Tag: Glibertarians

…conservatives and Republicans who had no problem with strong-arm security measures back in the Bush 43 days but are upset now. Charles Krauthammer is the classic example: forthrightly defending torture as, in limited circumstances, a necessary tool against terrorism, yet now outraged about “touching my junk” as a symbol of the intrusive state.

James Fallows on liberals, conservatives, and maintaining a consistent foundation to one’s thoughts no matter whose party may be in charge of executing the policy in question.

In which Ron Paul and I Agree

Imagine if the political elites in our country were forced to endure the same conditions at the airport as business travelers, families, senior citizens, and the rest of us. Perhaps this problem could be quickly resolved if every cabinet secretary, every member of Congress, and every department head in the Obama administration were forced to submit to the same degrading screening process as the people who pay their salaries.

The American Traveler Dignity Act. Good on you, Ron.
But: more to the point, it would be nice to see the conversation moved from being specifically about the scanners to a more general “the scanners are an entirely pointless invasion of deeply personal rights” realm. These scanners are a multi-million dollar boondoggle entirely aimed at stopping the underpants bomber of last year. They will do nothing whatever to stop the cecum bomber of 2011 or the vagina explosions of 2013. That we refuse to have this conversation, ever, is precisely why the next attack will succeed. Better to mark such a memo “classified” and hope nobody goes looking for it. Same with the memo on how these porno-scans are in fact saved and will inevitably get out; I’m surprised we don’t already have an airport scan of some celebrity. Likewise classify any health-related studies. And classify anything about the impact on pilots forced to go through this entirely needless screen daily for the rest of their careers. In the next fabulous version, your junk will be super-imposed on a stick figure! Won’t that be better for everyone? Left unasked, of course, is is this thing likely to stop any attack ever mounted, planned or attempted, past or present? Because it’s not clear it would have detected the very attack they point to when demanding the scans occur. It certainly wouldn’t have prevented 9/11; that fact is absolutely clear. I’m quite sure that any systematic testing of the assertion that these scanners offer no measurable improvement, if it’s been tested at all, is classified. File next to “what we deem as incredibly dangerous liquids in volumes greater than 3oz shall be stored in trash barrels directly adjacent to large concentration of passengers waiting in line.”

Listening to the tone of the recent hearings, I was unsurprised and yet still deeply troubled to hear that, mostly, the top concern was that this approach (apart from any particular utility or drawback) at least makes observant Muslims uncomfortable. I especially loved the back-slappy interchange between TSA chief John Pistole and John Ensign (R-Nev) who apparently agree that the most important part of any security technology or invasion of privacy is that it irritate Muslims. Does extending this underlying theory mean that if I agree to shave while in line I can thus skip the porno-scans?

Just as troubling, though, was the easy acceptance of the entirely false equivalency of “screened” airplane (using millimeter wave) and “unscreened” airplane (not using) and the relative preference a theoretical passenger would assert. Yes, we know a lot about everyone’s junk as they get on that “screened” plane, but it’s not actually any safer. And so far as I can tell from the transcripts I’ve found, not one Senator raised the issue of actual security improvement through this technology. In fact, they’ve only added a particularly demeaning bit of security theater to the already frothy mix of half-assed fixes to yesterday’s problems. And I guess that’s all we’re after anymore: The terrorists are coming; look busy!

It’s facile but still telling to point out that around 400,000 people have died in car accidents since 9/10/2001. About 3500 have died in domestic terror attacks since 9/10/2001. Feel free to compare and contrast national auto safety policy to national airline security policy.

In which Ron Paul and I Agree

To the Ring Fence!

… these potential savings can be realized if we are willing to make an honest examination of the cost, benefit, and rationale of the extensive U.S. military commitment overseas, which in large part remains a legacy of policy decisions made in the immediate aftermath of World War II and during the Cold War. Years after the Soviet threat has disappeared, we continue to provide European and Asian nations with military protection through our nuclear umbrella and the troops stationed in our overseas military bases. Given the relative wealth of these countries, we should examine the extent of this burden that we continue to shoulder on our own dime.

All I have to say about this is: Finally.

Naturally, the Serious People advocating harsh austerity are already heading to the barricades to put a stop to even a discussion about scaling back the Pentagon’s baseline, non-war funding to some remotely rational fraction of the national budget. Rest assured our potential GOP majority feels exactly the same way insofar as they even think about policy decisions such as these. They know who butters their bread, and it certainly isn’t the people standing in the bread lines.

To the Ring Fence!

Consider the rationale driving these who object to real trials: it’s vital that the Government be able to use information that it obtained by torturing people. It’s equally vital that the Government be absolutely assured that it will obtain a conviction against anyone it accuses of being a Terrorist. Because this is a “war,” we can waive our usual rules of justice. Any proceeding which imposes limits on the Government’s ability to profit from its torture, or which introduces any uncertainty as to the verdict, is proven to be both inappropriate and dangerous. We can and should simply imprison whomever we want in the War on Terror without the need for any charges, but if we do charge and try them, it should only be in newly invented tribunals (i.e., military commissions) where traditional due process is severely reduced and the rules are designed to ensure a guilty verdict, even it means allowing torture-obtained evidence.

People who think this way, by definition, simply do not believe in the rule of law. A system that guarantees guilty verdicts is not one that operates under the rule of law. Those are called “show trials” — at least they used to be when other countries did that. And the demand that torture-obtained evidence be admissible not only removes one from adherence to the rule of law, but from the civilized world as well. The whole point of a “justice system” is that there are rules that are well-established and which apply equally to everyone. Although the requirement that the Government adhere to those rules will inevitably mean that some very, very bad people are acquitted — including mass murderers, child rapists, and even Terrorists — that’s the price we’ve always been willing to pay to live under what we call “the rule of law” and a “justice system.” Those pointing to Judge Kaplan’s ruling as proof that Terrorists should not be tried in a real court — all because he applied centuries-old legal principles to the Government — believe in none of that, by definition.

Greenwald (via jonathan-cunningham)

Agree completely, but would add that the key part here that always seems to slide by in this discussion is that the rules are set out in advance and we, as a society, agree to live by them (or, alternatively, agitate through similarly agreed upon channels to change the rules instead of merely ignoring them when it suits us and summarily declaring that incident a state secret). It is only through this unspoken covenant that the governors and the governed can coexist. As soon as it becomes allowable (and even expected in “serious” circles) that the rules can be changed by fiat, or for the convenience of one or the other of these two parties, or because of the relative wealth or perceived “importance” of one party, or by a President (or other high official) who is inexplicably deemed intrinsically incapable of breaking any laws, then a democratic society collapses. Thus is the first link of the chains forged.
And I’d say we’re already several links in. But nobody seems to care. Thus dies our Republic while the Tea Klan hollers about whether or not we should all have to pay for fire departments even if our own house is not actively on fire. I mean, that sort of socialistic fire extinguishing arrangement inevitably helps a lot of immigrants who burn their houses down all the time to cover up the rampant decapitations going on in there in accordance with sharia law. Am I right?

Christie to cancel the region’s most crucial infrastructure project; refusing $3B in fed money, cutting 6,000 potential new jobs

ohhleary:

When you’re still stuck on a train stalled on the tracks in New Jersey twenty years from now, blame this grandstanding fatass.

How, though? Democrats, as currently figured, inevitably claim they are only interested in “looking forward.” This stance means that, in 20 years when the bill comes due, the Democrat sitting in the corner office trying to unwind the mess he/she inherited will take the blame for problems created long ago by policies that the GOP will still be pitching (and winning elections with) and a voter-at-large who remains utterly uninformed but sure likes the sound of all those never-ending tax cuts.

The only solution is careful messaging, right across the board, for decades, that informs the public, slowly but surely, about each of these decisions and their inevitable consequences. But, when handed somebody’s house burning down for lack of a $75 annual fee to use fire services, we are instead greeted by the sounds of Democratic silence. When a bridge collapses: sounds of silence. When people get sick because food is production isn’t being inspected and is thus contaminated: sounds of silence. When people die in the streets of the richest nation in the world because they can’t afford food anymore or caught a (fucking) cold: sounds of silence.

This is why they fail.

Christie to cancel the region’s most crucial infrastructure project; refusing $3B in fed money, cutting 6,000 potential new jobs

National DNC ad You Will Never See

Voice: South Fulton firefighters from Obion, Tennessee, last week stood by and watched as a family’s home burned down because their services were available by subscription only, and the family had not paid the $75 fee. Outrageous? That’s not what conservatives think.
Kevin Williamson: …for their trouble, the South Fulton fire department is being treated as though it has done something wrong, rather than having gone out of its way to make services available to people who did not have them before. The world is full of jerks, freeloaders, and ingrates — and the problems they create for themselves are their own. These free-riders have no more right to South Fulton’s firefighting services than people in Muleshoe, Texas, have to those of NYPD detectives.
Jonah Goldberg: letting the house burn […] will probably save more houses over the long haul. I know that if I opted out of the program before, I would be more likely to opt-in now. No solace to the homeowner, but an important lesson for compassionate conservatives like our own Dan Foster [who came out for saving the house anyway] (Zing!).
John Derbyshire: I am entirely with the South Fulton fire department here. In the terms of Nico Colchester’s great 1996 essay, they are being crunchy rather than soggy […] One of the duties of conservatives in this soggy fallen world is to stand up for crunchiness. For the fire department to have extinguished the Cranicks’ fire would have been soggy, even aside from the considerable degree of sogginess it would have left on the property.
Voice: “Compassionate” conservatism means core serivices like police and fire departments are only for the wealthy. “Compassionate” conservatism means letting your house burn down over a $75 fee. Ask your representatives where they stand on “compassionate” conservatism.

More Please

Rand Paul: The real answer to Medicare would be a $2,000 deductible.
KY Senior 1: A $2,000 deductible?
KY Senior 2: Rand Paul wants us to pay $2,000 just to get Medicare?
KY Senior 3: That’s crazy.
KY Senior 4: I can’t afford that.
Rand Paul: The real answer to Medicare would be a $2,000 deductible.
KY Senior 1: I don’t know what planet he’s from.
KY Senior 5: Rand Paul is off the wall with a $2,000 deductible.
KY Senior 6: Doesn’t he know that we can’t afford that.
KY Senior 3: The more we learn about Rand Paul, the worse it gets.
Attorney General Jack Conway: I’m Jack Conway. I approve this message.

High Cost of Free Parking

If developers were allowed to face directly the high land costs of providing so much parking, the number of spaces would be a result of a careful economic calculation rather than a matter of satisfying a legal requirement. Parking would be scarcer, and more likely to have a price — or a higher one than it does now — and people would be more careful about when and where they drove.

The subsidies are largely invisible to drivers who park their cars — and thus free or cheap parking spaces feel like natural outcomes of the market, or perhaps even an entitlement. Yet the law is allocating this land rather than letting market prices adjudicate whether we need more parking, and whether that parking should be free.

High Cost of Free Parking

Second House Indistinguishable from Health Care

Shatner: “Here’s my premise, and you agree with it or not. If you have money, you are going to get health care. If you don’t have money, it’s more difficult.”
Limbaugh: “If you have money you’re going to get a house on the beach. If you don’t have money, you’re going to live in a bungalow somewhere.”
Shatner: “Right, but we’re talking about health care.”
Limbaugh: “What’s the difference?”
Shatner: “The difference is we’re talking about health care, not a house or a bungalow.”
Limbaugh: “No. No. You’re assuming that there is some morally superior aspect to health care than there is to a house. …”