Why Make Health Insurance Difficult?

Right Plan, Wrong State

I'm not sure what the right policy for health insurance is, but making things more complicated isn't one of them. My, admittedly not-so-well thought out plan is simple.

Make everyone buy health insurance. It's no different for using a car, so why should it be any different for using health services.

Yes, yes. I know there are big time difference between a person's health and their ability to drive around. Still, wouldn't that at least solve the problem of having however many millions of people uninsured. Of course, then there would be another problem for government busybodies to worry about, that health care is too expensive. But one problem at a time.

Simply put, if you want to use a government funded hospital, then you have to have medical insurance. No ifs, ands, or buts. There would be minimum coverage requirements, just like with auto insurance. But other than that, have at it. You could have Geico offer health insurance. (In 15 minutes, you can save 10% on your health insurance). What's wrong with that?

I'm sure there's lots of things, but still nobody makes this suggestion in order for it to be shot down. I've heard one politician in Massachussets make this proposal, but I haven't heard anything of it since.

There could be loopholes created, but why wouldn't this work. It's simple and it would cut down on the freeloading that occurs under emergency care.

Does Restricting Immigration Reduce Freedom?

Restricting Immigration Reduces Freedom

Don Boudreaux is a libertarian economics professor at George Mason. In fact, Cafe Hayek is a libertarian blog that two like-minded professors maintain there. So I don't get why he doesn't understand how immigration restrictions can go hand in hand with liberty.

The explaination is rather simple. What happens WITHIN the borders of the United States is different from what happens BETWEEN different countries. Let's say, for example that the U.S. government is only allowed to enforce international disputes (ie. there's two sections to the Constitution:

1. The Federal Government shall only be allowed to enforce relations with other countries.
2. All other powers shall be delegated to the people.

Simple enough. So basically, except for immigration, people have free reign in the US. It's a libertarian's wet dream. So how does preventing other people from joining in our reindeer games prevent that from happening. Even more so, people have the ability to LEAVE the country (though not return). None of what I said has any bearing on my freedom, AS LONG AS I STAY IN THE COUNTRY. If I leave, that's my choice and the government can do nothing to prevent me to leave. However, once I leave (and I'm talking permanent, become a citizen of another country, leave), I renounce those freedoms and I'm stuck under the gun of whatever country I choose to live in. Too bad, I made that choice.

Again, this situation does nothing to change the freedom of the citizens living within the country. So now I don't understand where Mr. Boudreaux is coming from.

After reading the article, I do understand where he's coming from. However, he's wrong. He states:

When the U.S. government prevents peaceful foreigners from immigrating to America, it diminishes your and my freedom to associate with people of our choice.

This may have been true 100, 50 or even 15 years ago, but that's even less true today with cheap travel, tourism, and what I like to call, the internet. If I want to associate with these peaceful foreigners, then I can travel to their country, write them a letter, or chat with them on the web. Even if I say that they can't come to my country and settle here (peaceful or not), that doesn't restrict me from communicating or associating with them. What Mr. Boudreaux suggests is that he should be costlessly allowed to associate with whomever he wants, regardless of the costs to other people. In other words, he's a cheapskate. He wants to associate with Mexicans, learn Spanish and hop a $200 flight to Mexico. The English, the same thing. But by proposing open borders, he wants all of the benefits without paying the full costs FOR HIMSELF.

The only way that Mr. Boudreaux is correct is if you're talking about the freedom of ALL people. Basically expanding the realm of freedom to all people in all nations. Under this circumstance (and only this circumstance) does the US forbidding or eliminating immigration create a restriction on freedom. Immigration laws only apply to non-citizens and THEIR freedom.

Now you can take the ultra-libertarian view that if the government has power to control who gets in, then it can control all sorts of things. Normally, I don't have a problem with the slippery slope arguement, but that's not the case if you have enumerated rights and powers. The government can't barge in because it's not allowed to.

So again, I don't see where Mr. Boudreaux comes with his open borders = freedom equation, unless he's talking about non-Americans. For the rest of us, we can keep everyone out and still be free.

One more counter-example. Let's reduce the US to a household. The head of the household says that noone can enter his property unless they're a member of the family. Libertarians wouldn't have a problem with this. So expand it to a town. The town leaders say that noone can enter the town unless they're a resident. Again, that doesn't entrench on the freedom of the town's residents. So what's so different for the nation as a whole. Unless he's including the brotherhood of man to travel and reside whereever he damn well pleases.

But I'm not a brotherhood of man kind of person. I do think that there are inalienable rights bestowed on us by God. But living in my apartment isn't one of them.

However, I do agree with his other article stating that the US can absorb more immigrants. Obviously, we can or otherwise there wouldn't be such high demand for illegal immigration. Of course, that happens because of minimum wage and other labor laws, but that's neither here nor there. Economically, there's less to worry about with illegal immigration than what most people would believe.

The problem is much more social. Illegal immigrants have no incentive to become members of an American society. They do not want to become a part of the civic culture because that would expose their illegal status. Instead, the retain the culture of their previous homeland, and pass that onto their children. Children don't become assimilated because:

1. They learn much more from their parents than from their school.
2. Because their illegal parents don't want to move out of their culture, children are much less exposed to their non-ethnic surroundings.
3. Schools, because of multiculturism, aren't going to assimilate them any further.

The end result is that illegal immigration doesn't work socially because the immigrants themselves want to shield themselves from arrest and deportation. That's where amnesty would work theoretically. Immigrants can openly become a member of society without fear of government action. However, this only works if it's a one-time shot. If you don't enforce immigration laws, then this will only encourage further illegal immigration and the social problems explained above.

And most of all, Pres. Bush's guest worker program is the worst idea of them all. Basically, it codefies non-assimilation by requiring that guest workers return to their country after their usefullness is up. But that's if these workers do not decide to become illegal immigrants. And it's easier for them to hide, once their in the country and use to their surroundings. The Guest Worker Program is just a sop to the agricultural lobby and other users of migrant labor. It's corporate welfare with no social benefit.

I am not opposed to legal immigration. It's how millions of our forefathers arrived and made this country what it is. But open borders, guest worker programs and illegal immigration do nothing to help society except for a select few that use these migrants.

50 Babies a Year are alive after abortion

50 Babies a Year are alive after abortion

Sweet merciful crap. And that's not even the kicker. Apparently, there's a two year old mentioned in the article who was born after THREE attempted abortions. Needless to say, he's not in very good condition.

But if there's 50 screwed up abortions in the UK (and very much possibly more), then I wonder what the statistics are here in the US. But the pro-death lobby (which includes pro-abortion and assisted suicide), would never allow something like that to happen. It would be WAY too much ammunition for their opponents to feast on.

This is one very major reason why I'm conservative rather than libertarian. A libertarian will tell you that what a woman does with her body is her business and not the governments. However, a fetus is perhaps the weakest member of society and the most in need of protection. Perhaps one of the reasons government exists is to protect the weakest members of society from harm. That's why police exists. Hell, that's the major reason people came up with law in the first place.

Still, I shudder at the thought of how many children have to deal with this. However, on the cynical side, at least that's why partial-birth abortion exists. Doctors can damn well make sure that no malformed baby actually makes it out of the womb.

(Link courtesy of The Corner)

The Marginal Product of Sports Columnists is Zero

Pardon the Quite Frankly

Even though, I'm a sports fan, I'm not a fan of these shows. I could just give a ranking of how each show should be in the pecking order of obnoxiousness, but that would be meaningless.

For the most part, the author of this article has it right, although he misses on some points.

First off, I'd like to see this "study" that the grad student at Missou put out. Right now, the author of this article just points to two quotations out of study by the doctoral student. And they don't say anything more than "It's all TV's fault."

The author of the article is somewhat right in saying that TV is responsible for the downfall of the sports columist. However, the ultimate responsiblity falls with the viewer and reader themselves.

If I don't want to read the garbage put out by Bill Plaschke, TJ Simers, Steven Smith, Skip Bayless, Scoop Jackson, or Jay Mariotti, then I don't read them. In fact, the article itself points out that there are many different sources for information about sports. In fact, you can get your information without having to deal with the (mostly wrong) opinions of columnists.

In fact, I never bothered to watch Around the Horn, Quite Frankly, Rome is Burning (Jim Rome is one of the fathers of trash sports talk), or Cold Pizza. In fact, I've stopped watching Pardon the Interruption, mostly because Mike Wilbon no longer feigns interest in baseball. So much for a "sports" show.

So what's the point of all this? The fact of the matter is that people can complain all they want about the downfall of sports journalism, but the fact of the matter is that people pay attention to more outrageous statements than bland (but correct) statements. If anything, the internet would serve as an instant fact checking organization. However, the end result is that we've encounted the point where the marginal product of sports opinions is nearing zero. Nobody follows up on predictions and what these reporters say because what they say is nearly useless. The fact of the matter is that if what they said was so important or newsworthy, then people would check on what they have to say and call them out for their stupidity. But people don't because people don't care about accuracy in the media anymore, they want entertainment. And that's what ESPN delivers.

However, this is separate from actual reporting that is done by ESPN by SportsCenter. The author of this article wants to lump SportsCenter in with the rest of the stuff that ESPN produces, when in fact SC is probably the most accurate and (excluding Stuart Scott) least bombastic of ESPNs news products. Of course, if you want straight up news, then there's always ESPNews. Or just looking the information up yourself. On that thing called the internet.

And just two little comments: TJ Simers has a major case of sour grapes. He gets fired for saying that he hates the show that he appears on, and then bashes it when he's fired. Yeah, that sounds about right for TJ Simers. And the second comment is how the author remarks that Tony Cornheiser wants a critic fired. Anyone who has followed PTI knows that Cornheiser isn't known for being thick skinned. This is more or less par for the course for Kornheiser.

Email

I've decided that the Feedbag could use an email address. Thus, the Political Feed(Mail)Bag is born. Click the link on the sidebar below the archives to send us hate mail. Or love. Or porn. Because that's what the internet is for.

Pro-family Policy

The Party of Sam's Club

I'm only going to touch this briefly and make a general criticism. You may reply in the comments box if you want me to go futher and deeper into this.

The breakdown of the family has been a topic of conversation for more than 20 years now. Divorce rates are up, numbers of single-parent families are up, the nuclear family has been thrown to the dustbin of history. Or that's what some people think. Thus, conservatives are dreaming up of schemes (short of something politically damaging) to make the family whole again. So of course, they propose all sorts of incentives for people to stay together. Basically, what these two people propose is more government tax loopholes and scores of government regulations for health care and other types of social intervention.

But the thing is that the government CAUSED the breakdown of the family. The family has been the cornerstone of civilization for centuries. Then Social Security came along, so that parents didn't have to take care of their parents, breaking down that social bond. Then the Great Society came along, making it easier for someone to continue living without the support of a husband. Then liberalized divorce laws made things easier for couples to get a divorce. Scores of government laws, regulations and rules have made it easier for families to break apart. Not to say that government is completely responsible for all these things, but for alot of them.

So the solution is pretty easy. Just repeal the laws. Of course, a lot of people would say that you're turning back the clock to a time when society was much worse.

But was it really?

Yes, there is no way to literally turn back the clock. We're not going back to the 50's no matter what. So the question is whether the traditional family is sustainable in the 21st century is a good question. Technology makes it easier for a woman to become pregnant without a husband. Single people can survive without the need for a second income. The social stigma of a broken home no longer exists. So is there a real need for the family to rework itself?

And that is ultimately a decision that cannot be politicized. Who am I kidding? Of course it can be politicized. But the solution only favors one party.

The Libertarians.

Repeal the patchwork of laws that creat social engineering and I'll guarantee you that families will stay together because they have to. If you want the traditional family to be a fixture, then support the law of the jungle. Safety comes in numbers. (Although, once I think about it, that doesn't apply to the inner city. But that's something that the government can't control ANYWAY). But in normal society, people tend to clump in groups. No man is an island.

So if you like the traditional family (and I do), then you'd much rather see government get out of the way and have human nature take care of things. 5000+ years of history can't be wrong.

The Moral Problems of Dining and Dashing

Briefly, I want to bring a question to everyone who reads this (yes, all nine of you).

I argued last night with Luisa that it was acceptable to not pay for a meal that was of God-awful quality. Basically, I argued that if you got horrible food with horrible service, it would be ok to not pay your tab and just leave the restaurant. (With the obvious intention of never coming back again). Luisa argued that what I proposed, the "Dine and Dash," was stealing and thus morally repugnant. I didn't find the idea repugnant because it's one of the checks that the consumer has on the whole restaurant experience. By waiting until the end to give me the bill, the restaurant owner has to make sure that all of his staff perform adequately enough so that I'll actually pay the bill. (Then the staff has an even greater incentive to serve me well so that I'll tip them.)

So I posit the question to everyone who reads this: Is the concept of not paying for sub-standard quality of restaurant food the equivalent of stealing?

Also, keep in mind that I'm not saying you go in there with the forgone knowledge of not paying for your meal regardless of price or quality. I'm saying you walk in there, you sit down, and the service is craptacular and the food is horrible. Do you pay? Do you talk to the manager first or not even bother?

I'd personally not talk to the manager because IF he's going to repay you for your grievences, then it'll either be something like getting more food, or a voucher for a future visit. Which then generates more business for the restaurant that you wouldn't want to come back to in the first place.

And just to extend this to life in general, can this be applied elsewhere. Like taxes? Or other industries? Government (especially unelected government) has little incentive to provide the best quality of services because you have to pay for it either way. Like the DMV or the EPA. They can screw you over and you have to take it because you have no other choice. Because you end up in jail for not paying your taxes if you take the route of not paying taxes or you end up screwed over and not able to do anything because the government is intrusive on everyday life.

See, these are the types of questions that I want to ponder when talking about the philosophy of government. Unfortunately, you never do this in college, because most political philosophy classes are run by the philosophy departments, which emphasize the philosophy over the political. At least, that's what I learned during my experience at Georgetown. But then again, philosophy departments exist only to provide jobs for philosophy majors, which is probably in the Top 5 of useless majors. But that's liberal arts higher education for you.

So anyway, I was just pondering that since it got both myself and my girlfriend all bothered because of it. And it's an interesting topic to discuss.

The Troughs

We all know that you can't get enough of the Feedbag. That is all 11 of you that read this every day. But there are just some days that we don't write. Ok, make that most days.

But that doesn't mean that you still can't get enough of your yummy political goodness. And who better than Dan and I to show you what you should be reading. Thus was born... The Troughs. When the Feedbag isn't enough, just saunter on up to the Troughs, a collection of our favorite places to visit, when we're not busy working or trying to find work.

The Troughs are conveniently located on the sidebar. Just scroll down the page until you reach Dan's Trough or Mike's Through. It's just that simple.

I, on behalf of all two of us at the Feedbag, hope that The Troughs will be of help for you to find more entertaining internet stuff.

A litigious society

Doping, Torts, and Monetary Damages

(A moment of full disclosure: I despise lawyers. Society would be a million times better if we just got rid of the lot of them. I lose respect for people who want to be lawyers or are lawyers. I can't stand them. I think the movie "The Devil's Advocate" was a pretty good representation of lawyers, except they didn't show as much greed or lying as would normally go on in the legal world. Other than that, I'm an unbiased observer.)

(More disclosure: We're linked on the sidebar of the aforementioned site. As far as I know, that's the only place where we are linked. So I really shouldn't be biting the hand that occasionally feeds us. Well, I'm more highminded than that. And my hatred for lawyers extends far beyond my desire for widespread recognition.)

Hold off a minute before tut-tutting about the litigious nature of society today, because this might be a solution to the problem of reducing the use of performance enhancing substances in sport. Would-be regulators of performance enhancing substances like steroids and EPO face a number of problems. One is monitoring. Monitoring athletes for doping is costly. Regulators use random testing to overcome the monitoring problem, but this approach has some limitations, including the small fraction of the sample that is actually tested; random testing also appears to be an ineffective deterrent of performance enhancing drug use. One group that might have an advantage in monitoring athletes for doping are other athletes. Competitors might be better able to tell the difference between improvements attributable to better or harder training and improvements attributable to doping than regulators. And competitors have stronger incentives to detect athletes who are breaking the rules than regulators.

Did someone forget to tell me that this is "Trial Laywers are Your Friends" Month? First, I read this article. Then I saw that The State published an op-ed by a judge that essentially said, "There are no such things as frivolous lawsuits." If there is demand for it, I'll tear this article a new one, otherwise, I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader (the Econ grad textbook cop-out) to figure out how many times he is just plain wrong.

But anyway, back to the sports post. The author makes the claim that instead of using investigation and regulation of steriods in sports, people can sue anyone who we think is using performance-enhancing drugs.

There is only one group of people who benefit from something like this. Trial Lawyers. Let's see why.

Humphreys writes that the possiblity of getting hit with a $10 million dollar decision would be much more of a deterrant than just a 10 day suspension. Of course, that assumes that such a decision would ever be handed down. In most class action suits, settlements occur prior to an actual trial because both sides like the idea of a guaranteed conclusion than handing everything over to a jury of their peers. And in most cases, the defendant never admits guilt, nor does the underlying behavior change. Most times, things are done to prevent another lawsuit, but not the actual decision process of the actors involved. And in the end, it's the lawyers on both sides who make money no matter what the outcome is, while either the plantiff or the defendant is guaranteed to lose out in the decision.

Now, let's pick apart Humphrey's argument:

One group that might have an advantage in monitoring athletes for doping are other athletes. Competitors might be better able to tell the difference between improvements attributable to better or harder training and improvements attributable to doping than regulators.

Now, all this does is shift montitoring costs from a regulator to the athletes/fans/opposing teams. You still have the problems of having to rely on intuition to determine if a player is doping. In fact, the monitoring costs would probably INCREASE. A non-regulator is going to have LESS access to an opponent's trainging regimen or locker room than a regulator. Simply because while the player simply has the indirect costs of a regulator's decision to deal with, the player directly competes against the opposing team, creating a direct cost (losing) along with the indirect cost of getting caught by the other team. Thus, a player is LESS likely to reveal anything to an opponent.

Then there's the "sour grapes" problem. How can an opponent or a fan of an opponent determine if increased performance is because of an illegal advantage or not. Say I'm a pitcher and I face Barry Bonds on a yearly basis. I'm able to strike him out as he enters the league, but as time goes on, Bonds starts to tattoo the ball off of me. Why does that happen? Is it because he gets better of his own accord? Or I get worse? Or is he cheating? Or is it just random blind luck? There's ways to tell between most of these (looking at my stats, his stats, trends). But how can you tell the difference between him getting better just because, or him getting better because of steriods. Without documented proof, you can't. So Brad's solution is for me to file a lawsuit against Bonds and thus go out through a long and drawn out process to recoup monetary damages. Without solid proof that he's doping. However, my incentive to file a lawsuit is great if Bonds wants to avoid the taint of a trial. If he's innocent, then does he want to go through the process, yes, but it'll be expensive. If he's guilty, then he'll want to settle out of court. So in the end, we both pay lawyers, but I only get paid if he's doping, and even then, the results never see the light of day. The true winners in all this, the lawyers representing us.

But what about fans? If Barry Bonds starts smacking home runs and leading the Giants to, let's say the World Series, then fans of every other NL team can have a case against Bonds, since THEIR team didn't make the World Series. Obviously, the cost is greater to the team the Giants beat in the NLCS than to the bottom-feeders of the NL, but the cost is just the same. According to Humphreys, the solution would be to get every fan or quasi-fan, or anyone who was affected by Bonds' homeruns and lump them together as a class-action. You could get bar-owners, memorabilia dealers, you name it. Anyone who was threated by Bonds would get in on the class-action.

But what is the end result? The same situation that occurs with the player suing Bonds. If Bonds is innocent, then we go to trial with lawyers making lots o' money on each side, but with an end result of nothing gained. If Bonds IS doping, then Bonds has a strong incentive to settle pre-trial and the plantiffs don't. But it all hinges on whether there is strong enough evidence to take Bonds to the conclusion of the trial.

In the case that Humphreys cites at the beginning of his post, the lawsuit occurs AFTER the boxer was tested and found positive. The threat of a possible lawsuit didn't discourage his use of the drug, nor did the other boxer act as a surrogate regulator. The same would occur in baseball or any other sport. Suits would appear only AFTER credible reports have surfaced. In which case, the threat of lawsuits didn't deter players from using because the lawsuit only occurs when they are caught. But Humphreys believes that lawsuits IN LIEU of regulation would stop doping, when in fact there is no such basis for this.

A second problem facing regulators is that many of the benefits of improved athletic performance have public good properties: they are non-rivalrous and non-excludable. Fans clearly derive satisfaction from watching sport played at the highest level. The public good nature of the benefits of improved athletic performance make it difficult to enforce doping regulations because it means that some of the costs associated with doping also have this property.

He's very, very wrong on the idea of performance-enhancing as a public good. It is excludable, as baseball or any sport isn't something that is provided free of charge to the public. You have to buy tickets, or watch the highlights, or read the paper to get the benefits of Bonds doping. The Lords of Baseball can make Bonds' juicing VERY excludable if they wanted to. They just choose not to.

However, you can get non-excludable benefits if you don't actually take costs out to see the performance, but that leads to how these performances are also rivalrous. Hillary Clinton can get satisfaction from the Yankees winning the World Series by riding the bandwagon without having ever watched a game. So to her, better performances by Jason Giambi are non-rivalrous because her becoming a Yankee fan doesn't increase the costs for anyone else. But let's say that you're not a fair-weather Cub/Yankee fan, but an actual fan who gets into the game because Giambi's performance makes the Yankees better. You're demand for all things Yankee increases the costs to other Yankee fans who were there before. You buy tickets (or attempt to buy tickets), you buy hats, shirts. You watch YES. By creating this shift in demand, the price for all of these things increase, thus increasing the costs to other Yankee fans, or other fans who watch other teams who are playing the Yankees.

Therefore, doping is your run of the mill private good. The costs of doping are very much internalized by both the player (loss of salary, loss of prestige) and the team (loss of prestige, revenues). The costs RIGHT NOW, are just very, very low because penalties are not steep enough. What if MLB creates gambling-like penalties for steriod use. The team loses any championships they win and players get kicked out of baseball and are ineligable for the Hall of Fame. Those costs would be internally borne by the players and teams, without the need for messy lawsuits and high legal fees.

The fact of the matter is that Brad Humphreys is making conclusions based on limited data. A good economist would know that you need more than just a sample size of one to make a policy conclusion. But Humphreys, who may very well be a good ecnonomist, does exactly that. Steriods became illegal under the scope of the Collective Bargaining Agreement just last year. Before then, the players and teams had very low costs in respect to steriods. This year, MLB ramps up the costs, but we have no idea what the effects on doping are (as far as I know). I'll agree with him that a 10-day slap on the wrist isn't enough of a cost for most players with guaranteed million dollar contracts. But is the stigma of being classified as a player busted for steriods a bigger cost than is anticipated? We don't know yet. So before we start breaking out the lawyer threat, let's see if actual punishment works.

The Ninth Circus

I may not agree with Rush Limbaugh on everything, but this is certainly one characterization that is straight on.

The reason is the latest in a series of insane proclaimations from the Ninth Circuit. Here's a snippet from The Corner.

I've already mentioned this to Luisa and her father, but this decision has a couple of interesting facets to it:

1. Conservatives are quite perplexed. On the one hand, the court establishes that there is no constitutional right given to parents to control the contents of what a public education entails. Futhermore, they say that there is no right to privacy.
   
2. If there is no right to privacy, then what happened to the "superprecidents" of Roe vs. Wade or Griswold vs. Connecticut? That is what I would attack this ruling on more than anything else.
   
3. On the other hand, if parents can't control what's being taught in schools with THEIR money, then why have school boards in the first place? Why even hold elections? Having some grad student come into my child's school and ask these questions is something I would definitely object to. There are plenty of things that I would have a problem with a school teaching if I had a child going through a public school system. But apparently I have no redress if something objectionable being taught one way OR the other.
   
4. I wonder what the Ninth Circus' response would be if children were taught about all the good things that facism brings? Or old timey Southern-style bigotry? How much you think the courts would come down on that like a ton of bricks?
   
5. So apparently parents had to sign consent forms before allowing their child to take said survey. Thus, the parents did have control over what their children. But of course, the consent forms never mentioned the topic of the survey, ie sex. As others have mentioned, that's a serious academic no-no. Of course, the surveyors will probably say that they told the KIDS that they were going to take a survey on sex. And thus, they avoid any career-crippling problems and continue to give sex surveys to seven year olds.
   
6. Now think about this. Is any seven through ten year old going to be able to answer these questions:

   a. "Touching my private parts too much."
   b. "Thinking about having sex"
   c. "Thinking about touching other people's private parts."
   d. "Thinking about sex when I don't want to."
   e. "Washing myself because I feel dirty on the inside."
   f. "Not trusting people because they might want sex."
   g. "Getting scared or upset when I think about sex."
   h. "Having sex feelings in my body."
   i. "Can't stop thinking about sex."
   j. "Getting upset when people talk about sex."

   
   Now you can call me an old fogey who grew up sheltered, and without MTV, but if someone in the first grade told me to answer these questions, I wouldn't have had the foggiest idea of what they were talking. Or I wouldn't have cared and would've rebelled in my way of not giving two cents about what the teacher wanted me to do.
   
7. Speaking of which, is this an even remotely productive use of schooltime. In an era when educators frequently complain about how little time they have to do stuff, does time really need to be taken out of the day to take SEX questionaires? I wouldn't mind so much if the surveys would have something to do with education, but this has nothing to do with education or trying to improve my child's education.
   
8. Here's a gem of a quotation from the ruling:

   From the continuation of footnote one, the letter to parents on page 15065: "I understand answering questions may make my child feel uncomfortable. It this occurs, then, Kristi Seymour, the research study coordinator, will assist us in locating a therapist for further psychological help if necessary."

   
   FURTHER PSYCHOLOGICAL HELP?!?!?!?!
   
   Now, being quite the consumer of psychological services, I know how good or bad this can be. But why would being uncomfortable answering these questions be grounds for psychological problems? They're freaking KIDS, for crying out loud. And how about if I as a parent, objected to having my kid sent to a therapist for sex, at seven years old? Would I be forced to have my child sent against my wishes? Something tells me the Ninth Circus would approve of that measure.
   
9. If parents read the consent form without actually figuring out what it said, then same on them. At the same time, students need a consent form for everything, including the infamous aspirin note.
   
10. Of course, if you don't sign the form, then your child could be ostricized from the group or can have something that would seem to be a punishment to the child. And that wouldn't be very nice, now would it?

Of course, this is all the more reason for me to not send my children to public schools. It's an even bigger problem if you then have to pay twice, once to not even educate your child.

I'll go into the whole taxation = theft thing Dan brought up a while back in a later post. (It's not). Taxes suck and it's highly immoral for the government to take and then waste on something not done for the good of everyone. But that brings up the question of a public good and I'll save that for another time.

In the meantime, the lesson as always is: Do not live in California. Unless you have no scruples.

West Wing "Debate"

At first I was very skeptical about the whole concept, especially considering that NBC put the "NBC News" logo in the corner. It would take a whole lot of stupidity to think that it was a real debate, but I wouldn't put it past the American public to think that Alan Alda is running for President this year. The question is how many people think that's going to be real.

Even so, I think they did a real good job of creating Democratic and Republican characters. Even so, I think that's really, really insane how the Alan Alda was so pro-market and anti-government. Sure, the writers went overboard on the whole "Tax Cuts" thing, but towards the end that I watched, when they were talking about energy policy, Alda blew the other candidate out of the water.

I would love to see a candidate that is out of the economic libertarian mold. That's not going to happen unless the libertarians take over the Republican Party.

So I'm almost tempted to see how the writers of "The West Wing" will play out the rest of the election. Is it the charasmatic Texas Latino who likes government, or is it going to be the old, cranky free market white guy. I have a good idea which direction it will go in, but we'll see.

Identity Politics and Republicans

Italians for Bush - www.weeklystandard.com

I found this article on the Weekly Standard's website and read through it. The idea is that Italians have shifted voting patterns from Democrats to Republicans. Luisa sees it as being that Italians have assimilated to the point where they want to be patriotic and American. I more or less agree, but this leads to the question of the historical differences among Italian immigrants (or European immigrants in general), Asian immigrants, and African-Americans. Without going into it too much, while all three entered the country with disadvantages, for the most part, there are differences between European/Asian immigrants and African-Americans. The obvious difference is that African-Americans had to deal with the historical baggage that is slavery, while later immigrants did not. Then there was expressed discrimination in the South against Blacks, although discrimination against other immigrants did occur, just not on the same level as the Jim Crow laws of the South.

So politically, this leads to the differences between most identity groups and Blacks. While you hear about the Urban League and the NAACP, this was the first time that I had heard of the NIAF. Quick, other than for Hispanics (more on them in a moment), think of a non-Black ethnic political group.

So what about Hispanics? They don't have the historical or widespread discrimination that occured with Blacks. So why are groups like La Raza becoming so important? Why are Hispanics spoken as being the "next big ethnic group" and thus Republicans have to "reach out" to them? You can see that some within the ethnic group want to follow the Black model and become a "favored" political group. Of course, being a favored group hasn't helped Blacks, especially relative to Asians or other ethniticities. So why would Hispanics want to follow this pattern? If you're going to pick a pattern to go, then why not follow the pattern of Asians?

I think the common link between Blacks and Hispanics will end up being the culture of separation that prohibited assimilation between both groups. While the causes of that separation are radically different (imposed by others for Blacks, self-imposed for Hispanics), that separation can prevent Hispanics from joining the rest of the culture in the successes of American culture and society.

Right now, it is hard to say what the future will hold for identity politics as a whole and for individual identity groups. However, if Hispanics choose to not learn from history and choose to make themselves separate from American society, then it will be to their detriment.

Public Indecency?

So Michigan passed a law outlawing "drive-by pornography". Basically it makes it a crime to watch porn in your car such that anyone else can see it.

I learned about this from an article on Catholic Exchange that goes into detail about how upset the author is about indecent public acts, more specifically, watching pornography DVDs in public view.

He makes the quote here that's probably talking smack to the libertarians of the world:

Bloggers and other Internet commentators are having a great time disparaging the law. Some think it's a denial of fundamental freedom ("Hey dude, my car, my porn, my property; step off"). Some think it's a sign that the Michigan legislature has too much time on its hands. Some think it's just another little law that, combined with hundreds of others, creates a maze that brings the state into every aspect of our lives.

So that leaves the question, is this a law that should be on the books? Does a car count as private property. What happens if you're doing something with the intent of not having anyone watching and someone comes along. Is there a difference between a peeping tom, and someone in an SUV in the next lane over?

I think there's definitely a personal responsiblity issue at hand here, alot to do with the changing times. I don't think there's a difference between someone in the 50's reading a Playboy in the car and someone watching a DVD in their car. The same problem arises. Let's take a look at the DVD at the little league game concern and the Debbie Does Dallas-SUV concern. It's a more or less public place. If said guy decides to watch a little Jenna Jamison, he should expect the proper response of getting the shit kicked out of him or at least public dissaproval. But there's the culture of permissiveness and moral equivalence that's at stake here. But the problem is the culture of acceptance. Everyone is told to be more accepting. Thus, the horndog at the baseball game is "allowed" to watch his video.

Then there's the SUV example. Here's where the culture of not accepting responsiblity comes into play. If by some chance, your child watches the part of DDD that does have adult situations, instead of blaming the other person, do some frickin' parenting. The author would love to take his lack of parenting out on the driver in the other car, but he should just take responsiblity for his own kids. Either tell the kids to look away, or just LET IT GO. They saw 15 seconds of porn, which they will have no idea of what they were seeing anyway, and won't remember anyway.

Which leads to my final quandary? The age old, "What is porn?" question. This becomes especially true when you see a snippet of something. For example: You happen to come up on a car and see a naked chick on the screen. Is that porn? Does context matter in this situation? What if I told you that the naked chick scene was Kate Winslet in Titanic. Does that make a difference? Would that qualify under this Michigan law? Would the writer of the article think that watching "Titanic" is bad?

What if you're driving along and you see a single male in a car watching a porn but in one of those rare instances where the actors aren't having sex? Normally, you wouldn't think anything of it. So do you arrest the guy for watching a movie that would have no effect on you or your kids?

The author is right, we shouldn't have to have these kinds of laws on the books. But then his whole thesis revolves around this statement:

The solution is to eliminate our disordered desires and passions that make the laws necessary in the first place.

Which is fine, but won't do a damn thing to change the situation that he's talking about? How does the author want to change the disordered desires and passions in other people? I would like to see him write an article on that.

Semi-Glazed Response to Dan's Questions

Of course, the questions I refer to are at the end of this post, just for reference.

1. Do I want government more or less involved in my life than it is now?
Now here's a double-edged sword. Short answer, yes with an if. Long answer, no with a but. The short of it is that I (like about 99.99% of the population), would gladly like government involvement if it turns out to my benefit. If the government finds a way for me to get billions and billions of dollars, without doing anything, and I can do anything I want with said monies, then I'd love government. Of course, you end up with 300 million people making the same demands, and you end up with Communism.

Of course, there's the other side of said sword. If I depend on the government to make my life well, then I'm indebted to the government. Basically like the Mafia. And you're screwed if all of a sudden, you decide that government isn't exactly your cup of tea. My personal case in point, student loans. Of course, it's great that the government gave me money to get an education (in theory). And now, if I don't start making repayments, then the government can track me down and do whatever they want to me.

So in the end, since I have to deal with everyone else, and the fact that everyone else other than me is an idiot, I'd much rather not deal with other people and their wants. That's one of the things economics doesn't get into too much detail about. How other people's decisions affect your own. And I'd much rather not deal with that.

2. Do I think I or the government better knows the value of the income I make?

Well, the obvious economic answer is I do. The government can't possibly know what my utility functions are. Or can they...?

No, they can't. But they presume to know that the marginal value my money is lower than the marginal value of the money of someone poorer than me. But what do they know. Of course, I think it's possible to have an increasing marginal value of money. Example one: a lottery. More people want to buy tickets as the value of the lottery increases. Wouldn't that mean that people have a higher marginal value of money. Yet, all of the progressive taxation people justify progressive taxation laws on a DECREASING marginal value of money. So what is it?

More evidence the government has no idea what it's talking about.

3. Who is better to make decisions about my life and family, me or the government?

Haha, of course it's the government. After all, the government needs to protect my family from the crazy nutball ideas I have. After all, the 9th circuit just ruled that parents don't have the exclusive right to teach children about sex. That must be made in a classroom setting. And of course, children must be taught about tolerance, and all that togetherness stuff that is nothing more than brainwashing.

4. Am I qualified to tell you how to live your life? If so, why aren't you qualified to tell me how to live mine?

For entertainment's sake, let's say you are qualified. That also means that I'm qualified to tell you how to live your life. The idea behind this is that everyone has different experiences that would qualify them as having the knowledge to tell me what to do and what not to do. Thus, everyone is qualified to meddle in the affairs of everyone else.

That's the problem I have with people holding the ideas of "democracy" and "equality" as end all of government and society. Let's assume that these are the two highest ideals of government. That is, everything in society should revolve around them. There's rule of the people and everyone is the same. What happens? You end up ALWAYS doing what 50.000000000001% of the population wants to do. But if everyone's equal, then it doesn't matter. Everyone will agree on everything because they're equal, right?

Then let's relax things a bit. One person is, shockingly, different from everyone else. Let's say that everyone likes skiing. Thus, the government gives everyone free ski passes and equipment. But lo and behold, this one person hates skiing. He doesn't want the equipment and the passes are useless. But he's screwed because democracy says the choice of the people rule and equality says that everyone gets the same stuff. You can extend this continuously for more people, and more people get screwed, but we live by democracy and equality, so that's that. So I don't like "democracy" as an ideal state of nature, because people end up getting screwed by the majority. Unless you're in the majority, in which case, everything's happy. Of course, that's never the case. So you can have democracy without equality (let's call that Ancient Greece) or equality without democracy (Back in the USSR), but not both. Witness what's happening in Iraq with that statement.

So because people are fallible and different from me and my experiences, there's only one person who can tell me how to live my life. God. And of course, he abdicated that decision when he gave everyone free will. So noone can tell me how to live my life.

5. No matter what I do in my own home, what difference does that make to you?

Ah, private property rights. The answer is... it depends. If you're in your home, and you do nothing, then it doesn't matter. It starts to make a difference once you do stuff that affects me. Extreme example: You live on Mars. You're the only one on Mars and you own the planet. Being a long frickin way away from me, pretty much anything you do doesn't affect me. But not everything. Let's say you decide to blow up the planet for whatever reason. Since it's your home, you can do it. But now, I can no longer look at the sky and see Mars. It's gone, and you've just had an effect on me.

So I guess my point is that there is no ABSOLUTE property right. You can do anything, as long as it doesn't affect someone else. As soon as it does, then we have problems. And depending on the situation and circumstances, you're more than likely going to affect someone.

So I think these questions establish me as very much a conservative, but not a complete libertarian. And I'm comfortable with that.

Quasi-Response to Dan

Yeah, #3 was a big mistake on that part. I do agree with libertarians on this one, especially when concerned with the Republican stance of sucking as much money as possible for government uses.

As for #4, education is very much a public good, as far as it's much better for a society to have memebers who can read, write, do simeple math, etc. So I can definitely see where government should provide BASIC education. Of course, beyond that, it should be every family for itself. Like with a college education, or even a HS education. Basically, make K-8 manditory, then allow HS to be whatever you want Parochial, Private, Homeschool, skills based. But there should be no federal funding of college. None at all. So I somewhat agree with you there, but probably not as much as your ideologically pure bretherin would allow.

My bigger point is that the social liberal wing of the libertarians want there to be no discourse of religion or even mentioning religion in the public realm. Tis the season for millions of lawsuits over Christmas displays, menorahs, and Nativity scenes. What comes to mind is the brouhaha over the Ten Commandments in the Alabama Supreme Court. It's easy for me as a Catholic to say that it's not establishing religion over me, but it's still to say that the Ten Commandments set more or less the foundations for what I'd like to call our legal system.

So, I'll answer Dan's 5 questions at a later date, but this will be a good start for now.

Because the Senate isn't Doing Anything Else Important

AP: Bunning, McCain reintroducing steroids legislation

So McCain is missing during the vote on the Coburn Amendment redirecting Alaskan pork so he can come up with a bill like this?

So how do I react to this? Part of me (the conservative) says "Good for Congress. Way to actually enforce the laws on the books." Steriods are illegal, right? Then the libertarian part of me says, "Where does Congress get the power to do something like this?" Of course, it gets the power because it's Congress and it can do anything it frickin wants to. Plus, baseball is forced to have Congress intervene because of that ole anti-trust exemption.

(Sidenote 1: This is where the Supreme Court makes no sense whatsoever. Back in the 1920's, the Supreme Court passes the buck on ruling baseball under the anti-trust laws, saying that only Congress can say whether MLB is subject to those laws. So there's two things: I think this may be the only time I know of where the SC said that it's congress' decision on the application of a law. Why can't they do this for other things... like abortion. Second, how has this stood up as settled law for so long? You'd figure that someone would've challenged the exemption a long time ago. After all, isn't the Consitution a living, breathing document?)

(Sidenote 2: Ok, so Congress has jurisdiction because of the whole anti-trust stuff. But what about other sports? I imagine the NFL, NBA and NHL aren't going to be happy about this. And what about other sports? The WWE, the Strongest Man competitions? Everyone knows they juice, but there's no mention of them in the bill.)

So where to come down on this idea? The first area is federalism, is this something that falls under federal jurisdiction? And that's an affirmative. Now, the second question is SHOULD this be something the government should intervene in? I'd probably say this should be one of the lower priority issues on the Senate docket, especially considering that the Senate has some closed door meeting today on the whole "Scootergate" shenanigans. Then again, at the same time, these are bills that should more or less fly through Congress because it's a political no-brainer. Who's going to be the dumbass Congressman or Senator to vote against something like this? I could definitely see them getting torn to shreds if they voted against something like this. ("Senator X voted against punishing steriod users. What does that say about Senator X? Do you want to vote for someone who allows cheating in sports?")

So do I support something like this? On one side, this doesn't affect me. It doesn't spend any money (directly) and I'm not about to play pro baseball, nor will it change my affinity for following baseball. However, on principle, I'd have to say that this is a dumb piece of legislation. If the government can deal out punishment in a completely private industry, who's to say they can't do the same in every industry? "If a worker speeds to get to work, then they're suspended for two years for the first offense and a lifetime ban for the second offense." And don't say it's a bad argument because it's the same exact thing.

And finally, there's this nugget:

The proposal has a provision urging leagues to erase records achieved with the help of performance-enhancing drugs.

At least right now it wouldn't be required. But I can definitely see the creation of the Bureau of Sports Statistics in the Department of Commerce, which would produce official government statistics for every sport. And more jobs and government spending for everyone.

So I'd definitely have to say that I would oppose this piece of wonderful legislation. Of course, it all depends on which way the political wind is blowing. Congress, since it's waste of time hearings in March, has been itching to put it's stamp on the issue. It's only a matter of time before they make the leap into this arena.

Finally, I direct you to the Baseball Think Factory discussion on the topic. Loads of hilarity there. Here's my favorite (#39):

The issue here is not whether players broke a few rules, or took a few liberties with performance enhancing drugs - they did. But you can't hold a whole league responsible for the behavior of a few, sick twisted individuals. For if you do, then shouldn't we blame all sports? And if all sports guilty, then isn't this an indictment of our entertainment industry in general? I put it to you, Senator McCain - isn't this an indictment of our entire American society? Well, you can do whatever you want to us, but we're not going to sit here and listen to you badmouth the United States of America. Gentlemen!

I Like It

Now, here's a funny ad from the Beef Board. (The government-sanctioned steak monopoly). Sure, they artificially raise the price of beef, but how can you stay angry at an organization that makes fun of vegetarians.



For more delicious information on all things beef, you can go to www.beefitswhatsfordinner.com. Unfortunately, they don't sell beef related items like you can at the Pork Board's website. And who wouldn't want to go around with a shirt saying "The Other White Meat"?

And as a side note, why hasn't anyone started a ad/slogan for some meat producer that features Homer Simpson's "You Don't Win Friends with Salad" chant from the Simpsons episode where he has the barbeque. It's not like Matt Groening can't be bought.