Based on the media reports, I was having a hard time figuring out what was in Arizona’s new and controversial immigration law, so I looked it up directly. The conclusion? This law is a recipe both for confusion and for a spike in lawsuits against Arizona police departments. Oh, and if you are in the country legally but you aren’t a US citizen, stay the heck away from that place.
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Apr 302010
Apr 282010
Allow me to point your attention to an article which discusses the new GOP proposal about wall street regulation. The GOP has been unhappy with the Democrats’ proposal, and put forth an alternative for debate.
First off, I want to congratulate the GOP on finally making a positive proposal instead of simply arguing against Democratic proposals. This has been driving me nuts for the past 2 years, as they argued against bailouts, health care, and anything else Obama and congressional democrats proposed, but never suggested better plans. A strong minority party needs to be able to develop counter-proposals, and the fact that the GOP has gotten its head around that is a tremendously positive thing for policy making.
Second, I want to decry the pathetic news media. The democrats put forth a proposal, and the GOP put forth a competing proposal. But good luck to the American voter who wants to find out how the two proposals differ. The article I linked was the best I could find, and one has to wade through a bunch of junk about political strategy and other nonsense before one gets to a very cursory set of surface features that discriminate between the proposals. Why won’t the media actually report on the meat of the proposals? Ya know, what the government is actually planning on doing?
It drives me up a wall that we get endless reports on the policy as it relates to GOP and Democrat strategizing to win elections but nothing about policy as it relates to how it might actually affect us, or the economy, or anything else that actually matters. No wonder nobody trusts politicians – if you listen to the media all they do all day is scheme about how to get re-elected and policy is an afterthought. But if they don’t care about policy, what’s the point of getting elected in the first place? Bad media. Shame on you.
Apr 272010
Politics is, to a large extent, about labels. What we call things affects how we perceive them. Americans oppose the Death Tax, but support Estate Taxes. We feel positive about Anti-Poverty, but uncomfortable with Welfare and we hate Entitlements. You get the point.
And a lot of the rhetoric about labels comes from trying to define ourselves and our political opponents, or trying to take labels that our opponents have previously embraced and tarnish those labels. Glenn Beck is leading the charge on this redefinition crusade lately, at least on the conservative side (and I know of no liberal that is playing the game with as much zeal as he is). According to Beck:
Fascism = Communism = Socialism = Liberalism = Progressivism
I’m probably even missing a couple. Well, I propose an alternate way of thinking about these things, that is both more accurate than Beck’s drivel, and I hope more useful.
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Apr 012010
Bullying has been in the news a lot lately, unfortunately due to a teen’s suicide in a small Massachusetts town and the ensuing prosecution of some of the kids who were involved for statutory rape and civil rights violations.
That particular case is a tragedy all the way around. The behavior of the kids involved was reprehensible, and I do not doubt that it contributed to the suicide of the victim. (Although there is a difference between “contributed to” and “caused” which is often missed…) But I don’t think that charging them in criminal court as adults is the right response.
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