Planet Utah

Never a cop around when you need one

And yet, there's always one around when I run a red light after drinking a bottle of wine. What gives?

Anyway, I was in a bar last night watching the Orlando/Cleveland game. There are two reasons I go to this particular bar: it's the closest bar to my house, and it has sports on TV. (I don't have cable or satellite, so if a game isn't on network television, I don't get it at home.) Every time I go there, though, several patrons are smoking. Several others have their smokes out on the table, so it's obvious that this is known as a place where smoking is okay.

It's okay, that is, aside from the fact that it's illegal to smoke inside a bar in Austin.

I asked the bartender about this once--"I know there's a smoking ban in Austin, and yet people in here are smoking..."--and he told me that if you get caught smoking in a place where it's banned, the worst thing that happens is you get a ticket. Nothing happens to the owner or the manager of the place. So, patrons are taking a calculated risk. If they smoke, and if a cop should come in, and if that cop should catch them in the act AND write them a ticket, then they'll have to pay a fine. (I can't remember how much the fine is, but 50 bucks seems about right.) A lot of patrons are content to take their chances--at "my" bar, anyway.

Here's my question: What should I do about it? Going to another bar seems like the most reasonable option, but why should I be inconvenienced because other people have chosen to flout the law? Then again, what am I going to do...ask them to stop smoking? If I did that, I have no doubt that the bartender would say this: "Look, man, people smoke here. If you don't like it, I suggest you find another bar." Maybe I should notify the cops. But then I'm sure I'd get this response: "Okay, we'll pull a couple of guys off our Mexican gang task force and send them right over..."

They're pretty much all bad choices. But I've come up with an "outside the box" solution that I think will work: I'm going to take up smoking.

What conservatives are good for

Allow me to link you to an article on cap-and-trade. This is a good example of conservatives doing what conservatives do best: standing athwart history yelling, "Stop!" If you know nothing about global climate change, cap-and-trade probably seems like a good idea. It provides a mechanism for reducing carbon emissions, which is a good thing; it does so without increasing taxes, which is a good thing; and it relies on market mechanisms, allowing individual companies to decide how much they value their carbon emissions. Again, a good thing.

Right? I mean, this is a good idea, isn't it? Sure sounds like it...

This is where conservatives come in. Read the article, and you'll see that while each of these elements of cap-and-trade might be a good thing, they do not add up to a whole that makes any kind of sense. Well, any kind of sense other than political...that is, it gives politicians a chance to say that they have done something about climate change--something good.

Footnote: These days, I find myself deeply regretting the fact that I'm a political junkie. Politics and politicians are not worth the passion I feel for them. They so often disappoint, and do such transparently stupid, dishonest, self-serving, wrongheaded, corrupt, frustrating things--and I'm talking about Democrats AND Republicans here--you're just asking for heartache if you take them seriously. I guess it's a bit like being a fan of the Oakland Raiders, or Andy Dick, or boxing.

Politics could be--can be--inspiring, ennobling, even thrilling. Mostly, though, it's just maddening. And yet I can't stop watching...

Anklenote: I spend some of my free time thinking about various "good government" solutions that would check politicians' worst instincts. Sometimes, too, I think that would be a useful role for the national Republican party--not attempting to govern, per se, but simply trying to rein in the worst excesses of leviathan.

Then it occurs to me that politiicans, even Republican politicians (especially Republican politicians?), aren't interested in good government unless it gets them votes. Ultimately, therefore, I think the only solution to the things that drive me mad about government--stuff like massive borrowing, paralysis on entitlement reform, subsidizing tobacco farmers and then running public service announcements telling you not to smoke, etc.--is public anger. The American public, though, is temperamentally suited for a different kind of government than the one we've got. It's suited for the government the founders set up--a small government of very limited powers; one that doesn't require much minding. Today's government, though, is large and powerful (granted, not by European standards)...and yet, the public still goes about its civic business as if the year were 1789.

They know...they just don't care

Somewhere along the way, I realized that at least some of the fights between liberals and conservatives could never be resolved in anyone's favor because they weren't really fights at all. As one example, consider the taxation of capital gains. Conservatives will argue that raising the capital gains tax rate substantially will actually reduce revenues as investors seek to shield their money from taxation. If true, this would seem like a slam-dunk argument, right? Wrong. There are plenty of liberals out there who would respond, "So what? Capital gains are enjoyed disproportionately by wealthier people. Equity demands that these people pay more in taxes than they are paying now. If that ends up costing us revenue, then that's just the price we have to pay for a more equitable tax system."

There's really not much you can say in response to that.

I think that same phenomenon is at work in discussions of climate change and energy policy. The administration has proposed policies favored by the Woodstock crowd: increased fuel efficiency standards, much greater reliance on renewable energy sources, restricting carbon emissions, etc. There are reasons for profound skepticism toward all of these policies. As I noted in an earlier post on cap-and-trade, for example, any U.S. effort to restrict carbon emissions is likely to be all cost, no benefit. Why? It's a prisoner's dilemma; a tragedy of the commons; a collective action problem--whatever you want to call it. The ideal situation for any one country--say, China--is for every other country to bear the costs of dramatic carbon restrictions, while China continues to rely on carbon-based fuels. If this happens, then China gets to enjoy: a) substantially reduced greenhouse gas emissions, thanks to the efforts of all the other countries; and b) no disruption to its own production processes, thanks to its continued reliance on fossil fuels.

On the flip side, the least desirable situation for any one country is to take unilateral action. For example, if the U.S. were to adopt the Obama administration's cap-and-trade regime and the rest of the world were to carry on with business as usual, then the U.S. would see: a) greatly increased production costs; but b) no discernible change in global carbon emissions.

This brings me back to my initial point. A conservative considering this second scenario would say, "No go--this is all cost, no benefit. If there's a way of getting EVERYBODY on board--including China, India, and Russia--then maybe there's something to talk about. Otherwise, forget it. Why should we take a bullet on this one?" Liberals, on the other hand, would say, "Because this isn't just about the practical matter of controlling global temperatures. If we can do that, great. But even if we can't, it's important that we in the United States do what's right. And cap-and-trade is what's right."

Wrong president for the times (but not for the Times)

It's way too early for final conclusions about Barack Obama, but so far he strikes me as utterly conventional. That is a disappointment. It was probably naive to think that he might be different...but his stated commitment to a different approach to governance, coupled with the rare historical circumstances under which he assumed office, had me hoping. No such luck...

I will concede that he is less overtly partisan than the last Democratic president--but that's not saying much. Plus, the real test will come, if it ever comes, when the Republicans are a bona fide opposition, either due to their numbers or due to their ability to find their voice in the minority. If President Obama is less partisan than Bill Clinton under those circumstances, then I'll applaud.

I would note, too, that Obama's partisanship is less obvious than Clinton's in part because it's simply different. It doesn't take the "Republicans are greedy, racist, mean-spirited misogynists" form of the Clinton era. It takes two less blatant forms: 1) harsh criticism of George W. Bush, though never by name; and 2) straw man arguments of this sort, "Our opponents say that global warming is a fiction invented by the Pentavirate, a secret society of the world's five wealthiest individuals..." Again, he never says, "God damned stupid Republicans..." He doesn't have to.

As for the policies he has promoted, they are a combination of make-it-up-as-you-go, conventional liberalism, and a continuation of the something-for-nothing fiscal policy of the Bush years. There's been nothing here like the pleasant surprises we saw under Bill Clinton: a commitment to free trade; an economic policy centered on the reduction of interest rates via more responsible federal budgeting; a tough welfare reform bill; a (temporary) breach of the pledge to cut middle class taxes in order to focus on deficit reduction.

Nope, for the most part it's been full steam ahead on a very left-wing agenda--an agenda that, if anything, has gotten more ambitious, not less, in light of the current economic crisis.

If you ask me (or anyone who thinks the way I do), they will tell you that this is lousy policy, and that the country will suffer as a result. But the world is a complicated place, and there are many influences on the state of the union that have nothing to do with the particular president in office. It's possible, therefore, that Obama will look like a conquering hero in 2012. I think it's just as likely, though, that he'll look like this generation's Jimmy Carter.

Okay, how about one not-so-big market?

A while ago, I asked why the U.S. did not consider establishing a giant free market for health care. This would involve eliminating all government health care programs (e.g., Medicare, Medicaid) and all employer-subsidized health care; mandating that all individuals have health insurance; mandating that individuals and families purchase their insurance directly (rather than receiving it through a government program or an employer); and providing refundable tax credits and/or tax subsidies so that everyone could pay for their insurance while spending about the same amount of cash that they spend now.

Well, the current issue of National Review offers a good reason why this won't happen: a lot of people like Medicare, Medicaid, and employer-provided health care...for a lot of good reasons.

What NR suggests, therefore, is a much more limited market. If you are covered by a government program or by employer insurance, you can keep the coverage you've got. If you are not covered in one of these two ways, you would be rolled into one giant risk pool; you would be required to buy an insurance policy; and you would be given financial assistance to make the purchase.

In this way, existing arrangements would be protected, but the uninsured--and people who are insured now but may become uninsured--would also have access to coverage.

Under this arrangement, however, employers would have the option of ending insurance coverage for their employees. In that respect, you still run into the problem of upsetting the apple cart, that is, potentially divesting lots of people of the insurance they get through their employers. And that might be enough to queer the whole deal. (If I opposed this approach, I'd certainly use that argument. In fact, Obama and Biden already did so during the campaign, though in response to a significantly different proposal.)

But there would be, or at least could be, some mitigating facts. First, if employers who stopped providing private insurance were charged an offsetting, ongoing tax, they'd be indifferent between paying the cost of employee insurance and paying the tax (economically speaking, that is). Given that, if they thought that offering health insurance gave them a competitive advantage in attracting employees, one assumes that they would continue to offer it. Second, if the employer plan was less attractive to employees than what was available in the private market, then employees shouldn't care if their employer dropped coverage.

There may not be enough mitigation here to address the fears of people who worry about losing their employer plan and having to settle for an inferior plan in the private market. But I'm pretty confident that this will seem a lot less scary than what awaits us under the Obama plan.

Waterboarding? Bad. Raining death from the sky? No problem...

If you've been paying attention to the debate over torture for the past couple of years, undoubtedly you've heard someone say, "We're the United States. We shouldn't torture people. We're better than that."

So, ask yourself what's worse: waterboarding someone (which I consider torture, though not a particularly nasty kind), or burning them alive with white phosphorous? How about waterboarding someone vs. hitting their hideout with a thermobaric weapon that ruptures their internal organs and sucks up all of the oxygen in the area, asphyxiating them?

The U.S. has done all three of these things (and worse), but somehow waterboarding gets all of the attention. I'm not sure I understand the moral calculus whereby we're too good a country to waterboard people, but not so good a country that we refrain from dropping oceans of flaming, jellied gasoline on them (which we've also done).

Footnote: By the way, if you want to see Christopher Hitchens being waterboarded, you can see it here.

Can we starve the frickin' beast already?

Back when Ronald Reagan was president, there was an idea among some conservatives that if you cut taxes enough, revenues would fall, deficits would rise, and the public would clamor for spending cuts. In other words, if we starved the beast (the federal government), eventually it would get smaller.

Well, taxes fell, deficits rose, but there was never a clamor for spending cuts. Leviathan continued to gorge itself...albeit on a diet consisting of more borrowed cash than anyone had anticipated. 

Twenty-five years later, the beast is still hungry. (Surprise!) In fact, under the Obama administration, its appetite has vastly outgrown our ability to keep it fed.  Oddly, Democrats don't seem too concerned about this. 

This creates a big opportunity for conservatives and Republicans to shrink government. After all, there are only three choices here: cut spending, raise taxes, or borrow our way to oblivion. The Dems seem to want a little bit of the second and a lot of the third. If Republicans can't win (or won't make) an argument in favor of the first, then there's not much reason for them to exist as a party...and much more important, not much hope for our country.

Footnote: The one and only enjoyable thing about the current economic morass has been watching conservatives cut spending at the state level. There, they don't have to explain or apologize. They are required to balance the budget, plain and simple. 

Novel idea, don't you think?

Beer is best in a big, clear plastic cup

Having tried all of the alternatives--can, bottle, short glass, tall glass, boot, opaque plastic cup, bong, tap hit, etc.--I believe that beer is best when served in a big (16 ounces), clear plastic cup. 

The budding and actual social scientists among you will say that my assessment reflects all experience and no beer. In other words, it's the settings in which beer is served in a big, clear plastic cup--concerts, beach outings, outdoor parties, etc.--that make for enjoyment, not any interaction between plastic cup and beer.

Could be... But I think there really is something about the clear plastic cup as vessel that matters (oxygenation comes to mind, though you can obviously get that in a glass, too).

I'm not sure what it is. I'm just sure that it is.

Google Chrome?

I've been using Firefox to browse the Web forever. For all I know, then, the latest version of Internet Explorer might run circles around my browser of choice. But I'm looking forward, not backward. Looking forward inevitably means checking out Google Chrome.

Why would one do this? Over the years, I've found that the stuff I love about Firefox--namely, all of the extensions and add-ons--has really started to slow down the browsing experience. Firefox is very slow to open, and it hangs around, sucking up RAM, even after you've closed it. At its worst, the browser can make you feel as if you're doing your computing at the bottom of a reservoir of  molasses. In January. In Alaska. During the Ice Age. After taking a handful of codeine and chasing it with Nyquil. In Alaska again, but this time folded over on top of itself.

Google Chrome, on the other hand, is lean and quick. In part, that's because it doesn't have all of the nice add-ons that Firefox does. But come on, people, this is a Google product we're talking about. Over time, Chrome will probably have all of the bells and whistles of Firefox and more. Plus, if you're a user of other Google products, as I am--stuff like email, maps, reader, calendar, documents, and oh yeah, did you know they have a search engine, too?--you can look forward to the day when you'll see a tight integration between these things and the browser.

So for now...and probably forever...I'm jumping over to Google Chrome. Oh sure, I'll make the occasional booty call to Firefox when Chrome isn't able to meet my needs. But let's be honest: The future belongs to Google.

SAJU listening tour: funnier than you think

I've talked to a few people who read the "listening tour" post below, and, though they found it amusing, they weren't sure they quite got it. Well, here's the deal. The GOP recently announced a listening tour to help it get reconnected with voters. High-profile members of the party are out at donut shops, shopping malls, and restaurants. They're talking to voters, finding out what they don't like about the Republican Party, finding out what the party needs to do to win them over. Republicans are particularly interested in a constituency with which they've had consistent problems in recent years: single women. 

Are you starting to get it now...?