' desires:

1) Keep our soldiers out of harm's way,
2) Stop spending $275,000,000.00 per day on the war (one of the more conservative estimates)
3) Do not let Iraq become a new 1990s era Afghanistan.

Do not, do not, DO NOT pull completely out of Iraq. Soundbite: We made our bed, and now we have to lie in it. We shouldn't have invaded in the first place, but now we shouldn't leave until the country is stable. An over-the-horizon presence like John McCain advocated has the merit of keeping our soldiers out of harm's way (and therefore being cheaper too) and still stabilizes the region.

Still Think the Patriot Act is a Good Idea?

Principled conservatives over the last eight years have had real concerns about the Patriot Act's erosion of our civil liberties. Flag-hugger conservatives have often dismissed complaints about the Patriot Act as the whining of ACLU liberals who are willing to sacrifice the nation's security in favor of their agenda.

Ask yourself this: three months from now, how will you feel with your name on conservative political organizations' rolls, and on blog postings, and with a McCain bumper sticket on your car? How will you feel when President Obama can continue what President Bush started and have his people arrest you without judicial oversight and without ever having to tell your family where you are, let alone allowing visits?

Ask yourself this: how will you feel when Obama's FBI can come into your home and look around when you're away, without a warrant and without even telling you they were there, and without even having to claim that you're afiliated with terrorists, like they have been doing as Bush's FBI?

Ask yourself this: how will you feel when Obama's intelligence organizations can open your postal mail and read your email and listen to your phone conversations without even needing a warrant, like they have been doing as Bush's intelligence organizations?

Does the Patriot Act still seem like a good idea? Are you starting to think maybe those ACLU liberals are onto something?

Politics Doesn't End at Midnight On Election Day

No candidate ever exactly aligns with our own positions. I supported Obama and I'm glad he won. However, these are two big issues that I, and very possibly you, my friend, disagree wholeheartedly with Obama on.


Dear President-Elect Obama,

1) Do not, do not, DO NOT pull completely out of Iraq.

2) Reform, don't nationalize healthcare. (This is why I voted no on California ballot initiative 3).

So, Obamacons, Libertarians, moderate Democrats - these two issues should central to our dealings with, and advice to, the Obama administration.

Bettor and Voter Perceptions

Thanks to some friends who turned me on to it, I've been spending far too much time on Intrade recently. What the curves show is bettor perceptions of what the voters will do (based on voter perceptions). Note that the prices will not mirror the electoral split - they are a reaction to the likelihood of a certain electoral split's ability to call the outcome in advance. This is affected by the size of the split and the days until the election. In this way, a 60-40 popular split would probably have been a 95-5 on Intrade, even a week out.

No surprise here: McCain's curve jumps when the Palin nomination starts the buzz, then begins its plummet in mid-September (when Lehman Bros. went belly-up).



This is in line with my own and I think most people's intuitions - that McCain was already fighting a strong Bush-20%-approval headwind, but the meltdown is what got him. The damn shame here is that the GOP's albatross doesn't seem to have come from the Iraq War, or the erosion of civil rights, or the distortion of the tripartite model of government created by the Founders, or the damage to our moral imperative around the world. No, it was a bad hurricane, and a financial meltdown. Neither were entirely Bush's fault.

Full disclosure: if we wanted our financial system to keep running, we needed the bailout. I support what Paulson has done; we're between the Scylla of nationalization and the Charybdis of the economy getting sucked down the drain. But most Americans seem not to have been so thrilled about the bailout - perhaps this is part of the LP's relative success this time around?

An Interesting Time for the Libertarian Party

Despite the headwind that free-market advocates are facing these last six weeks, and despite that Bob Barr has alienated Ron Paul's supporters, it looks like the LP still got its best turnout ever in percentage terms. So what's going on here? Is it just alienated GOP fiscal conservatives who aren't as queasy about their older brothers and sisters about marijuana and abortion?

This is probably more because of dissatisfaction with the GOP then a sudden identification with LP ideals; for example, the turnout includes my mother, who said she was voting LP because we need laws to stop companies from sending jobs overseas; (Added later: she voted Green because the LP wasn't on the ticket in PA. I'm still recovering from hearing that.) Let's hope most voters aligned their votes better with their values.

Call Me a Sentimental Wuss...

...but I shed a tear or two during both McCain's concession and Obama's acceptance. This is a historic night, and if you don't let it carry you away a little - whether you're crushed or elated by what happened today - you're missing the point of being alive.

Interesting too that the only other President elected from Illinois was Lincoln.

My Vote on Proposition 5

I thought long and hard about Prop 5, which increases mandatory treatment and decreases jailtime for drug offenders. At first I was excited that we finally had a statewide ballot measure about drug policy. But I voted no. I agree with the ultimate goal of the measure (principally sponsored by everyone's favorite billionaire George Soros), but not the means.

As a Libertarian, I strongly favor sensible decriminalization of drugs. For example: not only is marijuana less dangerous than alcohol, it's on DEA Schedule I, which contains drugs supposedly having no known benefit and for which the penalties are most severe. Furthermore, I strongly believe that state-initiated decriminalization is the way to approach the issue (because at the Federal level this issue is political poison), and in the western US this has been producing actual results - here's one example where it's been legalized for a while, without the end of civilization occurring.

The problems with Prop 5 are:

a) Putting people in jail is expensive; giving them rehab the way this initiative proposes is even more expensive. If you're convicted of a crime, the costs should be on you. At the end of the day a drunk driver in CA pays about $10,000; I fail to see what other drug convicts should be able to bill taxpayers instead.

b) The authority of judges in the way they sentence offenders is severely limited by this initiative. There is a difference between someone caught with a dimebag of weed in their car and a guy with a meth lab and connections to international traffickers, and judges should be able to rule on that basis.

c) Prop 5 is a thirty-odd page initiative that no one (including me) can wade through. Not a good way to pass laws about complex issues.

d) Prop 5 draws no distinction is made between drugs. This is key. Meth is not alcohol is not marijuana. Honestly, does someone caught with a joint need rehab? And will treatment benefit someone caught with a meth lab in the midst of other criminal behavior that pre-dates their meth use? There must be some kind of schedule or system for biologically active substances, psychoactive or otherwise – that's the basis of prescription drug control and a legal drinking age. Our current system happens to be completely divorced from the medical reality of these substances, which is why it badly needs to be reformed. At the very least, the ultimate goal must be reorganization of the DEA schedule so it makes more medical sense, which will result in Schedule I substances being removed.

That's why I voted against Prop 5.

I Voted.

Did you?

We're lucky enough to live in a country where not only do we have secret ballots, but where we can disclose our votes without fear of retribution, as I'm about to do:

CANDIDATES

President/VP: Obama/Biden

US Representative, District 9: Jim Eyer, Libertarian Party

CA State Senate, District 9: Claudia Bermudez, GOP

CA State Assembly District 14: Myself. Nancy Skinner was running unopposed for this office. On principle I don't like seeing an unopposed candidate on the ballot, so it's my little tradition to write myself in. You can actually ambush-win small local offices this way.

Superior Court Judge: Phil Daly

AC Transit Director at Large: Chris Peeples

AC Transit Board: Greg Harper

Oakland City Council at Large: Kerry Hammill. Hammill has ties to Ignacio de la Fuente, a strong Oakland councilmember and seems to me at this point the best candidate to replace our current absentee mayor Ron Dellums. Ignacio is a hardass when it comes to crime and an unapologetic proponent of residential and business development, which of course among the local leftist activist set makes him a villain. Hammill's association with him and Jane Brunner (my own councilmember) is a big plus if you're looking for a candidate who's effective at executing a pro-development and crime-prevention agenda.


CALIFORNIA BALLOT INITIATIVES

1A (Trains): Yes

2 (Agricultural Animal Treatment): Yes – in purely practical terms, will have a positive effect on food safety, and I don't mind regulations about that.

3 (hospital bonds): No – our healthcare system's problems are at least magnified (and maybe caused) by the distortion of half-assed socialization. We don't need more government money constraining the market's behavior in healthcare.

4 (religious sneaks trying to limit abortion): No

5 (expansion of mandatory drug treatment, limitation of jail terms): No – more on this one here.

6 (safe neighborhoods): No

7 (environment): No (when PG&E and the Sierra Club oppose something, you know it sucks)

8 (Eliminates the Right to Marry): No

9 (an expensive and overambitious victim's rights bill): No

10 (alternative fuels funding): Yes

11 (redistricting rules and political accountability): Yes. Opposed by Nancy Pelosi – that should make some of my readers happy.

12 (vets' loans): No. Opposed by the Libertarian Party because the state should not be in the loan business.


OAKLAND BALLOT INITIATIVES

N (better schools): Yes. Makes teachers accountable, rewards them financially, and creates magnet schools in Oakland. Local educators screamed bloody murder about this, and it was put on the ballot by the administrator the state had to appoint because the district was such a consistent underperformer. That's a sign to me that it's a good idea.

NN (public safety funding): No. Oakland needs more law-enforcement, but the history of these types of measures is bad (because there's little control over exactly how it will be spent – like for example, there's no guarantee it will actually buy us more police.

OO (Kids First): No

VV (AC transit): No. I don't use AC transit. Sorry, everyone votes in his or her own interest. Send the buses to places where I might ride them, and then I'll change my mind.

WW (bond for parks): Yes. No-brainer. Check this article.


Suggestions for electoral innovations:

- Abolish the Electoral College. The most serious national initiative to this end I've ever seen is underway here;
more on this later.

- Abolish machines that allow automatic straight-ticket voting. You want to vote straight Democrat, fine, but you have to push all the buttons/check all the boxes separately. This might make the act of voting a little less autonomic and force people to analyze their own inclinations just a little bit more critically.

- Have a voting week instead of a voting day. This makes it easier to get to the polls, and easier for the volunteers to count the votes. With early voting, we sort of already have it, but it's not thought of in this way. In future elections maybe we can make it more explicit (maybe on your ballot, it says, “EARLY voting location during last week of October X; Tuesday voting location Y.”)

- During the debates, have a multimedia backdrop run by an impartial third party (factcheck.org, League of Women Voters, etc.) Here's how it works. On TV the debate is delayed a few minutes. Volunteers at the debate listen for each statistic or assertion made by the candidates. Then, as you're watching at home, on a scrolling marquee, or in a word bubble above the candidate, the reference will pop up. This would be a great use of technology to limit BS in televised forums, where Americans still get most of our information. Credit for this one to Fernando who I met in line at the polls this morning.

A friend of mine lived in Oregon where there are no polls; essentially everyone votes absentee.. A few years ago I considered going permanent absentee and I even thought about trying to vote early here. But I didn't. Call me sentimental, but I like going in and voting.

Republican Legislators Against Segregation

Republican ex-Congressman Tom Campbell explains in this article why California Republicans should vote NO ON 8. He does so much more eloquently than I could, so you should go right there.

What's really interesting is that the arguments for Prop 8 are exactly the same ones that were used to maintain segregation - the old "separate but equal". So, if you're against segregation, you should vote No on Prop 8. Notice how people are getting shipped into the state from across the country by national organizers - remember, this is a state proposition - so what happened to States' rights all of a sudden?

NO ON PROP 8!!!

Republicans for High Speed Rail

David Brooks makes the case that now is the time for infrastructure spending, and Pennsylvania Republican Congressmen Arlen Specter and Jim Gerlach are providing funding to extend Philadelphia's rail system back out to Reading, Pennsylvania. Op-ed columnists are writing about how America's agricultural exports have trouble getting to market because of the lack of train infrastructure. The Republican Party and the American heartland are solidly behind rail. Bottom line: the trend is toward more trains, and we need them. Now.

Prop 1A is on the ballot in California (supported by Governor Schwarzenegger), and if it passes, we'll have the first bullet trains in the U.S. It will create jobs, it's green, it gets cars off the roads and the U.S. off foreign oil, and (perhaps most important) it shows up Japan and France. Californians, YES ON 1A!

A Final Word On the Presidential Election

We're in the home stretch, and I think we're all ready for the election cycle to be over - John McCain and Barack Obama included. This will be my last post on the national race until Wednesday 5 November 2008 at earliest.

If you've read my blog for any length of time, you know that I've gone from being a McCain supporter to an Obama supporter - an Obamacon. I've put up enough posts and links, and now I'm going to let the arguments make themselves.

- Above all, America's Founding Fathers created a democracy of laws and not of men, where the branches of government checked each other, and where decisions were made based on reason and transparent debate. Which candidate - and which party - stand up more strongly for those values?

- To be successful, our next president will need to maintain coolness under fire, he'll need an ability to multitask critical in a chief executive, and a resistance to grandstanding in front of the media with lazy, easy answers. Who can we count on for this?

- The next president will have to work multilaterally with allies and trade partners to control the financial crisis, grow the economy and pressure rogues like North Korea, Iran and Venezuela. Who can we rely on to more quickly re-establish the moral imperative and global human rights reputation we've damaged these last eight years?

- The next president will have run a clean campaign. Any campaign that feels it has to lie and bully and scare and incite has given strong signs that its positions aren't the ones that Americans agree with.

- The next president should be one whose administration does not want to grow the government even further and damage both democracy and business competitiveness by forcing extremist views on our families and kids in the public sphere - in hospitals, research and science class.


I'm encouraged that after such an intense election cycle, American voters seem to finally be developing an effective B.S. detector - and we're discovering that we really don't have such radically different ideas of what the country needs. Vote on Tuesday, and remember that participation in democracy doesn't end at midnight on election.

I'm Looking Forward to McCain's Book

Whatever the title is, the unwritten subtitle will be "How Sarah Palin Broke My Campaign and the GOP". Regardless of your opinion on Palin as a VP candidate (Sarah Palin, not this Palin), it would be very difficult not to see what a liability she's been (laid out here in the Economist and here on this blog).

Anybody taking bets on when Palin is gonna be showin' up with her own show on FOX News? It won't be a big jump for her; she started her career doing sports journalism.

Anti-Marriage-Rights Amendment: Desperation and Blackmail

The Yes on Prop 8 people (read: religious extremists) are getting desperate, and now they're sending threatening letters to "blackmail" many businesses that are dead set against amending the California state constitution to take away people's rights. Think I'm exaggerating? They've admitted it openly; these folks don't seem to think there's a problem. Small business owners and anybody who completes a 1099 at tax-time should be worried at what these special interest groups are willing to do to intimidate you even before their measure passes.

Apple and Google Line Up Against Anti-Marriage Amendment

Apple is giving $100,000 to fight Proposition 8, and Google is on record publicly opposing it as well (along with big donations from its founders).

Hey all you "conservatives" pushing Prop 8 - either your church is a church, or it's a political organization. You can't have it both ways. When Libertarians and businesses are lining up against Prop 8 to defend Americans' rights from encroaching government, what is it that you're defending?

NO ON PROP 8!

The Great Game in Africa: And A New Growth Industry At Home

Interesting article in BusinessWeek about the increasing importance of African business to American defense contractors.

I'm posting this mostly to emphasize the importance of Africa in the first half of this century as the site of a new Great Game between the U.S. and China, as we maneuver around the resources still locked in the ground there. At the same time it bears keeping in mind that the militarization of parts of Africa has not done people there many favors, especially in places like Democratic Republic of the Congo and Darfur (where, after extending pressure, at least the Chinese government has finally started talking with the West about how to improve the situation).

China's strategy has been two-pronged: they don't just hand shiploads of weapons over to whatever leader is willing to make a deal with them, brutal thug or otherwise. They also directly build transportation infrastructure that not only gets commodities to ports, it helps Africans through free trade is exactly what the US">economic development. The U.S. has a golden opportunity here to focus on trade and economics over weapons delivery and retain the mantle of "the good guys".

Shameless Plug for Museum in Reading, PA

I was home in Pennsylvania a few days for a friend's wedding and also got to visit the Central Pennsylvania African American Museum, courtesy Frank Gilyard. The big sell for most people is that the museum is in an old AME church (the sixth one in the world) and there's an actual Underground Railroad hiding space dug out underneath the bottom floor. People having to escape by tunnels and underground hideouts is a story that's still going on today in places like North Korea. The whole museum is an excellent showcase for a part of Pennsylvania and American history that's often neglected, and not only does curator Frank Gilyard know everything there is to know on the topic, he's also a very interesting and nice guy. If you're in the area you should check them out.