Subsidizing Alaska

 Posted by  Fiscal Issues, U.S. Politics  1 Response »
May 242007
 

According to this article, the new postage hike is going to disproportionately affect some Alaskans in remote villages. The reason is that they live in villages for which there are no roads, and all their food has to be shipped to them by air. And so, since the 1970′s, the rest of America has been subsidizing their food, to send it out to these remote locations. The new postage rates will make the food even more expensive.

What I want to know is why we’re subsidizing them to begin with. If its so hard to get food out there, then either we should help them move to a location where food is easier to get (which would probably cost less than the subsidies on one year of groceries). If people want to live in a remote location, and can afford the associated costs, more power to them. But its not clear to me what benefit America or taxpayers get from having people live in remote locations. So I don’t see why we should be subsidizing them living there.

This is different from New Orleans, a one time cost responding to a natural disaster. This is continued subsidies – so long as they live there. Its a drain on resources with no end, and no apparent purpose.

In the grand scheme of things, I don’t care tremendously much about such a small amount of money; if we took just one day’s funding of the war in Iraq, we could fund this subsidy program for the next 100 years. But I get annoyed by the principle of people who are living a subsidized, inefficient lifestyle, and still complaining that the new postage rates are unfair.

Attacking the Messenger

 Posted by  Bush Administration, Foreign Policy, Middle East, U.S. Politics  2 Responses »
May 232007
 

I’m sick and tired of the character assassinations of critics. The last straw, for me anyway, has come with the reaction from the right to President Carter’s scathing indictment of President Bush’s foreign policy. In case you missed it, Carter made the following statement in an interview, published by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette on Saturday:

“I think as far as the adverse impact on the nation around the world, this administration has been the worst in history… The overt reversal of America’s basic values as expressed by previous administrations, including George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon and others, has been the most disturbing to me.”

On Sunday, Bush hit back, Carter backed off a bit, Bush backed off a bit, and everybody went home happy. But conservative pundits have been hitting Carter ever since, basically saying that Carter has no standing to talk about bad foreign policy or bad presidents. In the last week, I’ve repeatedly heard Carter called a hypocrite, and heard him derided multiple times as the worst president in history. And today, in what has to be one of the worst op-eds in an otherwise undistinguished career as a columnist for the Boston Globe, Jeff Jacoby blames Carter for encouraging Soviet aggression in Afghanistan, taunts him for not reacting to the Iran Hostage crisis with military force–never mind that Carter attempted a failed rescue attempt, or that the hostages were released thanks to his diplomacy. He ends with the comment: “The worst in history,” he says of Bush. Look who’s talking.”

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Price Gouging and Gasoline

 Posted by  Environment, Fiscal Issues, U.S. Politics  No Responses »
May 222007
 

The average price of gasoline in the United States is now within a penny of the historical inflation-adjusted record, set in 1981. Now, personally this doesn’t bother me much. On a personal level, my wife and I drive a Honda Civic on which we put less than 500 miles a month, on average. On a policy level, I understand that it is not in the best interests of the United States to remain wedded to gasoline, for both environmental and economic reasons, and the only way to wean us off of “Texas Tea” is to raise the price of gasoline. That being said, the policy debate surrounding the record oil prices is a little bit absurd. Politicians and newscasters are questioning the necessity of the gas price increases, noting that the price of a barrel of crude oil is nowhere closer to its historical high, and in fact is lower than it was at this time last year. The oil companies are responding by saying that prices are in fact being set by the laws of supply and demand, and they are only following standard fair market prices. And then, there is my favorite quote by one industry analyst: “Oil companies don’t need to price gouge right now, because profits are at a record high anyway.” (Think about that a second: there is obviously no price gouging going on because prices are so high that companies are making a killing. Um… yeah…)

The disappointing thing about this discussion is that its pretty obvious neither side was paying much attention in ECON 101. So, let’s go back to our textbooks and ask the question: is their price-gouging going on?

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Religion and War

 Posted by  Disasters and Tragedies, Issues, Religion  11 Responses »
May 182007
 

I’ve heard a lot about Christopher Hitchens’ new book God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. I spent a good deal of time today standing in the bookstore, reading the first few chapters of it–and while I certainly didn’t read all of it, I feel comfortable enough with the book to share my take on it. The book is a load of crap, and I would say so even if I agreed with his premise. It makes no claim to deal with religious belief in a respectful or logical way. He sacrifices any attempt to deal with substantive issues, and is satisfied with being witty, clever, and erudite in his turn of phrase. It’s a book that’s not going to convince anyone of anything, and instead is simply designed to goad the religious into public fights (which only raise the profile of the author) and make those who already agree with the author feel better about themselves without really asking them for any kind of introspection. In short, it’s Ann Coulter for the elite, and I feel somewhat ashamed that magazines and newspapers I generally respect have decided to recommend it.

Now, I won’t go into all of it; feel free to do your own research at your nearest library or bookstore if you are interested in it. (Although please don’t actually buy the book; Hitchens doesn’t deserve the royalties.) One chapter, in particular, stands out for me specifically–the chapter on religious warfare. Like most people who attack religion, Hitchens goes out of his way to point out all of the tragedy, destruction, and human depravity that has been committed in the name of religious disagreement. All the usual villains are there, of course: North Ireland, Israel/Palestine, India/Pakistan, Islamist terrorist organizations, the Crusades, etc. And the logic is simple: religion motivates the combatants in many wars and tragedies, ergo religion causes wars and tragedies, ergo without religion those wars and tragedies would not exist. Except it’s horrible logic.

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Wolfowitz In Hot Water

 Posted by  Bush Administration, Foreign Policy, U.S. Politics  No Responses »
May 172007
 

Wolfowitz needs to go. Not because he fought for invading Iraq, or because he got his girlfriend an absurdly large pay raise. He needs to quit because he is, and always has been, the wrong man for the job. To demonstrate, let’s go through his saga, from the time when he was nominated to be President of the World Bank. These are the facts, according to the Ad Hoc Group assigned to investigate the matter:

In 1995, Paul Wolfowitz left his position as Undersecretary of Defense, where he had been Rumsfeld’s second in command and one of the primary architects of the Iraq War, and he accepted President Bush’s appointment as President of the World Bank. At the time, Mr. Wolfowitz had “a relationship” with a long-time employee of the World Bank, Shaha Riza. Now, World Bank personnel regulations are very clear that personal relationships constitute a potential conflict of interest, which should be avoided at all costs. So, while Mr. Wolfowitz was negotiating his acceptance of the job, he brought his relationship to the attention of the internal World Bank Ethics Committee. The Ethics Committee met and decided that if Mr. Wolfowitz wished to be President of the World Bank, that it would be necessary to transfer Ms. Riza to a position where there would not be a direct conflict of interest. Furthermore, they suggested that Ms. Riza both be given a promotion before she was transfered, and be allowed to transfer back once Mr. Wolfowitz left as President, to compensate her both for her previous service and for any damage that the transfer might do to her career. Up until this point, everything has been above the board.

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