It's been apparent for a while that so-called religious conservatives when pushed, two often will choose religion over conservatism. When faced with a decision between big government in accordance with spiritual beliefs or small government in accordance with no one's beliefs, they cannot reliably be counted on for small government. This creates almost insurmountable divide in what was once a harmonious coalition. But it's getting even worse, evangelical groups are now advocating for a whole host of government programs ... Heather Wilhelm sums it up nicely here. Can a tent divided long endure?

Posted by Michael Van Winkle at 12:49 PM | Permalink

Of course, I'm not one prone to rabid flag waving, and I have more than my fair share of ambivalence over the war in Iraq. But I do find it interesting that Google chooses to recognize the Persian New Year but not Memorial Day. That's just not good marketing.

Posted by Michael Van Winkle at 08:53 AM | Permalink

The "gaggle" as they call it. Milbank's acconut is pretty interesting. Snow seems like the kind of guy you want out front if you're the White House.

Posted by Michael Van Winkle at 08:55 AM | Permalink

This is a must read essay. David Frum argues, very convincingly, that in fact the "limited government" movement, which I will call the libertarian movement (not to be confused with the Libertarian Party), is dead--at least in terms of political participation in the Republican Party. In fact, Frum points out that the slow, tortuous passing really began in 1998 when congressional Republicans decisively lost the budget battles (in the political sense) and turned their attention toward compromise and scandal.

Continue reading "The Era of Less Government is Over" »

Posted by Michael Van Winkle at 12:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (26) | TrackBacks (0)

The New York Times splashed what appeared to be one more story about how the Texan's in the current administration are giving it away to the oil companies: U.S. Has Royalty Plan to Give Windfall to Oil Companies. Enough to make your average, even your below average, libertarian nash their teeth.

As per usual, the New York Times is misleading its readers. The story should be titled: Clinton Era Decisions Bring More Oil but Less Royalties. This is the kind of not so subtle bias that pervades the New York Times. The story isn't outright dishonest or untrue, it is just cryptically titled and doesn't reveal that this is principally a Clinton administration decision until you jump to the follow and are 1400 words into a 1700 word article. I would call that irresponsible journalism, but I expect nothing less from the New York Times.

Unfortunately, the Rockefeller Republican and Truman Democrats who people editorial boards at northeastern papers that aren't per se house organs for the Socialist Workers Party don't understand oil exploration economics any better than the New York Times (free sign-up required). But the irony here is that the Clinton administration might actually have gotten it right -- even if the New York Times never will.

Continue reading "The broken clock theory - Clinton era oil incentives probably right" »

Posted by Brian Bishop at 06:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (15) | TrackBacks (0)

George Will has recognized the cynical silver lining of the assimilation cloud in a useful column in the Washington Post:

"large rallies by immigrants, many of them here illegally, protesting more stringent control of immigration reveal that many immigrants have, alas, assimilated: They have acquired the entitlement mentality created by America's welfare state, asserting an entitlement to exemption from the laws of the society they invited themselves into."

The complication of this debate for libertarians isn't knowing what we think, but explaining why in a way that moves public opinion, which is perhaps at its statist zenith with regard to immigration.

Continue reading "Immigration, stop gap measures?" »

Posted by Brian Bishop at 07:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Seriously.

Posted by Michael Van Winkle at 12:05 PM | Permalink

Outside the box thinking might have been handy in New Orleans before the hurricane instead of after, but a plan to sell flooded school buses on ebay might just be one of those 'if you got lemons make lemonade' kind of moments. Notably: " The district plans to contract out its student transportation."

More striking than the plan itself, is the obtuse AP reporting on what the buses symbolize:

Continue reading "Municipal privitization via ebay" »

Posted by Brian Bishop at 05:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

There is a fascinating oped in the Journal today on Charles Murray's plan which would give $10,000 to every citizen annually in lieu of government administered social programs. Not only would this be a more efficient allocations of funds, and leave people with more options, Murray also thinks such a plan would return a certain moral grounding to the welfare state. We would all know exactly how much others were getting and, thus, be more willing to judge some citizen's misuse of the endowment. The result is a more responsible citizenry. The only problem is that freeing the polity from responsibility is, arguably, part of the motivation behind the welfare state, is it not? If we believed people were responsible enough to invest their own money why would we take social security taxes in the first place? Paternalism is welfare's secret motivation. So while the plan is a clever one, it hardly seems any more realistic than dismantling the welfare state altogether. Though, there is something to be said for vision.

Will Wilkinson has some interesting thoughts on the Murray plan as well.

Posted by Michael Van Winkle at 12:53 PM | Permalink

One of my favorite professors used to talk about how the truth is often the biggest barrier to truth. Initially this concept sound strangely paradoxical. But I never tire of pointing out real world applications of the tool. Perhaps the most obvious example is our current political situation, in which one truth, that the Bush administration has botched foreign policy to some degree, masks another important truth, that the left has not offered a coherent alternative to Bush's incompetence (ignoring the problem doesn't count).

Continue reading "Truth v. Truth" »

Posted by Michael Van Winkle at 02:20 PM | Permalink

Bill Higginson tried to sound a thoughtful note on this blog regarding the debatably dubious Dubai deal. William Triplett, a former counsel to the Senate Foreign Relations Comittee penned an epitah for the UAE undertaking that tried to put some similarly fine points on the matter but smacked of staying on both sides of the issue.

The idea that any serious thought would be expended by any parties to this political firestorm is generous to a fault. President Bush, who has consistently resorted to terrorism as the one arrow in his quiver, found out the hard way the cost of going to this political well so often. The parable here is a cynical corollary of Aesop's famous fable, the moral of which is reported to be: "Even when liars tell the truth, they are never believed".

President Bush now knows: "When liars admit their lies, people don't believe them either".

Continue reading "The President who cried wolf -- a trade war by any other name, say 'terrorism'" »

Posted by Brian Bishop at 10:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (17) | TrackBacks (0)

The Christian Science Monitor reports today that homeowners around the nation are increasingly angry about property tax increases. It is true that property taxes in many areas have been rising much more quickly than either the overall inflation rate or increasing values of homes, and not just for the wealthy but for everyone. These windfalls, moreover, are not being collected because the communities desperately need additional swimming pools in the local schools. (You should see the astonishing luxuries in most schools in decent neighborhoods.) No, the local governments are collecting these high taxes simply because they can: people living in highly preferred communities are at the mercy of their local taxing bodies, and the latter are increasingly taking advantage of local residents.

Citizens around the nation are utterly fed up with this legalized extortion and have begun to take action, the Monitor reports:

This year, legislative proposals, citizen initiatives, and lawsuits are on the agenda in at least 20 states. These new efforts reflect both residents' distrust of how their property tax dollars are being spent and concerns that rising assessments are driving working-class people out of popular towns and cities. . . .

Continue reading "Welcome Development: Property Tax Revolts" »

Posted by Sam Karnick at 08:13 PM | Permalink

Political Wire is reporting that a George Washington University "Battleground Poll (PDF)," has Democrats winning a generic Congressional election ballot 46% to 41%. The "generic" qualification, though, is important because it means the question being asked is not about a particular candidate but rather "would you vote for a Democratic candidate of a Republican candidate." When faced with questions like this the typical respondent tends to idealize the party and the candidate. So while this poll might tell us a little something about the popularity of each party in a broad sense, it tells us very little about how elections will actually be one.

Continue reading "Generic Matchups" »

Posted by Michael Van Winkle at 10:28 AM | Permalink

I'm not trying to be insensitive to those who support laws mandating students be taught that evolution is merely scientific theory. Though, I thought these attempts would have ceased after the Dover case, but AP is reporting the Utah House has just killed another bill. I disagree with these kinds of laws and, like most libertarians, I feel they would be unnecessary in a voucher-ized school system. Be that as it may, I am not really all that troubled by the attempt to pass these laws.

What does trouble me is that American high school kids are apparently so lacking in scientific education they need a sticker on their textbooks to know that evolution is a "theory" and has not be "empirically proven".

Posted by Michael Van Winkle at 08:48 AM | Permalink

It's just a coincidence, I'm sure, but every major event that happens in the United States seems to be read as showing that we need more intervention from the federal government.

The Katrina disaster is an excellent case in point. As soon as it happened and people in the region had to put up with the consequences of having chosen to live in an area long known to be vulnerable to just such a catastrophe, the complaints rang through the press regarding the alleged slowness of the federal government in responding. Relatively little attention was paid to the disgracefully slow and inept response by the governments of New Orleans and Louisiana, and likewise to the fact that the federal government stepped in as soon as was legally permitted.

Continue reading "Katrina and Big Government" »

Posted by Sam Karnick at 01:13 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

A one-time fiscal conservative, Steve Laffey, is putting on his Roosevelt [pick either one] dancing shoes in a conservative populist (with apologies to co-blogger Randy Piper and his progressive conservatives) run for the Senate in RI against leftist Republican Lincoln Chafee. Ironically, while decrying government spending as a neo-Reaganite, Laffey, the budget-cutting no-nonsense Mayor of Cranston, serves up a bunch of bull about how government needs to protect citizens from big drug companies and big oil [the link to Laffey's criticism of big oil is down right now, but you will get the flavor from the opportunistic flagellation of the drug companies. What a shame that folks who want to shrink government think it should get bigger whenever there is a 'problem'. Reagan would have had the right solution, less regulation not more. Those claiming his mantle should practice what they preach.

More on my Reagan-esque ruminations in the follow, but if you want to hear a quality candidate -- with whom I disagree on some of these populist proposals -- Steve Laffey will be my guest on Rule Free Radio from 5:00 to 6:45 PM EST tomorrow (Friday, Feb. 24). You can Listen Live here.

Continue reading "Drug Wars: Markets vs. Populism [as usual]" »

Posted by Brian Bishop at 08:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (24) | TrackBacks (0)

Some ten years ago, Philip K. Howard, an attorney practicing law in Manhattan, wrote a powerful and long overdue book entitled “The Death of Common Sense.” Howard exposes the absurd, coercive and destructive lengths to which the development of law has taken in our society. His thesis is that beginning in the 1960’s, with our country’s new found interest in increased government involvement in private lives, there came an attendant increase in more laws with more proscriptions and more penalties.

Continue reading "Whatever Happened to Common Sense" »

Posted by Bill Higginson at 10:28 AM | Permalink

I guess this is what happens to you if you believe what you read in the Washington Post. I didn't believe that FISA could have such a giant hole in it, so I downloaded the statute (50 USC 36). I like my dry reading like the next policy wonk, but be fairly warned, reading this law will make your eyes bleed. Shakespeare definitely anticipated Congress when speaking about weaving tangled webs.

It turns out that the Washington Post comment was right in an isolated sense. But it leaves the impression that the President must seek a warrant based on probable cause against the domestic participant in an international conversation and thus is confounded in a mechanism for secretly intercepting communication of foreign nationals in or into this country. This is incorrect. See generally, US v Verdugo. If the government suspects the foreign caller then the 4th amendment doesn't apply, nor does it apply to the domestic party incidentally intercepted.

Thanks to Bruce Fein in another serious column for alerting me that there my original interpretation was based on a false assumption.

So now what do I think...

Continue reading "Mea Culpa: off target on NSA targets" »

Posted by Brian Bishop at 03:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Is 100,000 the new 42?

42, of course, was the answer to "Life, the Universe and Everything" by Douglas Adams. While it may be to much of a stretch to say that 100,000 is the answer to Life and the Universe, it may just be the answer to Everything that ails the U.S.

Continue reading "Powerful Number" »

Posted by Sean Parnell at 01:47 PM | Permalink

A little more politics this morning ... I'm sorry, but this is just plain fascinating. Will Wilkinson, who is studying "happiness" at the Cato Institute, is blogging a Pew Center poll that appears to show a correlation between being a republican and being happy. The chart below shows the percentage of respondents who claim they are "very happy" at different income brackets.

Continue reading "Your Politics and Your Personal Life May Be Connected" »

Posted by Michael Van Winkle at 09:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I hate to spend much time on politics, but I have a feeling by the end of the week the conspiracy theorists (perhaps even the MSM) will have Bush pulling the trigger and Cheney playing patsy.

Posted by Michael Van Winkle at 09:03 AM | Permalink