Leisure guys tells us :
One clear sign a politician is wrong if the arguments the politician advances keep changing.
It is easier than that.
All you need to know to tell whether a politician is wrong is that, well, she or he is a politician.
At Cafe Hayek Don Boudreaux reacts to a New York Review of Books review by singing the praises of globalization :
I doubt that McKibben knows what he’s talking about. That is, I doubt that he has any real appreciation for just how much our lives depend upon global commerce and industry. I doubt that he understands that each of us daily depends for our standards of living — indeed, for our very lives — on the creativity and efforts of tens of millions of people worldwide.
The good folks at Catallarchy pick up the drum beat:
It’s illuminating how expensive these experiments in buying local-only turn out to be. You never seem to hear about “working class” people rejecting global capitalism to prove some sort of ecopolitical holier-than-thou point. Maybe because they are too busy shopping at WalMart just trying to get by. Eliminating or reducing global trade would make their lives unbearably more difficult, if not impossible.
This is true enough. Pull the plug now on today’s global economy and things would look pretty bleak for anyone not currently “living locally.”
But, it is surprising to hear such supposedly strong free market supporters praising so loudly a structure so substantially built and maintained by the force of the state.
Boudreaux goes on to say:
…McKibben’s prescription would ironcially also likely require a vast, global government possessing awesome powers to force we humans to live — and to keep living — in local economies.
Right.
Just like our current version of a global economy is subsidized and maintained by vast government structures possessing awesome powers.
There is a new initiative hitting the streets in Washington State. The Defense of Marriage initiative would, if passed:
* add the phrase, “who are capable of having children with one another” to the legal definition of marriage;
* require that couples married in Washington file proof of procreation within three years of the date of marriage or have their marriage automatically annulled;
* require that couples married out of state file proof of procreation within three years of the date of marriage or have their marriage classed as “unrecognized;”
* establish a process for filing proof of procreation; and
* make it a criminal act for people in an unrecognized marriage to receive marriage benefits.
Farcical on its face, right?
The folks that put this together say:
The Washington Defense of Marriage Alliance seeks to defend equal marriage in this state by challenging the Washington Supreme Court’s ruling on Andersen v. King County. This decision, given in July 2006, declared that a “legitimate state interest” allows the Legislature to limit marriage to those couples able to have and raise children together.
They want to generate discussion and hope that if this passes it will eventually be ruled unconstitutional and thus weaken Anderson.
This could work. However, they might just get the first two parts of what they are asking for: discussion and passage…even in blue Washington. But they might not get the 3rd part: any part of this then being ruled unconstitutional by the state supreme court and end up strengthening Anderson.
My take: not a chance of passing. We all know to many couples, both same-sex and opposite sex, who have been married for years and do not have children.
If folks are going to spend precious time on issues like this why not go right to the heart of the matter and work on initiatives and so forth that say something like:
Individuals and voluntary groups of individuals must be treated equally under the the laws of…(insert appropriate federal, state or local entity).
Oh yea, the 14th Amendment already says something a bit like this.
The state, i.e., government, of course, has no legitimate interest in any aspect of marriage other than possibly enforcing judicial rulings on the contractual aspects of living arrangements entered into by 2 or more consenting adults.
Via Whatever It Is, I’m Against It.
From Radly Balko:
Congress needs to stop delegating so much lawmaking power to regulatory agencies. In fact, I don’t think it would be such a bad idea to force Congress to vote on every measly federal regulation it expects the rest of us to abide by.
Yes, anything to reduce the growth of the federal legislative and administrative rules library!
Kip calls senator lautenberg to task for calling for more subsidies for Amtrak:
How much more remedial can one make it: Amtrak loses money because people don’t use it. People don’t use it because people neither need nor want to use it. People are — gasp! — relying entirely on airplanes and roads.
……
So when Lautenberg says, “We cannot depend entirely on airplanes and roads,” what he really means is “I get a warm fuzzy feeling from the thought of having Amtrak, and that’s more important than any other use that you might have for your tax dollars.”
Amtrak, roads, planes (airports), public transit and shipping are all heavily subsidized at the federal, state and local levels. Non-Amtrak trains have been historically heavily subsidized.
I don’t pretend to know which mode(s) of transport would win out without tax subsidies but it is time to find out. Let’s eliminate all the tax subsidies and put the mechanisms in place to assure that the folks using a particular transportation service are paying the full cost per use.
It will take time but I suspect that we will see dramatically different answers rise up than we have seen with the centralized planning of the last 150 years.
An Amtrak like service may or may not be one of the answers.