A Missed Opportunity For Reform

 Posted by  2008 Election, U.S. Politics  No Responses »
Jul 262007
 

One of the biggest bills that will come out of Congress this summer is the Farm Bill. The Farm Bill will determine the size of farm subsidies, food stamp budgets, and determine the fate of any number of projects related to land conservation, energy, etc. It’s a massive and important piece of legislation, and it’s something that is in need of major reform.

In fact, for once both the President and the Congressional Democratic leadership agree that major reform is needed. Both sides understand that the massive federal farm subsidies are largely counter-productive, inefficient, and ultimately extremely harmful to our economy, the environment, and to the world’s poor. Like with immigration reform, the President and the Congressional Democratic leadership are pretty much in accord that the current system is broken, and they also agree on which direction it needs to move.

And just like with immigration reform, it looks like no substantial progress will be made. Of course, some Farm Bill will be passed–it has to be passed, in some form or another.  And there is some moderate reform here, such as the ending of some farm subsidies to “farmers” earning more than $1 million per year. But there was a shot at major reform–that is a major overhaul of how the government supports farmers both large and small.  And that looks like its dead in the water.

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Research Gone Awry

 Posted by  Education, The Media  No Responses »
Jul 252007
 

The University of Colorado just terminated the contract of Ward Churchill today. It was absolutely the right decision–and it has nothing to do with his statements regarding 9/11.

Just to remind you, Churchill first received national notoriety for comments he made comparing some 9/11 victims to Nazis. His point was that the Arab extremists were responding to American imperialism and consumerism, as represented by the businesses with offices at the World Trade Center. The comment made little impact when he first wrote it, but it was picked up by the media in 2005 when a professor objected to a speech he was supposed to give at Hamilton College. The University of Colorado investigated the matter, and determined that it was free speech protected by his tenure agreement, despite calls from many pundits and politicians that he be fired. And while I disagree with his statements, that was absolutely the right call. Continue reading »

Arguments Against “Socialized Medicine”

 Posted by  Healthcare  37 Responses »
Jul 232007
 

The Democrats–along with quite a few moderate Republicans–are working on a drastic expansion of the Children’s Health Insurance Program, which offers health insurance to low-income children. The Senate passed a version of the bill last week and the House is expected to follow suit on a more expansive program this week. The extra costs created by this expansion would come from an increase in the federal tax on cigarettes. It’s certainly not a fix to our health care woes, but it would help a lot of kids get access to medical care so I’m all for it. President Bush, on the other hand, has threatened to veto it. The President claims that the bill would raise taxes, which is bad for business (just leave it to the GOP to be looking out for the bottom-line of cigarette makers), and would furthermore be “down the path to government-run health care for every American”.

It’s that last statement that really piqued my interest today. I’ve run through the economics of health insurance before, but let me summarize by repeating two easily proven facts: 1) The United States has, by a (un)healthy margin, the most inefficient healthcare system in the world. We’re paying Ferrari prices for a used Kia. 2) Any insurance operates more efficiently when it covers more people. In case you were curious, our health insurance system is ingeniously designed to encourage insurance pools to be as small as possible. But I’ve never really confronted the arguments of the other side, that is those who are against universal healthcare. I’ve tried to look up some of the major ones, but if I miss any please let me know, and I will address them in a comment or in a future post. (Most of these come from this op-ed by Rev. Mark Creech, in the on-line paper The Christian Post. I don’t mean to set up a straw-man here or to pick on Rev. Creech; he just gives a nice summary of conservative arguments.)

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Farm Subsidies

 Posted by  Fiscal Issues  No Responses »
Jul 232007
 

The government has been paying farm subsidies to farmers who died over 7 years ago. I’m not a big fan of farm subsidies to begin with. And its things like this that reinforce my libertarian tendencies – when you get government involved, you increase the incompetence.

I can’t help but think of how much good could have been done with that billion+ dollars…

Conservative Irony

 Posted by  Crime, Immigration, Legal Philosophy, Legal Reform  No Responses »
Jul 202007
 

One of the great ironies of the Scooter Libby trial was that the same conservatives who have for years fought for high mandatory minimum sentences–and against allowing judicial discretion to reduce those sentences–ended up complaining that the sentence given to Mr. Libby based on those sentencing guidelines was too harsh.  Now we have the second verse of that song, although this time the “overly harsh” sentence is being doled out to two dirty border patrol agents.

There is a lot of debate about what happened.  The story told by conservative talk-radio, not to mention Lou Dobbs, Sean Hannity, WorldNetDaily, etc. starts with two of our heroic border patrol agents who see a suspicious van near the border just outside of El Paso–a van that is currently being used to smuggle hundreds of pounds of marijuana across the border.  As they approach, the smuggler gets out of the van and runs away.  At some point, the story goes, he reaches behind himself and half-turns, as if to point a weapon back at the heroic border patrol agents.  This makes sense, because we all know that drug smugglers are well-armed, for the most part.  The agents open fire, but the man keeps running and manages to get back across the border.  Shortly thereafter, the Mexican government demands that the border patrol agents be brought up on charges for shooting an unarmed man.  The US attorney, Johnny Sutton, bows to that pressure, and throws the book at the heroic border agents.  He misleads the jury into convicting them, and goes out of his way to fight for the maximum sentence possible by charging them with the use of a gun to perpetrate a felony–a charge that carries a mandatory 10 year minimum sentence.  He also gives the drug smuggler “victim” immunity from the original drug charge, and gives him a visa to be able to come to the trial–which the drug smuggler uses to smuggle marijuana once more.  Of course, given this storyline, conservatives are demanding a pardon and/or reinstatement for the border patrol agents (who were “just doing their jobs”), and are bucking to have Mr. Sutton fired.

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