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Clayton's commentary on news and events of the day. Broadly speaking, I'm a conservative with libertarian sympathies (getting more conservative as my children get older).
 Never forget! I ran for Idaho state senate in 2008--didn't win I've written a number of history books, as well as scholarly and popular articles, (see my web page). Relocating to Boise? Use my realtor, neighbor, and friend, Cindy Smith csmith@1realtyone.com.
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Saturday, February 21, 2004
Never Enough One of the many reasons why the homosexual marriage issue has me so irritated is that no matter what equality the law provides, it is never enough--and homosexuals insist not just on equal treatment by government, but equal treatment by private firms as well. This article about the marriage licenses being issued by San Francisco discusses the fact that because these licenses were issued in violation of state law, a lot of companies are unwilling to treat these newly married homosexual couples as being actually married: The couple asked State Farm for the marriage-discount rate on their car insurance, and the company mailed them an acknowledgment form showing both their names.In the mid-1970s, in California, homosexuals complained about police harrassment, and they wanted the sodomy laws repealed. I agreed at the time; I couldn't understand who all these Christians were who wanted the laws left in place. (I was young, naive, fairly liberal, and like most of my generation, I saw homosexuality as just a different lifestyle, not for me, but if others wanted that, sure!) The laws went away, and amazingly enough, within six years, the promiscuity of gay men meant that AIDS was burning a fire through the homosexual community, and soon, contaminating the blood supply. By 1979, homosexuals were insisting that private employers (admittedly, a public utility) could be sued for discrimination based on sexual orientation--and the California Supreme Court agreed. In the 1990s, the struggle was to extend this to nearly all private employers, and California's Legislature went along, banning all discrimination based on sexual orientation in 1992. (Note: sexual orientation was not defined by the law. You don't want to hire a member of NAMBLA at your day care center? Lawsuit, lawsuit!) Now homosexuals are insisting that they have a right to government recognition of marriage. But that's not good enough: "we're on the cusp of being treated again as second-class citizens." So private companies will have to be forced as well. Libertarians keep insisting that all of this is a libertarian policy. But inevitably, because the need for approval is so strong (as opposed to the libertarian ideal of laissez-faire), homosexuals aren't content with making the government treat them like everyone else. They need to force everyone to treat them that way. There is nothing libertarian about this, and libertarians should wake up, and admit that they have crawled into bed with a bunch that isn't interested in freedom, but control. We've already seen how homosexuals have destroyed the concept of free speech in Canada and Britain as part of their irrational need to suppress disapproval. I expect plenty of libertarians will start to make excuses for shutting up disapproving voices here, in the interests of "fairness." UPDATE: A reader points out that insurance companies give a discount to a married couple because their loss experience shows that married people are less expensive to insure, as reflected by actual losses. This is certainly true for heterosexual married couples. Will this necessarily be true for homosexual married couples? Maybe, maybe not. If I were an insurance company, I would not assume that a homosexual married couple is going to have the same loss record as a heterosexual married couple. More About the Albany Church Scandal This is over at FreeRepublic.com, so read with appropriate care, rather like you were reading the New York Times: Andrew Zalay, once of Albany and now working in California as an engineer, showed members of the media excerpts from his brother Tom's diary Wednesday that say shame and confusion from a relationship with Hubbard drove him to suicide in 1978 at the age of 25.Lifestyle? Gee, what do you think Tom Zalay was talking about? Toy Gun Control From the Salinas Californian: Five-year-old Martin Patiño threw his toy machine gun into a trashcan marked "armas no," Spanish for "no guns," and he promptly picked up a coloring book to replace it.Isn't it odd that middle class kids used to grow up playing with toy guns, and even BB guns, without becoming gang members? Hint: it isn't the toy guns that are the problem. There are some social and cultural problems involved, but it is easier to blame a toy. Amusing Self-Defense Account I was at first worried that the headline had something to do with the German cannibalism case, but no, that's just an expression: Butcher makes mincemeat of robbers The Economist About Outsourcing They have written an article arguing that the protectionist forces are making too big of an issue about outsourcing. I don't dispute that relative to the overall economy, the jobs going overseas are pretty small. (It is still little consolation if you are one of the people whose job has gone away, and is unlikely to be coming back, to know that someone else has a good job instead.) They also make some good points about how some Democrats are picking the starting year for counting job losses in a way that exaggerates the extent of the problem--picking 2001, before businesses started laying off workers. It is certainly true that some of the three million jobs lost is cyclical, not permanent. It is at least worth reading after listening to the doom and gloom sorts. A Fascinating Argument: Will Liberals Accept It About Concealed Carry Permits? Liberals are suddenly making libertarian arguments for gay marriage: Mathew Staver, a lawyer representing the Campaign for California Families, said he believes the court ultimately will find that Newsom acted illegally when he began allowing gay marriages last week.The same is true for carrying concealed firearms, or owning an "assault weapon." No one is hurt by being allowed to carry a gun, or have an AR-15. The same is true for allowing employers and employees to make what ever wage arrangements they want (say, paying less than minimum wage). The liberal argument for why the government has the right to regulate all these matters isn't the direct effect, but the indirect effect. Hey, if liberals decide that they are really libertarians, that's fine. We'll scrap the vast majority of the laws now on the books. But the fact is that liberals aren't libertarians. They still insist on the right of the government to regulate wages and gun ownership because of the indirect effects. Even on marriage, their libertarian-sounding arguments are just an excuse to do what they want to do. Ask them why San Francisco isn't issuing group marriage licenses for polygamists, or for five year olds, or, across species lines. After all, who is hurt by these things? Suddenly their libertarian-sounding arguments will all evaporate. Friday, February 20, 2004
Powerful Book Review in Atlantic Monthly It's by Caitlin Flanagan titled "How Serfdom Saved the Women's Movement." Her criticism of a number of recent books about working mothers--all written, according to Ms. Flanagan's review, from an almost reflexively feminist perspective--seem spot on to me from living in various parts of California, which is something of a cauldron of both highly paid professional women--and mothers struggling to bring in enough money to pay for luxuries like health care and dental exams. Flanagan is not impressed with the reasoning of these works. It's a long essay, well-written, and worth reading in full. I can't even begin to summarize here without going on for many pages, but I will give you a few interesting and important points. Flanagan argues that feminism engaged in an at least delusive, if not intentionally self-serving claim that back in the 1950s and 1960s, all women were oppressed in roughly equal ways, and that what all women had in common with respect to work and childrearing was pretty much the same regardless of economic status. As the title of her review suggests, Flanagan believes that without the mass importation of poorly paid, largely illegal immigrants (often exploited for that reason), the modern feminist ideal of the working professional mother would have been impossible. Flanagan's criticism of Ann Crittenden's The Price of Motherhood: The Price of Motherhood proceeds from an undeniable and painful truth: that although keeping a house and raising children are as physically exhausting and emotionally demanding as almost any job you can think of, they are entirely unpaid endeavors?a fact that carries grave economic repercussions for women far beyond the loss of a weekly paycheck. This was made starkly evident to Crittenden?as it is made starkly evident to millions of women every year?when she took a look at her Social Security statement and noticed a startling row of zeros, the first of which corresponded exactly to the date she began her life's most challenging work: raising her son.As the historian Elizabeth Fox-Genovese observed some years ago during a debate about feminism, it had done women like herself with good jobs an immense good; for a vast swarm of women, raising kids on their own, living in a trailer park, surviving on irregular child support payments and welfare, feminism had been a net disadvantage. Flanagan points out that this is not simply a question of some gaining and other losing, with no connection between the two. The privileged class of professional mothers needed a class of women poor enough to do the "[excrement expletive deleted] jobs" without impairing their careers. Yet as Flanagan points out, a previous generation of women had not regarded these as awful tasks, but simply part of being a mother. Even when these jobs were tedious, they were part of motherhood, for good and bad. Flanagan is not going to pretend that everything was wonderful about being a 1950s mother. She just wants some of the writers on the subject to admit that while something was gained, something was lost as well: What few will admit--because it is painful, because it reveals the unpleasant truth that life presents a series of choices, each of which precludes a host of other attractive possibilities--is that when a mother works, something is lost. Children crave their mothers. They always have and they always will. And women fortunate enough to live in a society where they have access to that greatest of levelers, education, will always have the burning dream of doing something more exciting and important than tidying Lego blocks and running loads of laundry. If you want to make an upper-middle-class woman squeal in indignation, tell her she can't have something. If she works she can't have as deep and connected a relationship with her child as she would if she stayed home and raised him. She can't have the glamour and respect conferred on career women if she chooses instead to spend her days at "Mommy and Me" classes. She can't have both things. I have read numerous accounts of the anguish women have felt leaving small babies with caregivers so that they could go to work, and I don't discount those stories for a moment. That the separation of a woman from her child produces agony for both is one of the most enduring and impressive features of the human experience, and it probably accounts for why we've made it as far as we have. I've read just as many accounts of the despair that descends on some women when their world is abruptly narrowed to the tedium and exhaustion of the nursery; neither do I discount these stories: I've felt that self-same despair.One thing that my wife and I have noticed, over the years, is the dramatic decline in the quality of middle class kids. By this, we mean that what used to be considered middle class standards of education, behavior, and values are now relatively scarce. There is no great surprise to this. A generation ago, the woman who was the primary caretaker of middle class kids was their middle class mother. Today, more often than not, the primary caretaker of middle class kids is a daycare provider. There are exceptional daycare situations out there (and priced accordingly). Most kids aren't in those situations, nor are they being raised in their own home by a nanny from some Third World country. In our experience, they are being raised by women who are so poorly educated that daycare is the highest paying work that they can find. Let me be clear on this: there are women providing daycare because they love kids, and often they compensate for the low pay because they are raising their own kids at the same time. When my wife was working on her BA, our son went to daycare 1 1/2 hours a day, three days a week, with a woman we knew from church. She was educated, intelligent, and with thoroughly middle class in her values. But more typical of daycare providers, in our experience, was our neighbor, who had dropped out of high school, didn't vote because she didn't consider herself smart enough, and failed to adequately look after her charges. She eventually stopped doing it because her conscience bothered her. One child she watched from 7 to 7 everyday, starting at six weeks (when California stops paying disability insurance after a birth) while Mom drove a shiny new BMW to an important job in San Francisco. At the father's request, our neighbor kept it a secret when the baby first crawled, rolled over, and walked. By the time the baby was two, she called our neighbor "Mommy" and would hit her biological mother at the end of the day. The mother-child bond wasn't there. Lower class women are now raising middle class children. I hope that this isn't a suprise to you when I tell you that even in very middle class schools, there are big behavior problems. Unfortunately, it's not just in California; it's here in Boise as well, because much of the poison of "have children; let someone else raise them" has spread throughout the country. It may not be as bad here; my son tells me that in his middle school classes, about half the kids simply ignored the teacher, kept talking, and otherwise being disruptive. The teacher just talked louder, recognizing the unrealism of requiring kids to behave. This is a big improvement over middle school in Sonoma County, where my son tells me that some teachers did little teaching; the whole class was spent yelling at kids to sit down and be quiet. As much as I disagree with Mormon theology, at least Mormons some effort into promoting the idea of raising your own kids. That's probably why half the class at my son's middle school was prepared to sit down and listen. Promoting the idea that every mother should be working--and thus, every child is in daycare--will someday be looked back upon as one of the great mistakes of the last half of the twentieth century. At least some of the blame can be reduced back to that simple error of treating people as members of a class, rather than as individuals. Social expectations meant that every mother in the 1950s was supposed to be home raising kids, even though some were not suited to it. This was wrong, because it assumed that every member of the class of mothers had, or should have, the same goals and expectations. The correction to these social expectations (sometimes written into law, and sometimes not) were social expectations that every woman who wasn't stupid should be working, letting the stupid ones raise the kids. This was wrong for the same reason--the assumption that all members of the class mother should be employed. Question For Your California Law Students Are there any cases that you are aware of where the California Constitution's equal protection clause struck down any law based on sexual orientation? There's a 1978 case where gay law students sued Pacific Telephone for discrimination against homosexuals. I recall that the case was decided based on freedom of political expression under the Unruh Civil Rights Law. (The theory was that being openly homosexual was a political act, since there was no law prohibiting discrimination based on seuxal orientation at the time.) It would seem a bit strange for California's equal protection clause to have prohibited discrimination based on sexual orientation--but not be used to strike down the state's laws banning homosexuality (not repealed until the 1970s). Ralph Nader Considering Run For Presidency Run, Ralph, run! As frustrated as I get with Bush's triangulation strategy, it will not cause me to support a third party candidate to run aganst Bush from the right. If you have to wonder why, look at Ralph Nader and the effect he had on the 2000 election. Al Gore wasn't far enough left for Ralph Nader, and Nader's forces, rather than recognize that they represent a fairly small minority viewpoint, decided to punish the Democratic Party for not catering to them: Nader, who turns 70 next week, has said he would base his decision, in part, on whether Democratic and Republican officials respond to his agenda, which includes the need for universal health insurance, a more progressive wage policy and making dramatic reforms to the criminal justice system.Conservatives are a good more common than "progressives," or whatever the term du jour is for Nader's form of leftism, but there still aren't enough of us to elect a president--but there are enough of us to guarantee a victory for someone like Kerry, if we sit on our hands. It is not a good situation. I understand those who get frustrated that conservatives have so little influence in America. But the alternative is to make ourselves into the equivalent of Ralph Nader. A Cure For Opiate Addiction? Here's one of those amazing stories that I am instinctively skeptical of, but it is at least interesting: However, when it comes to curing addiction, a reputable scientist believes ibogaine is nothing short of a miracle. "I didn't believe it when I first heard about ibogaine. I thought it was something that needed to be debunked," admits Dr. Deborah Mash, professor of Neurology and Molecular and Cellular Pharmacology at University of Miami.The story is careful to emphasize that by itself, it won't do the whole job, and there are people who won't help--but imagine how the world could change if heroin and cocaine users could get free of their addictions. Even a 50% reduction in addicts would mean dramatic reductions in rates of burglary, robbery, and the associated murders, rapes, and aggravated assaults. Resources that are gobbled up by the criminal justice system would be available for schools. Of course, when morphine addiction was a big problem in the nineteenth century, someone came up with a non-addictive substitute: heroin. North Dakota Adds Idaho To List of Reciprocity States North Dakota has added Idaho to the list of states whose concealed weapon permits it recognizes. Lesbian Marriage in New Mexico At the end of a story about Mayor Newsom of San Francisco officiating at a gay wedding: In New Mexico, meanwhile, the Sandoval County clerk married a lesbian couple after announcing that the state had no legal grounds to refuse marriage licenses to gays. Other same-sex couples quickly began lining up to exchange vows.Hmmm. I haven't looked at the New Mexico statutes, so I don't know exactly how the clerk came to this conclusion. A majority of Americans do not approve of gay marriage. The only question is whether they care enough to do anything about it. Instapundit is of the opinion that the opposition to gay marriage is very soft. I've received email from a gay blogger in Kansas who wanted to bet me about the legal status of homosexual marriage in near-term future America. His bet was that it woudl be lawful. I decline to bet against him, because I think he is correct: within ten years, homosexual marriage will be the law (although not by legislation, but by judicial order). Within thirty years, I am pretty sure that churches that refuse to solemnize gay weddings will lose their tax-exempt status, again, not by legislation, but by judicial order. After all, what is the tax-exempt status of schools that discriminate based on race? I don't consider the two forms of discrimination at all equivalent, of course, but the analogy will be so powerful that the courts will impose it. I keep waiting for President Bush to show that he stands with conservatives on this, but I fear that he lacks the guts to side with the 60% of Americans who oppose gay marriage. In Case You Missed This Example of "Homophobiaphobia" (Yes, there are two "-phobia" suffixes there--this is the irrational fear of homophobia.) David Bernstein points to this example of outrageous behavior by a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill--and the department chair willing to step in and make the adult behave like an adult: PC at UNC: Student at UNC expresses religious objections to homosexual conduct and criticizes homosexuality as "disgusting" in class. Professor sends out an email to the entire class lambasting this student:Now, I don't know exactly what the circumstances were that provoked this "outburst." I can imagine circumstances where the student's statement was a legitimate expression of his opinion. I can also imagine circumstances where these remarks were tactless and inappropriate. The professor's response, of course, is just typical of the sort of fascist sentiment that dominates the academic community today, where some ideas are so horrifying, so repulsive, so dangerous, that a student dare not say it. "The idea that dare not speak its name.""what we experienced, as unforuntate (sic) as it is, is, however, a perfect example of privilege. that a white, heterosexual, christian male, one who vehemently denied his privilege last week insisting that he earned all he has, can feel entitled to make violent, heterosexist comments and not feel marked or threatened or vulnerable is what privilege makes possible."The professor adds that such "hate speech" creates a "hostile environment" and will not be tolerated in her class. Dreams Some people have erotic dreams; some have nightmares. My dream last night involved opening the Wall Street Journal, looking at the chart of Treasury rates--and seeing a Treasury yield curve inversion--where short-term Treasury yields are higher than long-term Treasury yields. (Click here to see Treasury yield curve online.) This doesn't happen often--once in the entire 15 years that I have been investing. When it does happen, you are supposed to buy the longest term Treasurys you can. Is this a premonition? I hope so! Publishers Tell Me There's No Market for My New Book Trade publishers keep insisting that there is no market for my new book (teaser here). So please explain to me why there is a large market for this: Harry Potter becomes "Warrior Cup" and his enemy Voldemort "Scaly Death" in a translation of the schoolboy wizard's adventures into Ancient Greek due for publication this summer.I have two university presses looking at my manuscript right now--but still, why is there a larger market for a book written in a dead language than there is for a serious history book written in English? "Roe" Asks Court of Appeals to Reopen Roe v. Wade (1973) Norma McCorvey, who was the "Jane Roe" of the most famous and divisive case of my lifetime (although I don't recall hearing about it when it happened), is now a pro-life activist, and has asked the courts to reopen the case, claiming, among other things, that she was taken advantage of by pro-choice attorneys. She now says that the factual basis of that suit--that she had been raped--was a lie. I have also seen an interview in which she says that she didn't even know exactly what an abortion was when she agreed to be the plaintiff. To hear her tell the tale now, she apparently thought "abortion" was rather like an "undo" in your favorite text editor, or to quote the Servpro disaster restoration service ads, "like it never even happened." The argument has advanced to the Court of Appeals: Norma McCorvey, who joined with anti-abortion activists nearly 10 years ago, is seeking to have the decision overturned, citing what she says is more than 30 years of evidence that abortions are psychologically harmful to women.A Georgia woman who sued in the similar case Doe v. Bolton (1973) now says that she didn't even want an abortion--she just wanted a divorce, and claims that the lawyers involved misled her about the papers that she was signing. I will tell you that while I think an original intent argument, based on what was lawful and unlawful in 1789, could have been written that came to the same results, Roe v. Wade (1973) isn't really an original intent argument. It is a privacy right argument based on Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), and has all the problems of Griswold. Labels: abortion Conservatives Threatening to Sit Out the Election You would think from the screeching of the left that Bush is some sort of ideological conservative. Yet the Religious Right is threatening to sit out the election out of frustration with Bush's apparent liberalism on abortion, education spending, spending in general, and his reluctance to get involved in the homosexual marriage struggle: "It's not just economic conservatives upset by runaway federal spending that he's having trouble with. I think his biggest problem will be social conservatives who are not motivated to work for the ticket and to ensure their fellow Christians get to the polling booth," said Robert H. Knight, director of the Culture and Family Institute.So why is the left so vehement against Bush, when he has apparently sold out one of his core constitutencies? As an example, I just received a furious email from my sister about Bush's anti-choice policies, and the enormous damage that Bush's "abstinence-only" sex education policies have done to health education in the schools. The problem, however, is that while the Bush Administration is talking about increasing funding for such policies (and I think they are a mistake), federal funding for such programs was already $100 million a year when Bush took office. Bush hasn't actually made any change in this area. I wrote my sister back asking if perhaps she was upset about the Clinton abstinence-only sex education policies--because they were defintely in place when Bush came into office. Does anyone remember when the left was furious with Clinton for selling out to the Republicans on welfare reform? Yup. Bush is doing what Clinton did so well--triangulation. He is going just far enough to the left to make the middle happy. Who To Blame For Faulty Intelligence? As I have pointed out in the past, it would appear that even Hussein believed that he had WMDs--at least, he was paying people to build them for him. Now it appears that at least some faulty intelligence came from an organization that had its own reasons for wanting Hussein out of power, the Iraqi National Congress: U.S. officials said last week that one of the most celebrated pieces of false intelligence, the claim that Saddam had mobile biological-weapons laboratories, had come from a major in the Iraqi intelligence service made available by the INC.I can understand why the INC might have felt that lying to get Hussein removed was worth it, and Chalabi, one of the INC leaders, admitted as much in that same article: During an interview, Mr. Chalabi, by far the most effective anti-Saddam lobbyist in Washington, shrugged off charges that he had deliberately misled U.S. intelligence. The Glories of a Refractor Last night was the first really good night for observing in many months. It was cold, of course, but only about freezing. The sky was completely clear, although there was a lot of moisture impairing transparency. I was able to put the Televue Ranger and the Photon Instruments refractors side-by-side on the same objects, without the sound of chattering teeth distracting me. The Photon Instruments has a huge advantage in aperture--127mm vs. 70mm--but the Televue Ranger is about as good as it gets without being an apochromatic refractor. On Venus: both showed gruesome purple halos, with the Ranger perhaps having some slight advantage. Venus, of course, shows a gibbous image right now, and there is no detail--just blinding white clouds. On Saturn: the Photon Instruments showed at least one cloud band on the planet, as well as a clear and unmistakable Cassini Division in the rings. The Ranger showed no detail on the planet, and the Cassini Division was more implied than clearly visible. In both cases, image quality started to break down at high power. The Ranger image broke down at 120x; the Photon Instruments broke down at 229x. The limitation here, I think, was the seeing (mostly transparency). Star testing: I remain convinced that the Photon Instruments is undercorrected, about 1/3 wave. Oddly enough, I was unable to get diffraction rings out of the Ranger. I suspect that I need more magnification than I can get without using a Barlow. Orion Nebula (M42): The Photon Instruments gave a lovely image at 127x. I couldn't see any of the E, F, G, or H stars fo the Trapezium (nor should I), but A, B, C, and D were crisp and flicker-free. The lack of tube currents in a refractor, I am beginning to think, has a lot to do with the superior image quality that refractors have for their size. With only 127mm of aperture, the Photon Instruments is certainly no deep sky telescope, but within its limitations, it does a fine job. I pulled out the 8" reflector as well, to see how it compares on Saturn. Unfortunately, it seems to be out of collimation, and the batteries on my new laser collimator are dead. I don't know if the problem was having left it on, or being out in the cold aggravated battery death. Saturn was certainly not impressive because of the collimation problems. (This is also one of my objections to reflectors--the need to collimate them often.) One odd aspect, however, is how much whiter Saturn is in the reflector than it is in the Photon Instruments refractor, where it is a yellow color. I don't mean that Saturn is brighter in the reflector--it is actually a different color. Labels: telescopes How Many Gay Couples Are There? Bad Links Instapundit links to Nick Schulz's column about gay marriage. Nick Schulz quotes Virginia Postrel: But the libertarian writer Virginia Postrel touched on another dynamic at work, one that captures why a lot of self-described conservatives haven't lost a lot of sleep over the gay marriage debate. On her personal website she recently linked to an Associated Press article that pointed out the following:THere's a problem, however. When you go to Postrel's website, you find:"Massachusetts has one of the highest concentrations of gay households in the country at 1.3 percent of the total number of coupled households, according to the 2000 census. In California, 1.4 percent of the coupled households are occupied by same-sex partners. Vermont and New York also registered at 1.3 percent, while in Washington, D.C., the rate is 5.1 percent."Postrel went on to say that this "helps explain why DC conservatives, including the president, tend to squirm when their base demands condemnation of gay marriage and gays in general: If you work in Washington, you inevitably have gay friends, many of whom are de facto married." The Massachusetts Supreme Court has ruled that only full marriage rights for single-sex couples, not Vermont-style civil unions, satisfy the state constitution's demand for legal equality. With a Massachusetts senator the Democratic frontrunner, and Bush desperate to avoid the issue, this could get nasty.The problem is that the AP news story contains no such statistics. Furthermore, I am skeptical that these statistics are even close to possible. For example, this news story reports on 2000 census data on homosexual couples: To date, the Census Bureau has reported that there are 479,107 same-sex couples sharing a household. This number will rise when data from all 50 states is released. The missing states are New Jersey, Texas, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, Wisconsin, Mississippi and Arkansas.San Francisco is, if not the most gay-friendly city in America, certainly in the top five. It has one of the highest concentrations of gay people in the U.S.--and even there, only 2.7% of the population are gay couples. Contrary to Postrel's claim that 1.4 percent of Californian households are gay couples, the actual number--92,138 same-sex couples in California, multiplying by two to get the number of people, and dividing by California's population--comes to about 0.55% of the population. I am very skeptical of the rest of the statistics that Postrel is quoting. I suspect that someone is looking at same-sex households, and assuming that these are all gay couples. They may well be roommates. UPDATE: Volokh says that Postrel's data is correct, because the 1.4 percent is of all couples, not of the general population. (Yup, my mistake.) Postrel's link definitely doesn't point to an article containing the data. Here's the census data that Postrel should have cited. This would suggest, however, that one of the arguments for gay marriage--the supposed stability that legal marriage would provide--isn't much of an argument. Homosexuals are about 3% or so of the population--and about 1.4% of couples. Unsurprisingly, half of these same-sex couples are female, even though homosexual men outnumber lesbians by perhaps three times. Thursday, February 19, 2004
The Onion Has a Marvelous Satirical Piece It's about the multimillionaire gigolo's campaign to protect ordinary Americans from that rich guy George Bush: ANCASTER, PA?Democratic frontrunner Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) began a seven-day, eight-state whistle-stop tour Monday, addressing a group of Frigidaire factory workers from the all-teak deck of his 60-foot luxury motor cruiser. Equal Protection Claims in San Francisco I certainly don't claim to have any detailed knowledge of the California Constitution's equal protection clause, but at first glance, it appears that even in the much more serious situation of someone being sent to prison, California's courts seem pretty willing to defer to the Legislature in deciding whether a distinction between two classes is legitimate or not. This is from People v. Jones, 101 Cal. App. 4th 220 (2002): The Mills court noted that although section 290 requires registration by persons convicted of some sex offenses but not by persons convicted of other sex offenses, it is up to the Legislature "to determine the different degrees of gravity, of danger, to society from various types of sex offenses." (People v. Mills, supra, 81 Cal. App. 4th at p. 180.) The court explained that the Legislature's decision not to make certain sex offenses subject to registration "may be based upon the legislative determination a particular type of offender does not recidivate or recidivates less; some offenses, although touching upon sexual acts, are not so directly concerned or related to the type of conduct which is repetitive, recidivist, in nature." (Id. at p. 181.)Obviously, this is a very different situation from the question of marriage (and mostly, I am posting this to start a conversation)--but I would think if anything, the courts would be less willing to defer to the Legislature on a criminal charge, where someone is going to go to prison--a far more serious consequence than an inability to get married. Of course, the real issue is whether the courts will decide that the statute adopted by the voters had a rational basis. As that same decision explained: We conclude that defendant failed to show that the Legislature had no rational basis for requiring persons convicted of violating section 288a, subdivision (b)(1) (oral copulation with a person under the age of 18) to register as sex offenders under section 290. Therefore, the statute does not offend equal protection as applied to defendant, and the trial court did not abuse its discretion in declining to dismiss defendant's current conviction.It seems that to win on an equal protection claim, the defendant was required to establish that the Legislature's classification had no rational basis. To some people, of course, any distinction based on the sex of the participants is prime facie irrational. But there are lots of distinctions in the marriage laws that would seem equally irrational: laws against incestuous marriages, and laws against polygamy. I can't see any reason why a law prohibiting same-sex marriage is intrinsically more irrational than laws against brother-sister, mother-son, father-daughter, or one guy, four women marriages. And what's with this discrimination against animal marriage? What makes it irrational to define marriage to an animal as wrong? I know that some people will get really steamed, and say that animals aren't humans. Yeah--and your point is? What makes human relationships preferable to animal ones, without getting into that pesky notion of absolute morality? UPDATE: At least part of the issue is whether marriage is a fundamental right. If so, strict scrutiny applies; if not, rational basis is enough, and the courts must defer to the judgment of the Legislature. The problem is, as another decision, People v. Alvarez, 88 Cal. App. 4th 1110 (2001), points out: In discussing the Olivas case, the court in People v. Bell n20 noted that "We find a lack of clarity and consistency in the cases dealing with the equal protection analysis of penal statutes. Olivas did not deal with a statute creating a crime but was concerned rather with a law which results in greater punishment for separate defendants convicted of the same crime in the same court based solely on the ages of the defendants. Still, Olivas states that liberty is a fundamental interest and requires that the strict scrutiny test be applied to equal protection claims when liberty is affected. Courts since Olivas have applied that concept narrowly . . . ."This case upheld an enhanced penalty for use of a firearm in a crime, relative to another deadly weapon. What makes using a gun rather than a dagger worse? The argument is essentially this: The Martinez court rejected the defendant's contention, stating that other enhancement provisions, such as section 12022 (committing a felony with a firearm or deadly weapon) and section 12022.7 (infliction of great bodily harm), "may not be compared to section 12022.53, because they enhance the sentence for 'any felony,' whereas section 12022.53 is limited to designated felonies of a very serious type. . . . More significantly, the Legislature determined in enacting section 12022.53 that the use of firearms in commission of the designated felonies is such a danger that, 'substantially longer prison sentences must be imposed . . . in order to protect our citizens and to deter violent crime.' The ease with which a victim of one of the enumerated felonies could be killed or injured if a firearm is involved clearly supports a legislative distinction treating firearm offenses more harshly than the same crimes committed by other means, in order to deter the use of firearms and save lives."I don't know about you, but this sounds like doubletalk to me. Yes, a firearm is deadlier than a knife, when used in a crime, but they aren't all that different in lethality. It looks to me like the courts use "strict scrutiny" to strike down laws when convenient. As the decision admits, liberty is a fundamental right, and Alvarez's liberty was definitely at risk here. I can't see that there is anything rational about firearms enhancement relative to use of another deadly weapon. You could just as easily make the argument that promoting homosexuality by giving it equal status justifies treating it more harshly than heterosexuality. It would make about as much sense. Labels: child sexual abuse Should Chutzpah Be a Capital Crime? I outraged by the chutzpah of this guy's notion of an appropriate punishment for what he did. First, the crime: Alan Walter Jr., one of eight friends accused of abducting, raping and drowning 13-year-old Maryann Measles in October 1997, pleaded guilty Thursday to six counts, including felony murder.Horrifying crime, right? But this is shocking: He initially told police he thought he deserved about 300 hours of community service for his crime, but later revised that to two months in prison.I am stunned by the savagery of the crime, and I am even more stunned that this monster would make either of these proposals with any expectation of being taken seriously. This sounds to me like someone who should never see the outside of a jail cell. He is so completely out of touch with civilized standards that he thought punishments this light might be a basis for negotiation. Do You Remember Reagan's First Term? When Reagan came to office in 1981, we were in a terrible economic situation. For all the whining about unemployment and a bad ecnomy we are hearing today, you would think this is an unprecedented situation. America was a much more unpleasant place to look for a job in the late 1970s than it is today. Even though the economic malaise was largely the result of previous administrations (both Democrat and Republican), the left called the economic hard times of 1981-83 "the Reagan recession." Yet, by 1984, the economy was recovering--and Walter Mondale, a Big Government liberal, went down to smashing defeat. The situation is quite similar. The good times (built partly on dotcom and telecom startup delusions) came to an end in April of 2000, with the stock market beginning to fall. Bush took office when things were definitely not going well. We now know that there was some mild recovery--or at least, the bloodletting was starting to cool--when 9/11 happened--and the economy collapsed. For the last few months, partly because of the tax cut, but partly (perhaps mostly) because the liquidation of unproductive assets is part of how recessions cure themselves, the economy is well into recovery. Today's news is that the leading indicators composite index is up, and new unemployment claims for the week ending February 14 are down: "the largest decline since the beginning of November...." There is enough time between now and November for this rising economy to put a lot of people back to work--and yet not enough time for the inevitable demand-pull increase in interest rates. I think Bush is going to win re-election, although it will be nip and tuck--the billionaires are pulling out all the stops to get their boy Kerry into the White House. UPDATE: Here's a table from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showing unemployment rates from 1975 (when I entered the workforce) to today:
John Kerry, Enemy of Special Interests Shockingly enough, the Los Angeles Times (free registration required) is running this story: Sen. John F. Kerry sent 28 letters in behalf of a San Diego defense contractor who pleaded guilty last week to illegally funneling campaign contributions to the Massachusetts senator and four other congressmen.Now, there's no evidence that Kerry knew the contributions were illegal--but this is exactly the sort of special interest politics that Kerry claims to oppose. Amusing Description of Howard Dean's Campaign From one of the comments over at Lucianne.com: Dean was the perfect dot-com candidate, all hype with tons of start up money but no substance. This combination led to his top-fuel dragster like acceleration to oblivion. Viacom CEO Capable Of Learning; the Virtues of Rolled Up Newspapers Against the Snout From the New York Post: BESIEGED Viacom president Mel Karmazin read the riot act to execs of all 180 Infinity radio stations yesterday - including Howard Stern's in New York - telling them they'll be fired if they violate the company's new "zero tolerance" policy on obscenity.Yes, you can call me narrow-minded, prudish, whatever you like. I have caught Howard Stern's late night TV show a few times, and I was really impressed. I guess it doesn't surprise me that Stern has an audience for stuff like this--I just didn't think there were enough drunken, out of control teenaged boys to keep a show like that on the air. (Let me emphasize: I am sure that there are many drunken, out of control teenaged boys with far too much taste to watch a show like Stern's.) I expect that some of you are also going to tell me, "If you don't like it, change the channel." I will take you seriously when your henchmen at the ACLU stop trying to remove the Ten Commandments from public parks because it is offensive: Plaintiff Sue Mercier is a resident of La Crosse, Wisconsin and a member of plaintiff Freedom from Religion Foundation. When visiting her lawyer’s office, which is near the monument site, plaintiff Mercier must sometimes alter her route to avoid seeing the monument. She shops at the People’s Food Coop and the farmers’ market less often than she would if the monument were not in Cameron Park. When she has viewed the monument, it has “disturbed” her emotionally. Yale Law School On those occasions when I think about going to law school, I read articles like this one, and cringe: Federalist Society Vice-President Nick Muzin LAW '05 said he did not consider himself to be particularly conservative before coming to the Law School; he said he even worked for the Gore/Lieberman Presidential Campaign in 2000. But he said he feels far to the right of the politics of many Law School students.And this is the right wing at Yale Law School? Compared to most of America, Muzin is firmly in the liberal camp. "My larger concern is I feel that the law school is really marginalizing itself -- they're fighting for causes that were already lost 30 years ago," Muzin said. "I think they're really doing a disservice to their students, producing students who will not be leaders in mainstream America."I really wish that this was true. In one sense, Muzin is right: these causes were already lost 30 years ago among the people. But what the majority wants isn't really particularly relevant in the post-Lawrence world, where judges get to rewrite history to suit their preferences about what the law should be. If enough judges want it--and Yale Law School graduates are going to be disproportionately represented among federal judges--that's all that really matters. Thanks to David Bernstein for the link; he remarks that he was apparently ostracized for a controversial statement he made in Contracts class at Yale. As a former fellow student related it to Bernstein: "I don't remember Contracts class being that controversial; we didn't discuss any of the truly hot button issues for the left--such as race, abortion, gay rights--in Contracts--and, in any event, my (libertarian) views on such issues wouldn't have been so objectionable to them, anyway. So what did I say in Contracts class that led to my ostracism?" He said, and I swear he seemed at least 80% serious, "well, you kept saying that contracts should be enforced!"This is really scary. Wednesday, February 18, 2004
Illegal Immigration & Temporary Worker Programs I received this article from a group called the Center for Immigration Studies. I don't know anything about them, but it is pretty obvious that they think Bush's proposal for a temporary worker program, like the Bracero programs of the past, would be bad for low wage American workers. You can read a short history of these programs here. Obviously, you have to regard anything from an advocacy group with a certain amount of care, but I don't see anything obviously absurd in it, and much that fits with my knowledge of the effects of large scale immigration in other periods of American history: The heart of the problem is that guestworker programs seek to reconcile two sharply conflicting goals: the need to protect citizen workers from the competition of foreign workers who are willing to work for wages and in conditions that few citizens would tolerate versus the wishes of some employers who rely on labor intensive production and service techniques to secure a plentiful supply of low cost workers. In addition, there are always unforeseen side effects that harm the wider society.Another article from that same group, written by a former federal prosecutor, points out the combination of groups that encourage illegal immigration: Business interests dependent on an unending flow of cheap, exploitable, labor; immigrant groups intent on keeping the door open so that more of their relatives, friends, and countrymen would be allowed to enter; immigration lawyers who derive personal profit from the plight of immigrants; the politicians who rely on these interests groups for their continued reelection; all of these groups joined together to deprive INS of the resources and legal authority needed to implement the immigration laws in a coherent fashion.I understand why Bush is pushing this temporary worker program. It gets him brownie points from those parts of our society that think illegal immigrants are a good idea; it releases political pressure for real reform in Mexico, something that might turn out to be a pretty bloody action; it buys him support from business interests who like having a cheap labor supply available. What amazes me is how the Democrats keep talking about helping the little guys, but do nothing about a problem that is clearly depressing wages and reducing employment among unskilled and underskilled Americans. Is it possible that the votes bought by supporting illegal immigration exceeds the votes that Democrats could get by helping blue collar and pink collar American workers? If that is really the case, it is a terrifying statement about the number of illegals and their friends who actually vote in this country. New Mexico, Breathalyzers, the ACLU, and Gun Control I just received a very entertaining letter from Robert Racansky which he gave me permission to post here: February 18, 2004 Interesting New Specialty Blog It's called The Argus, and specializes in watching Central Asia and the Caucasus region, by a guy who spent time there, and has considerable interest in the region, its culture, and people. In his own words: I served in Peace Corps Uzbekistan from 2000 until the program was evacuated in September 2001. I taught English at the Navoi Academic Lyceum for a handful of hours every week and spent the rest of my time rapidly losing weight, taking long "business lunches," harassing police officers, and making fun of tourists.This captures something of the flavor of the blog--a mixture of serious and humorous commentary on events of the day (rather like my blog, but with slightly stronger language), while still specializing on the specified topics. Now, the observant reader will notice that this is also one of my new advertisers. Let me emphasize that if The Argus had come to my attention in some other manner, I would still be telling you about it. I noticed it, of course, because before I accept an ad on my blog, I make sure that they aren't selling something utterly horrifying or repulsive. (Sorry, but "South of Market Dirt Scene Cruise & Virus Exchange" is going to have to advertise somewhere else--say, Six Foot Pole. I wouldn't encourage you to click that link. The language, hatred, and immaturity are...unpleasant.) It does raise an interesting question: what happens if the most effective way to get some of the traffic from high volume sites is to advertise through blogads.com, instead of the more polite and generous methods that have worked until now? I suppose that I could advertise somewhere like Instapundit, take advantage of the Instalanche that results, while people down the food chain from my blog enjoy the echoes of the Instalanche. I am reminded of an interesting account of hallucinogen use in 18th century Siberia, described in some book that I read. The story is somewhat gross, so you might want to avert your eyes if the mildly scatalogical offends. It seems that the local tribes had discovered a plant with hallucinogenic properties. The hallucinogen was both rare enough (and thus expensive) and sufficiently strong that even after being passing through the kidneys, some of the hallucinogen remained. There was thus a market for the urine of those who had consumed the planet--and for the urine of those who drank the urine of those who consumed the planet. The hallucinogen remained psychoactive even unto the fourth generation of urine. Will blog ads to generate traffic be the Siberian hallucinogenic urine of our time? A Sad Story of AIDS--And Someone Who At Least Knew What Caused His Preferences From the Utah Deseret News: Years after her life was played out on the TV screen like a reality show, the sequel to Kim Smith's story plays on without the cameras. Labels: child sexual abuse, homosexuality Syria Gets The Message Instapundit points to this story from the Guardian, and seems to imply that Syria's interest in resuming talks with Israel might be driven by the recent "tyrant cleansing" that took place next door. Nah. Must just be a coincidence. Remarkable: A Poll That Understands the Electoral College! A number of polls have come out in recent days showing that either Kerry is double digits ahead of Bush, or five points behind Bush, or neck and neck. The last of these polls, however, has perhaps the most signficant numbers of all: A new poll conducted by Zogby International for The O’Leary Report and Southern Methodist University’s John Tower Center from February 12-15, 2004 of 1,209 likely voters with a margin of error of +/- 2.8 percentage points found that if the election for president were held today, Democrat John Kerry would edge George W. Bush 46% to 45% in the “blue states” – or states won by Al Gore in the 2000 election. In the “red states,” or states won by George W. Bush in 2000, however, Bush wins handily by a 51% to 39% margin.Think long and hard about this: Bush only has to win the "red states" to win re-election--and it appears that he has these states locked up. Kerry's lead in the "blue states" is within the margin of error. There are a bunch of states that Bush doesn't even have to campaign in (say, Idaho, where I live). This means that any state where he has a ten point lead over Kerry doesn't require any significant campaign expenditures. He can spend that money on the "blue states" where the race is tight. It is going to take a lot of money from Red China, George Soros, and the rest of the billionaire leftists for Kerry to hold his "blue states." Unlike the 1996 and 2000 elections, our government is watching money flows very carefully, because of terorrism funding concerns. I can't imagine tens of millions of dollars wandering into the Kerry campaign from overseas without being seen. Unlike the 1996 and 2000 elections, the Bush Administration has no reason to close their eyes to Red China's efforts to buy the White House for a Democrat. Before you wonder if the Saudi government might try to buy the White House for Bush--I've thought about that, and I suspect at this point the Saudi royal slimocracy would probably prefer Kerry by now. Bush seems intent on "destabilizing" the Middle East by infecting Iraq with the liberal democracy virus. What's The Opposite Of Indecisive? That's the only way to describe the father of Alex Polier, alleged Kerry adultress. On Friday he was quoted as calling Kerry a "sleazeball" that he wouldn't want his daughter around, and that he wouldn't vote for Kerry. On Monday: Terry Polier pledged to vote for the super-rich Democrat after daughter Alex, 27, publicly insisted she had not had a fling with him.Okay, the United Kingdom's Sun isn't exactly a high quality paper, with those infamous Page 3 girls (definitely not women, or womyn, or wimmin). Still, you wonder: was it a carrot ("Here's $100,000 to make yourself look incredibly stupid for making completely opposite statements between Friday and Monday") or a threat ("We know where you live")? Personally, I don't care all that strongly if Kerry and Alex Polier committed adultery or not. Kerry is an elected official, and therefore I find almost any immoral act by him readily imaginable. What I do find disturbing is how rapidly "little people" can make a 180 degree turn when it suits the needs of America's wealthiest gigolo. Is This a Parody of California Gun Control Laws? I'm afraid not. The New Mexico lower house has passed a bill requiring every vehicle in the state to have a breathalyzer installed. Now, if they had imposed this requirement on people convicted of drunk driving as a punishment or condition of probation, that would be perfectly reasonable. If they had imposed this as a lifelong punishment for drunk driving, I would say that they had gone too far. But imposing it on every vehicle in the state? What next? A mandatory breathalyzer interlock chastity belt to prevent rapes by drunks? If this had been one legislator's pipe dream, I would ignore it. It almost reads like a parody of California's assault weapons ban (which similarly assumes that the only solution to gun crime is to treat everyone like a criminal). But this bill passed the lower house? What sort of fools do they elect there? This is almost Californian in its arrogant refusal to discriminate between criminals and law-abiding. Thanks to Eugene Volokh for the link. Advertising With Blogads; Bridal Magazines as Pornography I was hoping that advertisers would flock to the opportunity to advertise on my blog, knowing what an important and influential crowd reads this. Besides, if advertising put some money in my pocket, I wouldn't have to nag my readers to throw money into the PayPal tip jar. (Thanks to those who do.) But it appears that advertisers don't particularly want to sell my readers anything. I am crushed; you should all feel insulted that you aren't important enough for advertisers. Anyway, feel free to throw some money into the PayPal tip jar. My daughter is aiming at a June wedding, and this will cost a bit. I suppose it could be worse; she tells me that one of the bridal magazines that she reads tells of a bride who took pride in her self-restraint. "I only spent $2000 on flowers." Hmmm. Sounds like someone has more money than she needs. Bridal magazines, unfortunately, are selling a princess fantasy to young women. My daughter's fiance refers to them as "chick pornography," and it is a pretty apt analogy. Like pornography, everything is perfect: the brides are beautiful; the grooms are hunks; the honeymoon is in an exotic location; entire counties must have been cut for the flowers. Also like pornography, bridal magazines don't convey the real costs, with typical weddings costing $20,000 and up. Imagine what taking half of that money and using it as a down payment for a house would do to improve the lives of the young couple. What troubles me are the number of weddings where the bills haven't been paid off before the divorce. UPDATE: You'll notice that advertising is now appearing on my blog! Yahoo! Paying customers! And to my surprise, not from the RNC, or the Human Rights Campaign. :-) Yes, Just Like The Rest of Us: I Could Not Make This One Up This article from the San Francisco Chronicle really captures the weirdness of the culture: First, there was the term "homosexual," then "gay" and "lesbian," then the once taboo "dyke" and "queer." Bush v. Kerry Polling Results: Is Bush's Triangulation Strategy Necessary? This recent survey shows that Bush is now five points ahead of Kerry among likely voters. What I find interesting is that a previous survey by the same organization shows that "64% prefer smaller government with fewer services and lower taxes." No matter what you might say in Kerry's defense, he is definitely a big government with more services and higher taxes sort of liberal. I suspect that all Bush is going to have to do is run ads showing Kerry's liberalism, and the gap won't be 5%, but 15%, in very short order. Tuesday, February 17, 2004
NBC News Covers Kerry's Involvement With Chinese Communist Influence Peddlers This has been covered by conservatives, but I guess it's a story too big to ignore, so even NBC is reporting on it: Senator John Kerry, D-MA, unwittingly tried to help a Chinese espionage agent and arms dealer in 1996 in return for campaign contributions for his Senate reelection campaign, according to congressional and other documents, interviews, and photographs.Well worth reading the entire article. I don't think anyone believes that Kerry is some sort of Chinese agent, but when Kerry talks about the evil influence of special interest money--well, perhaps this isn't just book knowledge he's spouting. San Francisco City Official Lawlessness I mentioned a few days ago the problem of city officials in Babylon West ignoring state law. What other state laws do local officials get to ignore because they believe that it violates the state or federal constitutions? If I were the sheriff somewhere like Lassen County or Modoc County, I would be very tempted to just ignore California's assault weapons law, start ordering them up on department letterhead, and then sell them to any resident of the county who passed the background check for firearms transfers in California. I mean, the sheriff could argue, and with as much accuracy, that the assault weapons law violates Article I, sec. 1 of the California Constitution: All people are by nature free and independent and have inalienable rights. Among these are enjoying and defending life and liberty, acquiring, possessing, and protecting property, and pursuing and obtaining safety, happiness, and privacy.Well let's see, "defending life and liberty" is pretty broad, isn't? There are circumstances where a rifle with detachable 20 round magazines would be quite useful for that purpose. Just because the state legislature has passed a law doesn't mean that local officials have to follow that law, does it? I mean, there's some room for disagreement about this, isn't there? I really do not think homosexuals have thought this through very carefully. What other laws may local officials ignore if they find them distasteful? "We don't really think the legislature repealing the laws on homosexuality is consistent with the clear intent of Article I, sec. 4 concerning licentiousness." Free exercise and enjoyment of religion without discrimination or preference are guaranteed. This liberty of conscience does not excuse acts that are licentious or inconsistent with the peace or safety of the State.(No, I'm not actually claiming that this is a valid reading of Art. I, sec. 4, but it doesn't seem any sillier to me than the San Francisco Mayor's misreading of the equal protection clause.) What if district attorneys in the more rural parts of California decided that gay men who get beat up for making a pass at a straight guy deserve what they get? Another State Considers Amending Its State Constitution In Response To Judicial Activism Mississippi: Sen. Alan Nunnelee, R-Tupelo, filed Senate Concurrent Resolution 514, which calls for an amendment to the state constitution defining marriage as union between a man and a woman. The Continuing Scandal Involving the Catholic Church & Homosexuality Also from the Independent: A priest was found dead two days after meeting a Roman Catholic bishop over a letter alleging the bishop was part of "a ring of homosexual priests".It now appears that Minkler committed suicide. Why? Here's another news account of this death that makes me wonder a bit: On Friday, the church announced that Minkler had disavowed authorship of the letter and had said he had never contacted the archdiocese. On Monday, they released Minkler's signed statement to that effect.Here's a bit more from Newsday about the 1995 letter that seems to have led to at least one death (cause undetermined): Albany - A priest was found dead Sunday, two days after meeting with Albany Bishop Howard Hubbard over a 1995 letter alleging the bishop was part of "a ring of homosexual Albany priests."The New York Post coverage is also disturbing. Although quoting an unnamed police official that there were indications that was suicide: "We've been apprised of Rev. Minkler's death and we're awaiting the results of the autopsy," said Albany District Attorney Paul Clyne.This article also seems to imply that this was more than an allegation against Bishop Hubbard: The bishop said he was "stunned" by Minkler's death, and said the priest assured him as recently as Friday that he was not the source of criticism of Hubbard's handling of a series of child-abuse cases involving Albany priests.Of course, conspiracies of silence involving powerful gay men and murder aren't new. See this coverage in the Bakersfield Californian, provoked by the murder of Assistant District Attorney Stephen M. Tauzer. The abstract gives you something of where this is going: Powerful gay men. Vulnerable teen-age boys. Murder. For years, some prominent local men who led secret lives were rumored to be protected. Whispers surrounding another important man's death prompt the question: Is there really a conspiracy? Labels: child sexual abuse "Child Molesters Aren't Homosexuals": More Interesting News From Britain From the Independent: A man accused of nine counts of rape broke down in tears yesterday as he insisted he was not the "dangerous sexual predator" who had indiscriminately attacked women and girls across the south of England.No conviction yet, but the rest of the article doesn't leave much doubt. Oh yes, what does this interesting paragraph mean? Mr Imiela, dressed in a grey suit, blue shirt and tie, leaned forward in the dock, often clasping tissues to his face as Mrs Poulet questioned him about a "significant" event when he was 14. His voice shaking, he pointed angrily at his own counsel and answered: "You said you wouldn't mention that."What was this "significant" even when he was 14? The Entertainment Industry: How Many Groups Can They Offend in One Month? Apparently OutKast managed to upset Native Americans: LOS ANGELES, California (Reuters) -- CBS television issued a new round of apologies, this time for any offense taken at the American Indian-motif Grammy Awards performance by the hip-hop group OutKast that some Native Americans have condemned as racist.Here's the core problem: an industry that sees offending people as the highest purpose to which they can aspire. Yes, there's a lot of people that are a little too sensitive; but there are a lot of people in the entertainment industry that must sexualize everything. Humor Some of this may not mean much to you if you don't live in Idaho, and know what the stereotypes are that being satirized here. Or maybe they will! Idaho Barbies Why Libertarian Ideas Have Not Been All That Popular Tyler Cowen at the Volokh Conspiracy points to Will Wilkinson's discussion of why libertarian ideas haven't been more successful. I would argue that libertarian ideas have not been more popular for the following reasons: 1. Americans are not generally very sympathetic to unpragmatic political philosophies. Some of this is because the best examples of highly idealistic political philosophies are socialism and Great Society welfare state liberalism. Both turned out to be failures because they were based on false assumptions about human nature. Socialism (in the formal sense of government ownership of the means of production, not the welfare state liberalism that often calls itself socialism in Europe) was based on at least two incorrect assumptions. a. Human beings can be consistently motivated by concern for the collective good. b. Market prices are not necessary to rationally allocate resources. Great society welfare state liberalism (which I distinguish from New Deal welfare state liberalism) failed because it made at least three incorrect assumptions. a. Poverty was primarily caused by a shortage of money, not a shortage of values. b. Subsidizing dependence would not increase the number of dependents. c. Capitalism, rather than being the goose that lays the golden eggs that fund the welfare state, was something disreputable and contemptible that could be regulated and discouraged without endangering either the tax revenues that funded the welfare state, or the political will of the taxpayers to continue supporting the welfare state. (In some respects, Clinton's often corrupt relationship with capitalism was an attempt to get the goose laying golden eggs again.) It might be that libertarian ideals are grounded on more realistic assumptions than socialism or Great Society welfare state liberalism, but I see a lot of the same "we've got an all-encompassing theory, and we're going to run with it" approach among libertarian ideologues that sank the more extreme forms of Great Society welfare state liberalism. 2. Libertarian hostility towards religion in general, and Christianity in particular. This is not intrinsic to libertarianism. It is true that there are some religions where such conflict is unavoidable; Islam simply has no notion of a state separate from religion, and seems to be persisting in the hostility towards interest that retarded Christianity until the Renaissance. A lot of libertarian hostility towards Christianity reflects both the Ayn Rand roots of much libertarian thought, as well as a tendency of American libertarians to define their ideology by how it is distinguished from American conservative thought (which has some strongly libertarian components to it). American conservativism has been closely identified with Christianity simply because that has been the dominant religion of Americans from the very beginning of colonization. It seems to me that a lot of libertarians define themselves that way because they are either non-believers (and not just non-Christians), or because they are offended by the cultural baggage that they associate with American Christianity. Once someone has divided himself away from conservatives because of reaction to the dominant religion of America, libertarian ideas are the logical political orientation. While hostility to religion in general, and to Christianity in particular will make you fit right in at faculty meetings, it won't get libertarian ideas much traction in a nation where the population still overwhelmingly defines itself as Protestant or Catholic. 3. For libertarian ideas to work in a society, there are a few necessary conditions. Some are obvious to libertarians, who take comfort that we live in a society where these conditions exist: a. If not a well-educated population, at least one that isn't grossly ignorant. If you don't know that there are better jobs available in the next county, you are likely to be exploited by an employer, even in a free market. b. If not fully equal opportunities for all, at least a rough approximation of this. A society where tradition means that many smart people are condemned to work in the mud, while dumb people run the society because of their birth, is terribly unjust, and unlikely to be economically successful. This is perhaps the reason that Latin America lagged behind after overthrowing their Spanish and Portguese masters, while the U.S. took off economically. 4. Libertarians tend to overlook several other characteristics of the real world, not just in America, but in lots of other places as well. a. What do you do with the helpless and dependent? Yes, libertarian thought is supportive of private charity, but fails to recognize some disturbing historical problems. Part of why local governments in England were saddled with responsibility for the poor starting in Elizabeth I's reign was that Henry VIII's confiscation of the Catholic Church's property had destroyed one of the few institutions with the economic resources to care for the helpless and dependent. I have had enough experience with private, community-based charity over the last few years to recognize that many of the fine ideas about charity that libertarians believe should solve the problem, simply don't work reliably enough. A village of 100 people knows who is suffering, and often has a pretty good of whether the problem is "unable to work" or "work gets in the way of his intoxicants." This doesn't work so well in a community of 100,000. It becomes difficult, without a bit of bureaucracy, to separate out the needy from the greedy. (Not that the current bureaucracies do this job very well, either--they just don't bother distinguishing the two classes of poor.) b. There are some people who are helpless and dependent because of horrifying crimes--but there is no way to hold the criminal responsible. The libertarian answer is to hold the criminal responsible. Over the years, I've run into a number of adults who are either dependent on the government, or are just one step away from it, because of child sexual abuse. In many cases, it is impossible to determine who the guilty party was, the evidence would be insufficient for even the standard of proof of a civil suit, statute of limitations, or the guilty party has absolutely nothing of value. Unlike fraud, where there is only a transfer of wealth, some crimes end up destroying human capital. I look at the damaged people that I know (and unfortunately, I know more than I can easily count from our years in California), and I see a lot of people unlikely to ever be self-sufficient. c. Poor kids as hostages of poverty. I have always been frustrated by one of the most difficult problems of poverty: children who are effectively hostages to bad parents. I had a sister-in-law who was part of the welfare dependency class (because her husband never let work get in the way of his intoxicants). Her perception of how things worked among her fellow dependents was that in about half the homes, the AFDC check went to feed and care for the kids, and then whatever was left over went to support the parental intoxicant habits. In the other half the homes, the parental intoxicants came first, and only the fear of Child Protective Services made sure that the kids had food. What is the libertarian solution? It has to work as well as the welfare state liberalism solution (which isn't a terribly high bar to reach). If a private charity cuts off funding to the irresponsible parents, the kids go hungry, preventing the next generation from having any hope of improving itself. If a private charity doesn't cut off funding, they will find themselves unable to keep up with demand from other intoxication-based parents, anxious to get their bad habits subsidized. A private organization lacks the legal authority to take the kids away from the parents. (The record of foster care is so bad that even in the welfare state liberalism solution, judges are reluctant to take kids away from their biological parents, and with good reason.) d. Libertarian ideas rely excessively on notions of self-interest. Self-interest is a fine organizing principle for a society if people are intelligent and prepared to think about long-term consequences of their actions. Great! But what about the other 90% of Americans? It used to be said that the only question you had to ask at a Santa Clara County Libertarian Party function was, "Hardware or software?" I have found that on average, engineers tend to be both intelligent, and prepared to think long-term about their actions. There are doubtless a few other professions where this is generally the case. Is this generally the case for most Americans? No. I shudder to think of what is going to happen as the Clinton generation starts to retire over the next few years. For every Woodstock attendee who has an adequate 401k or IRA to support them in their 70s and 80s, there will be probably six or seven who have exactly zero set aside. I've seen too many examples of people cashing out their 401k plans in their 30s and 40s, and buying nice cars. e. Another component of the self-interest problem is that for many Americans, the primary operating principle is guilt. This is why left-wing politics gets more common in the multimillionaire and billionaire ranks. If all this guilt led to charitable giving, this would be a good thing. Mostly, however, the purveyors of guilt are the left, with people like John Kerry, gigolo to multimillionaire heiresses, leading the charge against wealth and privilege. Labels: economics Monday, February 16, 2004
The Princess Diaries: Better Than I Expected Saturday night I was channel surfing (yes, I do that occasionally), and I ran into the beginning of The Princess Diaries, a comedy made a couple of years ago with Anne Hathaway and Julie Andrews (looking much better than someone her age should ever look). My wife returned from her band gig about 8:30, and we headed off to dinner with our daughter and her fiance. I was so impressed that I decided to rent it, and watch the whole film without commercials. The first half of the film (which is as much as I saw Saturday night) is really funny--and I don't mean witty, or amusing. Even watching some of the pratfalls for the second time, I was occasionally laughing so hard that I was becoming short of breath. The second half of the film isn't really all that funny; it tries for sweet and romantic, but doesn't really pull that part off quite so well. Still, if you need a film that you can enjoy with your kids, this might be one to consider renting. It is, I think, the first G-rated comedy that I have seen in some time that wasn't animated. (I will tell you that as much as I enjoyed it, I found myself a little disappointed that an animated feature such as Shrek, intended for kids, had some gratuitous crude humor in it. As near as I can tell, it was put it deliberately to raise the rating to PG.) There was no foul language in The Princess Diaries. There were a very few places where particular lines of dialog would be completely over the heads of most young kids (it's the line about the black pumps that the chauffeur buys for the princess), but even these were, in a nation as sexually warped as America has become, really incredibly mild. Is this a great piece of film art? No. You'll recognize themes from My Fair Lady, Cinderella, and King Ralph of course. I found myself wondering a little why a nation somewhere between Spain and Portgual has its citizens speaking with primarily British accents--and the cultural attache is speaking flawless American English. The kids at the private school in San Francisco, even the mean stuck up snobs, are more 1970s than modern Bay Area types. (Of course, a film about real high school kids from the Bay Area today would be either extremely atypical, or at least R-rated.) There are gaping implausibilities in the setup for the story. One aspect of the film that was an odd mixture of realism and idealism, however, is the heroine, Mia. Anne Hathaway does a nice job of portraying her as a sweet and innocent 15 year old, waiting for her first romantic kiss. Note to writers: this is perhaps .00001% of 15 year old girls in the San Francisco Bay Area. At the same time, Hathaway manages to convey how easily a lot of 15 year olds are manipulated and taken advantage of by guys with their own agendas. Unfortunately, the real world of the San Francisco Bay Area (and probably most other places in America) doesn't involve guys looking for press coverage, and the consequences for the girl aren't embarrassment and scolding by the grandmother, but much more seriously life changing problems. But so what? Anyone that complains about a movie that is unrealistic--but thinks Kill Bill is great art--has some other problems to confront. This is a movie that you can laugh at, enjoy, and not be ashamed to have shown your kids. Can You Believe Everything You Receive in Email? Harold Brashears, one of my loyal readers, points out: A lot of email seems to be appearing lately claiming something like, they are a "Life Long Republican," and usually then goes on to note they are a big a big admirer or Rush Limbaugh or they voted for Bush.Hmmm. Just like Moby was saying a few days ago was how he and other liberals intended to win the election for the Democrat. Unique Uses for Human Remains I've heard of cremated human remains being used in the making of pottery. Planetary geologist Eugene Shoemaker's ashes were carried by the Lunar Prospector spacecraft to the Moon. Here's a new variation on the theme: The widow of an expert on vintage shotguns had her husband's ashes loaded into cartridges and used by friends for the last shoot of the season. Oil Prices and the Strategic Petroleum Reserve This article from the Financial Times quotes two Senators complaining that the Bush Administration is driving up oil prices by continuing to fill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve: Carl Levin, a Democrat from Michigan, and Susan Collins, a Republican from Maine, wrote a letter at the weekend urging Spencer Abraham, the energy secretary, to suspend plans to fill up the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) to "help provide American consumers and businesses with urgently needed relief from near-record high crude oil and energy prices".Interesting point. I can see several possible reasons for this policy. 1. They genuinely see some risk of foreign instability (say, involving overthrow of the Saudi government) putting us at risk of not having a steady supply of incoming oil. 2. They are just being prudent, and filling the SPR. 3. They are terrified of the economy recovering, and putting too many people back to work, perhaps too far before the election. Why Illegal Immigration is So Hard To Stop My mother just forwarded this question to me: MAD COW MIGRATIONThat's because that cow isn't going to be voting Democrat. Integrity in the History Profession No, that's not a very thin book. Ralph Luker has just blogged about the Organization of American Historians response to the recent crises: The print version of February's OAH Newsletter announces the Organization of American Historians official response to the series of scandals that introduced history to the third millennium. My articles, "The Year When We Got Caught" and "Clio's Malpractice; or, What's A Fallen Girl To Do?" suggested that, while 2001 and 2002 were particularly embarrassing years for historians, the scandals had lots of precedents in the last half century and often involved fairly prominent practitioners of the craft. Diamonds Are a Galaxy's Best Friend? A friend pointed me to this amusing news item: Cambridge, MA -- When choosing a Valentine's Day gift for a wife or girlfriend, you can't go wrong with diamonds. If you really want to impress your favorite lady this Valentine's Day, get her the galaxy's largest diamond. But you'd better carry a deep wallet, because this 10 billion trillion trillion carat monster has a cost that's literally astronomical! |
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