Month: September 2004

I Shoulda Had a V-8, Too

My father owned several cars with V-8 engines, but I’ve never owned one. (A straight-8 and some V-6s, yes, but never a V-8.) Now I’m reminded of what I’ve missed:

I Shoulda Had a V-8

By Ralph Kinney Bennett

Published 09/23/2004

In September 1914, just 90 years ago, the makers of a very good American car made a dramatic leap from good to great.

That was when Cadillac, which had already established a reputation in the luxury field with its high-quality four cylinder cars, introduced the all new “Type 51” with a V-8 engine….

Advances in internal combustion engine technology give today’s motorists a wide variety of smooth powerful engines — fours, sixes and eights — and the perfection of the V-6 over the past couple of decades has given them power and acceleration rivaling V-8s.

But there’s still something about those extra two cylinders. Drive a Chrysler 300 with its fine V-6, for instance. Then get behind the wheel of a 300 with the new Hemi V-8. Whooee! Automotive engineers can give you technical reasons for the difference but it’s better just to experience it, to feel it….”

More about Libertarian Hawks and Doves

A few weeks ago I posted about a piece by Max Borders, “Flying with Libertarian Hawks.” Comments by a reader led me to do a followup post.

Borders, too, has been getting mail, so he has followed up with “Sparring with Libertarian Doves.” He makes some points that I’ve made in various posts on libertarianism and war, but he makes them so compellingly that I can’t resist the urge to quote:

…It is by virtue of both security and the rule of law that we are both free and united as a people. Sometimes these forces — i.e. national security and the rule of law — appear, at times, to come into conflict — much like human cells and the immune system. But one can’t exist without the other.

That is why I find it even more curious that some libertarians advocate a private, decentralized protective apparatus. When such a system is worked out properly, I might be convinced. Until then, I’ll pay my taxes and pray that my leaders keep me safe to the best of their judgment, using the best available information….

Now, at the strategic level, critics may be right in saying that the Iraqis may not be able to sustain a liberal democracy. But it will be worth it to find out (despite the bellyaching of anarcho-capitalists who don’t want to underwrite such measures). A long term strategy to plant the seeds of liberal democracy in places where serious threats would otherwise fester in the status quo is a necessary evil — and I should add doesn’t require “wholly remaking the social and political order.” (I believe that all people prefer freedom to tyranny and the process emergent order can follow after they get some momentum.) And while it may seem un-libertarian to use tax revenues for adventures that some people just don’t get is, well, the nature of the beast — that is, the actions of an imperfect nation-state, doing what it has to do in an age of deadly weapons proliferation and terrorism.

Finally, other libertarians believe that invasions like Iraq run afoul of the rights of those we would attack. Indeed, some critics of my article claimed that my brand of libertarianism “denies a right not to be killed to people who are not liberal democrats or who do not live in liberal democracies.” Ultimately, I think rights — as such — are conferred by constitutions at home and to a lesser degree by international alliances abroad. Beyond that, human rights are just words we can afford to use when we’re certain about our safety. To think otherwise is to be willing to die and expect fellow citizens to die for what are little more than libertarian flights of fancy [emphasis mine: ED].

Zing! Ouch!

I am working on a piece about the viability of the kind of “private, decentralized protective apparatus” espoused by anarcho-capitalists. It will be a doozy. Stay tuned.

Speaking of Discrimination…

…a story at The Washington Times says:

Discrimination against white male found

By George Archibald

THE WASHINGTON TIMES

An English professor at the University of North Carolina illegally subjected a student to “intentional discrimination and harassment” because he was “a white, heterosexual Christian male” who expressed disapproval of homosexuality, the U.S. Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights has ruled.

Professor Elyse Crystall violated student Timothy R. Mertes’ civil rights, the agency said, by improperly accusing him of “hate speech” in an e-mail sent to students after a class discussion in which Mr. Mertes said he was a Christian and felt “disgusted, not threatened” by homosexual behavior.

“The e-mail message not only subjected the student to intentional discrimination and harassment, but also discouraged the robust exchange of ideas that is intrinsic to higher education and is at the very heart of the Constitution’s protection of free speech,” Alice B. Wender, the Education Department’s southern regional director of civil rights concluded in a letter to UNC Chancellor James Moeser on Wednesday.

It’s about time.

Is There Such a Thing as Legal Discrimination?

According to an Encarta article about Detroit, the Motor City’s population peaked at 1,850,000 in 1950. Its black population at the time was 16 percent of the total, that is, about 300,000. Detroit’s population in 2000 was about 950,000, of which 81.6 percent — about 776,000 — were black. Thus the non-black population of Detroit dropped by almost 90 percent in 50 years. The “white flight” from Detroit made property there much cheaper than in the nearby suburbs to which whites were fleeing. And so, as low-income blacks filled much of the space left by whites, Detroit’s black population increased by more than 250 percent during the same 50 years.

The white-flight phenomenon leads me to ask two questions: Was the desertion of Detroit (and other large Northern cities) by non-blacks a form of discrimination? If so, was that discrimination legal? I ask because Tim Sandefur in two recent posts at Freespace (here and here), has left me wondering whether there is any legal scope for widespread acts of racial discrimination.

It’s clear to me that non-blacks were discriminatory in leaving Detroit. I grew up in Michigan. I can vouch for its combination of Northern charm and Southern racial attitudes. Detroit’s whites might have rationalized their flight as a response to the greater prevalence of crime and drugs in the black community, but white flight stemmed from a visceral dislike on the part of most whites for living near blacks. (Detroit is, of course, only emblematic of racial attitudes and their consequences throughout the North.) The greater prevalence of crime and drug use among blacks gave whites an excuse for fleeing Detroit, but the underlying cause of white flight was old-fashioned bigotry.

Now the question is whether white flight was legal. Actually, I have no doubt that it was perfectly legal for the vast majority of Detroit’s white citizens to abandon that city and practically ghetto-ize it. Each departing household simply made a voluntary decision to leave and each arriving household simply made a voluntary decision to move in. But Sandefur’s posts lead me to wonder at what point it becomes illegal for the majority of citizens to act similarly out of racial prejudice. Here’s Sandefur, writing about the refusal of most Southern whites to trade with Southern blacks in the days of legal segregation:

If everyone in the state makes an agreement (even sub silentio) not to engage in trade with blacks, even if they don’t stamp that agreement with the state’s imprimatur, it is still a social compact, which means that it can’t pretend not to be state action….

[A] person has the right to discriminate in almost all cases, but when that discrimination reaches such a massive collective agreement, it becomes state action, I think, and subject to the same objections as state discrimination.

These statements are consistent with an earlier post, in which Sandefur says:

As Frederick Douglass pointed out in his speech on the Civil Rights Cases, what sense does it make that we say “the state may not do X, if we say all of the citizens may do X”?

Thus, if I’ve followed Sandefur’s reasoning correctly, it seems to be this:

1. A collective agreement amounts to state action.

2. The state cannot act to deny an explicit constitutional right or any other fundamental right, say, the right to engage in commerce.

3. Therefore, the widespread refusal of whites to refuse to engage in commerce with blacks is an unlawful state action.

The linchpin of Sandefur’s argument is his conflation of collective agreements and state action, a conflation that he traces to Frederick Douglass. Sandefur’s argument collapses if not all collective agreements amount to state action. Well, his argument collapses because:

1. It’s true that the state arises out a collective agreement of its citizens (or their chosen representatives).

2. But the collective agreement that creates the state doesn’t give the state unlimited power of action. In fact it specifically limits the state’s power of action. The citizens of the state may — and do — withhold certain powers from the state, for the private exercise of citizens.

3. Therefore, regardless of how many citizens agree on a particular subject, that agreement is not tantamount to state action if the subject lies outside the power granted the state. Enforcement of an extra-constitutional collective agreement rests on the voluntary submission of citizens to that agreement. The same citizens who entered the collective agreement may dissolve it piecemeal by abandoning it, one or a few at a time, whereas they cannot similarly revoke a power specifically granted the state.

I conclude that the state has no business telling its citizens how they may or may not carry their racial attitudes into the conduct of their affairs, as long as that conduct is passive — that is, as long as it takes such forms as not buying from, hiring, or otherwise associating with members of certain groups. I say that not out of bigotry — I long ago outgrew the attitudes of my native State — but because we have gone far beyond the abolition of slavery and the granting of equal civil rights. We have practically repudiated freedom of association, we have severely undermined property rights, and — more lately with speech codes and hate-crime laws — we have entered an early stage of thought policing.

In sum, liberty is being vanquished in the name of liberty. It wouldn’t be happening if collective agreements were, indeed, tantamount to state action.

Favorite Posts: Affirmative Action and Race

Repeat This Until You Understand It

I’ve said it before. Dale Franks at QandO says it again:

[T]he enemy is not an inanimate object upon which we impose our will. Instead, the enemy is composed of thinking, reasoning human beings who are doing their best to divine our intentions, and to prevent us from accomplishing them.

It seems that it can’t be said too often.

Florida Supremes Make a Tough Call

I’m not surprised by the substance of the Florida Supreme Court’s decision in the case of Terry Schiavo, which enables the removal of the brain-damaged woman’s feeding tube. I am intrigued by the legal logic underlying the court’s decision. From AP via Yahoo! News:

Fla. Court Nixes Law Keeping Woman Alive

By JACKIE HALLIFAX, Associated Press Writer

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – The Florida Supreme Court on Thursday struck down a law that was rushed through the Legislature last fall to keep a severely brain-damaged woman hooked up to a feeding tube against her husband’s wishes.

The unanimous court said the law that kept Terri Schiavo alive violated the separation of powers between the judicial branch and the legislative and executive branches.

Lower courts had ruled that Michael Schiavo could have the tube removed, but the Legislature passed the law to overrule the courts. Gov. Jeb Bush then used the law to order the tube reinserted. The court’s decision came just weeks after oral arguments….

“It is without question an invasion of the authority of the judicial branch for the Legislature to pass a law that allows the executive branch to interfere with the final judicial determination in a case,” Chief Justice Barbara Pariente wrote for the court. “That is precisely what occurred here.”

The court said the law improperly delegated legislative powers to the governor, who had complete authority to issue or lift a stay….

The 40-year-old woman left no written instructions before suffering brain damage when her heart stopped beating 14 years ago. But in Florida a person’s wishes must be honored even if they are expressed orally.

Schiavo’s parents disagree with their son-in-law about her wishes, insisting their daughter wanted to live and could be helped with therapy. Courts have generally sided with Michael Schiavo, but parents Bob and Mary Schindler have won stays that have kept their daughter alive.

Why didn’t the court simply accept Michael Schiavo’s word that his wife didn’t want to live in a vegetative state? Is the court using the Schiavo case as a way of getting back at Florida’s Republican legislature and governor for the outcome of Bush v. Gore? In that case, as you know, the U.S. Supreme Court overruled the predominantly Democrat Florida court, which had overruled the intent of the Florida legislature, as properly interpreted by Jeb Bush’s secretary of state, so that Gore’s minions could continue to manufacture the votes Gore needed to defeat Bush.

That’s the only way I can read it.

Since when has it been improper for a legislature to make a law that effectively overrules a judicial determination? It would be improper if the law itself is unconstitutional. But how is it unconstitutional for the Florida legislature to authorize the governor to issue a stay in the matter? Legislatures don’t issue stays, but they can authorize the executive to issue them.

Mmmm…this one may be headed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

A Logic Puzzle from the Left

TBogg takes issue with InstaPundit, who characterizes Kerry’s private discussions with the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong in 1971 as secret. First, TBogg quotes InstaPundit:

September 22, 2004

OUCH: “It would be like an American today meeting with the heads of al Qaeda.”

UPDATE: Heck, even Chris Matthews saw this one coming.

ANOTHER UPDATE: But it wasn’t secret — well, it may have been when it happened, but not later.

TBogg next quotes from the WaPo article linked in InstaPundit‘s “Another Update”:

The meeting, however, was not a secret. Kerry, a leading antiwar activist at the time, mentioned it in testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in April of that year. “I have been to Paris,” he testified. “I have talked with both delegations at the peace talks, that is to say the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and Provisional Revolutionary Government,” the latter a South Vietnamese communist group with ties to the Viet Cong.

TBogg then does a silly riff on what an 11-year old InstaPundit might have been asking his mother about the whereabouts of John Kerry in 1971.

But TBogg fails to get the point, which the WaPo article clearly establishes: Kerry’a private discussions with the North Vietnamese were secret at the time he conducted them. He told Congress about the negotiations after the fact. Not only that, but the discussions may have been illegal. According to the same WaPo article, the Kerry campaign has come close to admitting it:

Kerry’s campaign said earlier this year that he met on the trip with Nguyen Thi Binh, then foreign minister of the PRG and a top negotiator at the talks. Kerry acknowledged in that testimony that even going to the peace talks as a private citizen was at the “borderline” of what was permissible under U.S. law, which forbids citizens from negotiating treaties with foreign governments. But his campaign said he never engaged in negotiations or attended any formal sessions of the talks.

No, he just went to Paris to practice his French.

Why Don’t They Do Something Challenging?

“The Hon. Dick Thornburgh and Louis D. Boccardi to Comprise Independent Review Panel Examining CBS News ’60 Minutes’ Wednesday Report.” Are they that hard up for something to do? That job ought to take them a day, including meal breaks and a gala farewell for Dan Rather. They ought to take on a challenging project, like getting the name of Peter Jennings’s hair colorist.

Saving the Electoral College

Gail Heriot of The Right Coast has been posting on the subject “Does the Electoral College Makes Sense?” She is trying to make the case for abolishing the Electoral College. Her latest post is here. I think she has yet to address a very good argument for keeping the Electoral College, which comes from Glenn C. Altschuler, writing at The New York Observer in a review of Why the Electoral College Is Bad for America, by George C. Edwards III:

[T]o avoid the possibility of electing a President who has only a plurality in a crowded field, advocates of direct election provide for a runoff if no candidate gets 40 percent of the vote. The runoff, Mr. Edwards acknowledges, “has some potential to fragment the party system.” He argues, strenuously, that runoffs would be rare and would not destabilize the political system. The provision, however, is fraught with danger. Third-, fourth- and fifth-party candidates — let’s call them Ralph, Ross and Lyndon LaRouche — could enter the first round. Without a winner-take-all in each state, voters might be less likely to think they were wasting their votes on them. These reforms might weaken the already fragile two-party system — which, for all its flaws, has served this country well — and put fringe parties in the driver’s seat, à la Israel. It doesn’t seem worth the risk. Maybe, after all, the Founders were right.

Yep, just maybe.

DeLay, a Headliner in Austin

“Grand jury indicts DeLay lieutenants,” according to the Austin Statesman-American. The Statesman plays up the DeLay angle because (1) it’s a Democrat mouthpiece and (2) it harbors special ill-will toward DeLay, who is the Darth Vader of Texas politics, according to the left.

Go below the headline and you read this:

Following the Republican sweep of the 2002 elections [for State-wide offices], [Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle, a Democrat], began investigating allegations that Republicans and their business allies used unprecedented amounts of corporate cash to affect the elections.

State law generally prohibits using corporate or labor union money for political purposes except to pay for the administrative expenses of a political action committee.

There are two things going on here: a political vendetta and the suppression of political speech. The latter is just as bad in Texas as it is in D.C., thanks to decades of Democrat control of the Texas legislature.

Outrageous Headline du Jour

We learn this from BBC News:

US in shock over hostage deaths

America has woken up in shock to the news that both the US hostages being held by militants in Iraq have been killed by their captors….

Unfortunately, Americans aren’t shocked. Shock is “the feeling of distress and disbelief that you have when something bad happens accidentally.” Americans, by and large, were expecting the hostages to be beheaded. There was nothing sudden or accidental about the beheadings.

“Outraged” is the right word, BBC. Get a dictionary.

Tit-for-Tat on the Left

Don’t you love the logic of moments like this:

Johnny: Teacher, Sue’s a big liar. She wasn’t sick yesterday, her Mom took her to the mall.

Sue: Teacher, Johnny’s a big liar, too, he wasn’t sick last week, his Dad took him to a ball game.

Sue is trying to justify her lie by pointing out that Johnny also lies. What we know is that both of them probably have lied.

Well, that’s what we get from lefty blogs that are still trying to minimize the import of Rather’s lies about Bush’s National Guard records. Here’s Gene Lyons, quoted at Eschaton:

I saw pundit Andrew Sullivan on CNN clucking over CBS’ mistakes. In 1994, when Sullivan edited The New Republic, it ran a cover story accusing Bill Clinton of corruptly enriching his wife’s law firm by changing Arkansas usury laws as governor. In fact, the deed was done by public referendum under Clinton’s Republican predecessor.

On Dec. 19, 1995, ABC News’ “Nightline” aired a deceptively edited video clip of a Hillary Clinton press conference about Whitewater. It accused her of lying about the very information electronically deleted from her remarks. No consequences followed.

On May 4, 1996, The New York Times published an article with a deceptive Associated Press byline stating that an FBI agent’s trial testimony described a $50,000 windfall to Whitewater from an illegal loan. As the actual AP article stipulated, the agent gave no such testimony. Many accusatory editorials and columns followed, helping Kenneth Starr to prolong his fruitless investigation of Bill Clinton’s finances for years. The Times has never acknowledged its blunder.

Of course, there’s nothing there about all the misleading if not downright lying things that ABC, NYT, and many other media outlets have published about Republicans and conservatives over the years. Desperation, thy name is “Lefty”.

That’s It, Exactly

Why is it that many economists (epitomized by Paul Krugman) seem not to understand the principles of economics? That is, why do they consistently favor government intervention in economic affairs (e.g., heavy handed regulation of the drug industry, government as the single payer in a universal health insurance plan)? Here’s why, according to Arnold Kling, writing at Tech Central Station:

My sense is that even for the best students, mathematical constructs in economics tend to go into short-term memory. The really important lessons of economics can be forgotten, if they are even learned in the first place, in a class where students are graded on their ability to manipulate diagrams as opposed to their ability to apply economic reasoning.

Some economists seem completely lost without their mathematical tool kit. Unable to explain economics in plain English, they stoop to the novice level, or even lower. I put Paul Krugman in this category….

Many economists are considered “good” economists because of their command of mathematics and statistics — not because they truly understand the principles of economics.

Creeping Euthanasia

Guardian Unlimited posts this:

Revealed: full scale of euthanasia in Britain

Fury as number of ‘assisted deaths’ claimed to be 18,000

Jamie Doward, social affairs editor

Sunday September 19, 2004

The Observer

British doctors help nearly 20,000 people a year to die, according to one of the UK’s leading authorities on euthanasia. The claim, the first public attempt by a credible expert to put a figure on ‘assisted dying’ rates, will reignite the emotive debate over the practice.

Dr Hazel Biggs, director of medical law at the University of Kent and author of Euthanasia: Death with Dignity and the Law, calculates that at least 18,000 people a year are helped to die by doctors who are treating them for terminal illnesses.

Biggs, who has submitted evidence to the House of Lords select committee which is examining Lord Joffe’s private member’s bill on Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill, makes the claim in an article submitted to the European Journal for Health Law.

Her figures will place renewed focus on the doctor-patient relationship, which pro-euthanasia campaigners want changed so that medical staff can help conscious, terminally ill patients in pain to shorten their lives.

Biggs’s figures are based on data from countries such as the Netherlands and Australia, which have published research into assisted dying rates, as well as evidence taken from British doctors.

‘If you extrapolate from countries that have published data, you’re looking at quite a large number of patients who may have had their end hastened, not necessarily with their consent,’ she said [emphasis mine: ED]….

An ageing population has meant that an increasing number of doctors are taking private decisions to aid the early demise of terminally ill patients, usually by increasing drug doses.

Deborah Annetts, chief executive of the Voluntary Euthanasia Society, said there was an urgent need to clarify regulations governing assisted dying: ‘We need to shine a spotlight on this. The medical profession doesn’t want the public to realise they are making these decisions. It shows the need to make the patient the decision-maker. When it’s left to the doctor, there is always the risk of abuse.‘[emphasis mine: ED]…

Well said. And I wonder how often doctors respond to pressure from family members.

It happens here, too. After all, if it’s okay to abort defenseless babies, it’s okay to kill persons who are too old or ill to defend themselves. Don’t tell me that there’s no such thing as a slippery slope. Look what has happened to the share of the economy controlled by taxation and regulation since the reigns of Theodore Rex and his cousin Franklin.

Where will the descent down the slippery slope of state-condoned murder come to an end? With government screening programs to determine whether a person is “fit” to live? That’s what we’ll have if we don’t get a grip on ourselves and deal with abortion and involuntary euthanasia.

(Thanks to my daughter-in-law for the tip.)

Reassessing the Man from Ohio

Two new books are refurbishing U.S. Grant’s reputation, according to a review by Jonathan Yardley in The Washington Post. The books are Ulysses S. Grant, by Josiah Bunting III, and Ulysses S. Grant: The Unlikely Hero, by Michael Korda. Yardley quotes Bunting on Grant:

He was hugely but modestly self-reliant; he was accustomed to making do with what he was given, without asking for more; he defined himself in action, not talk; he was dutiful, intensely loyal to superiors and friends, brave in the way that Tacitus called Agricola brave: unconsciously so.

And Korda:

Grant had that rare quality among professional soldiers, even at the very beginning of his career, of feeling deeply for the wounded and dead of both sides. It was not weakness — it was that he spared himself nothing. Grant saw what happened in war, swallowed his revulsion, pity and disgust, and went on.

A general for all seasons.

Yardley reminds us that Grant’s heroism extended beyond the battlefield:

The end of Grant’s life was both sad and noble. An investment firm to which he had foolishly committed such fortune as he had was undone by its founder’s dishonesty, and Grant was bankrupt. At about the same time he learned that he had terminal throat cancer. Desperate to assure [his wife] Julia’s financial security after his death, he overcame his qualms and agreed to write his memoirs. He completed them barely hours before his death, his final bequest to the country he had served so nobly: a literary masterpiece, two volumes in which the stamp of his greatness is on every page.

Isn’t Chicago a "Liberal" Stronghold?

Not according to this story at NYTimes.com:

Chicago Moving to ‘Smart’ Surveillance Cameras

By STEPHEN KINZER
Published: September 21, 2004

CHICAGO, Sept. 20 – A highly advanced system of video surveillance that Chicago officials plan to install by 2006 will make people here some of the most closely observed in the world. Mayor Richard M. Daley [a Democrat] says it will also make them much safer….

Police specialists here can already monitor live footage from about 2,000 surveillance cameras around the city, so the addition of 250 cameras under the mayor’s new plan is not a great jump. The way these cameras will be used, however, is an extraordinary technological leap.

Sophisticated new computer programs will immediately alert the police whenever anyone viewed by any of the cameras placed at buildings and other structures considered terrorist targets wanders aimlessly in circles, lingers outside a public building, pulls a car onto the shoulder of a highway, or leaves a package and walks away from it. Images of those people will be highlighted in color at the city’s central monitoring station, allowing dispatchers to send police officers to the scene immediately….

Many cities have installed large numbers of surveillance cameras along streets and near important buildings, but as the number of these cameras has grown, it has become impossible to monitor all of them. The software that will be central to Chicago’s surveillance system is designed to direct specialists to screens that show anything unusual happening….

When the system is in place,…video images will be instantly available to dispatchers at the city’s 911 emergency center, which receives about 18,000 calls each day. Dispatchers will be able to tilt or zoom the cameras, some of which magnify images up to 400 times, in order to watch suspicious people and follow them from one camera’s range to another’s.

A spokesman for the Illinois chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, Edwin C. Yohnka, said the new system was “really a huge expansion of the city’s surveillance program.”

“With the aggressive way these types of surveillance equipment are being marketed and implemented,” Mr. Yohnka said, “it really does raise questions about what kind of society do we ultimately want, and how intrusive we want law enforcement officials to be in all of our lives.”…

One community organizer who works in a high-crime neighborhood, Ernest R. Jenkins, chairman of the West Side Association for Community Action, said the 2,000 cameras now in place had reduced crime and were “having an impact, no if’s, and’s or but’s about it.” Nonetheless, Mr. Jenkins said, some people in Chicago believed the city was trying to “infiltrate people’s privacy in the name of terrorist attacks.”

“I just personally think that it’s an invasion of people’s privacy,” Mr. Jenkins said of the new video surveillance project. “A large increase in the utilization of these cameras would oversaturate the market.”

City officials counter that the cameras will monitor only public spaces. Rather than curb the system’s future expansion, they have raised the possibility of placing cameras in commuter and rapid transit cars and on the city’s street-sweeping vehicles.

“We’re not inside your home or your business,” Mayor Daley said. “The city owns the sidewalks. We own the streets and we own the alleys.”

You may have noticed that that the local ACLU outlet seems to be taking it rather calmly. Must be they trust Democrats more than Republicans. Not that they should, they just do.

I’m inclined to give Mayor Daley the benefit of the doubt. Not that I think that his surveillance system will do that much good. It sort of defeats the purpose to publicize it. But as long as it only monitors public places, I’m not going to get all excited about it.

Why Class Warfare Is Bad for Everyone

Let’s say the economy consists of two persons: A, who makes bread, and B, who invents things. A pays B in bread whenever B invents something that A wants.

B’s first invention is the toaster. A likes it a lot, so he and B agree on a price for the toaster: B gets a loaf of bread a week for as long as the toaster works. So far, so good?

Now suppose that B invents TV. A really likes that invention, so he offers to pay B five loaves of bread for every week the TV works. B makes a counter offer of 10 loaves of bread per week. A doesn’t think it’s “fair” to pay that much for TV, so he forces B at gunpoint to accept five loaves a week. (Get the not-so-subtle dig at the coercive power of the state?)

Now B says to himself, “If that’s the way it’s going to be, I’m not going to the trouble of inventing anything else as complex as TV. I’ll stick to simple stuff like toasters.” So B keeps on inventing things, but they’re not things that A would be willing to pay a lot of bread for.

Here’s the quiz: Who’s worse off because the “state” (A’s pistol) intervened on behalf of the laborer (A) who envied the entrepreneur (B) — A or B? Answer: Both are worse off. A doesn’t get to enjoy the things B would have invented if the state hadn’t removed B’s incentive to invent them. And B doesn’t earn as much bread as he could have earned for inventing things that would make A happier.

So, when you think of progressive taxation and other methods of redistributing income, think of A and B and the parable of the loaves.

Austin’s "Humor" Columnist at Work

UPDATED BELOW

The Austin American-Statesman carries the brainwaves of one John Kelso, the paper’s alleged humor columnist. In a recent column, “Hey old man, step away from the camera,” Kelso pokes fun at an incident in which a 71-year old amateur photographer and Austin resident was questioned by police for photographing the city’s tallest building, the Frost Bank Tower. Here’s some of what passes for “humor” in Kelso’s mind:

Something tells me Bill W… wouldn’t have gotten off so easy if he’d been wearing Arab garb and hollering “God is great” out the car window when he took photos of the Frost Bank Tower.

“I just hope Congress doesn’t pass a law making it illegal to own a camera,” the Austin retiree wrote in an e-mail about the situation. But he adds that the Austin cop who questioned him to see if he was a terrorist taking pictures of the Austin skyline was nice about it.

Bill looks at the situation as a sign of our unreasonably edgy times.

“He was very polite, and I think he was kind of embarrassed,” said Bill, 71, an amateur photographer who lives in Northwest Austin. “I didn’t fault him at all ’cause I know they have to respond to any calls that they get along those lines. I guess it’s just an indication of the public mind-set, to see a terrorist behind every shadow.”

[H]e decided to try out his new toy — a set of Meade binoculars equipped with a built-in digital camera.

“That Frost Bank Tower is a real challenge to take a picture of. It dominates the skyline.”…

Bill’s stepson had told him about a great place to shoot a photo of the Austin skyline — on the northbound frontage road of Interstate 35, a block or two south of Riverside Drive. So that’s where Bill headed. He parked in an office building parking lot. Then he got out the binoculars/camera, rolled down the driver’s side window, and started shooting out the window.

Moments later, here came the law. He’d only had time to fire off four or five shots before the cop pulled up and started asking questions.

“What he told me was that somebody had called in and reported somebody was taking pictures of downtown, and he wanted to know if that was what I was doing,” Bill recalled. “And I was very cooperative, and said yes.”

I figure if Bill had been an architect and had had a set of building plans on the front seat, he’d be in an orange jumpsuit.

“He saw that I was a senior citizen, and I didn’t fit the profile of a young, suicidal terrorist or anything like that.” But he says the cop did take down some information on him, including his driver’s license number.

“I’m probably on some database, don’t you think?” Bill asked.

Yes, Bill, you’ll be taking off your shoes at the airport for the rest of your life.

Kevin Buchman, an Austin police spokesman, says there’s no set policy on dealing with people taking photos of such things as the Frost Bank Tower. But he says the cops are glad to get calls from folks when they see suspicious activity.

“We encourage that from the community,” he said. “They’re our eyes and ears.”

Then again, what’s suspicious? I’ll betcha right now tourists from, say, Abilene, are taking snapshots of the Capitol. I wonder if I should turn them in?

Questions I asked myself when I finished reading Kelso’s “humor” column: (1) Funny, right? (2) Shouldn’t citizens ignore stuff like that, what’s suspicious about it? (3) Shouldn’t cops refuse to respond? (4) Shouldn’t cops take notes about stuff they respond to? (5) Isn’t it stupid to be edgy about terrorists?

Answers: (1) Not funny…just lame…too stupid to laugh at…didn’t even crack a smile. (2) Someone who parks on a frontage road a good distance from a building seems furtive, unlike a group of tourists from Abilene who stand in front of a building when they they photograph it. Citizens should “ignore” furtive activity the same way the passengers on United flight 93 “ignored” the hijackers and forced them to fly the plane into the ground. (3) Cops should respond to stuff like that because you never know when it’s the real thing. Who’s to know it’s a self-important 71-year old who thinks that cops are supposed to know that he’s not a terrorist even before they’ve laid eyes on him? (4) And, as a matter of prudence, it’s just as well to let him know that his presence has been noted. (5) Taking note of suspicious activity isn’t being edgy, it’s being prudent, and it doesn’t mean that everyone is walking around all day with a case of nerves. A lot of us can walk, chew gum, tell a joke, and keep our eyes open all at the same time. But maybe all of that’s too hard for Kelso.

Bonus observation: Kelso obviously dislikes profiling; check his lede. But if he dislikes profiling why should he object when the furtive behavior of a 71-year old white man is questioned? Oh, I forgot, in the liberal mindset terrorists aren’t a threat until they’ve actually struck. But you can bet that Kelso would be on the Austin cops’ case in a heartbeat if they had questioned and turned loose a suspicious character who then drove a truck bomb into the lobby of the Frost Bank Tower.

UPDATE
Kelso’s most recent column displays his knee-jerk dislike of Austin’s once-dominant high-tech types:

It must be rutting season for the species Yuppius North Austintatious. Like a mother bear separated from her cubs, these critters become upset by waits in the doughnut drive-through line.

Though rarely known to lock horns, the males, when even slightly inconvenienced, are known to screech like a peacock and stamp their tasseled loafers….

The trouble started when a guy driving a silver sedan got his Dockers in a wad because a guy in front of him in a white Jeep Cherokee was taking too much time ordering his doughnuts. “I could have sworn I heard the guy order, then change his mind, then order something again, then change his mind and then ask for a recommendation,” Christy [a tipster] recalled….

“They’re both out of the car, but they never leave the opening of the car on the driver’s side,” Christy said. “So they’re pointing at each other. But they don’t even take a step towards each other. They’re pretty chicken.”

The squabble ended with the guy in the silver sedan, still in full huff, getting in his car, slamming the door and peeling out — still with no doughnuts. “He’s still yelling while he’s sitting,” Christy said. She figures the whole thing occurred because the two males were members of a subspecies known as Internetus downsizerooni.

“It’s those crazy high-tech people — introverted, full of rage,” she theorized. “They’re angry that their stock options are under water.”

Wasn’t that another uproariously funny column?

I’m not crazy about yuppies myself — but what I don’t like about them is the way they drive. How much they make and how they make it is their business. And I don’t gloat at their misfortune. But then I’m not into class warfare like old John Kelso, who’s sort of a watered-down Michael Moore:

Say goodbye to the nice folks, John. I’m not going to bore them with any more of your carping crap — unless it’s especially outrageous.

I Wish It Were Thus

An article (“How religion divides the Democrats”) at The Boston Globe site, boston.com, includes this statement:

Libertarians and social conservatives are locked in a do-or-die battle for the soul of the Republican Party.

Sadly untrue. Most libertarians, being too pure of mind for the likes of Republicans, have gone off into their own never-never land, crying “peace at any price” and having no influence whatever on anything.

Instead of trying to shape Republicanism from within — which is my long-standing advice to the Libertarian Party — the party goes off on its own and nominates kooks like Michael Badnarik. The Libertarian Party would make a lot more progress toward its goals if it were to align itself with the Republican Party. It wouldn’t get them a half-loaf of bread — more like a slice. But a slice of bread is still better than no bread at all.

Hard-core, card-carrying, upper-case Libertarians won’t do that. Well, it’s their money, let ’em waste it. That’s my neolibertarianism speaking.

Kerry Does It Again

Via AP and Yahoo! News:

Kerry Says He Wouldn’t Have Ousted Saddam

By RON FOURNIER, AP Political Writer

NEW YORK – Staking out new ground on Iraq, Sen. John Kerry said Monday he would not have overthrown Saddam Hussein had he been in the White House, and he accused President Bush of “stubborn incompetence,” dishonesty and colossal failures of judgment. Bush said Kerry was flip-flopping.

Less than two years after voting to give Bush authority to invade Iraq, the Democratic candidate said the president had misused that power by rushing to war without the backing of allies, a post-war plan or proper equipment for U.S. troops. “None of which I would have done,” Kerry said….

Flip-flopping is an understatement for what Kerry does. He surrounds an issue and then proceeds to attack it from all sides. You know what happens to a 360-degree firing squad.