Re: TownHall.com – 3/10/2008 – “Secession? Yes. From Those Who Would Destroy America” – Douglas MacKinnon

I believe that no agreement requested by any territory and agreed to by Congress while granting that territory statehood may override the Constitution. If, as MacKinnon claims, Montana believes it got assurances from the Feds that as a condition of its statehood it got the right to interpret the meaning of the 2^nd Amendment in place of the Supreme Court, then I say Montana has a very confused appreciation of the process of granting statehood and the legal powers of Federal Government under the Constitution.

I believe that MacKinnon’s lack of respect of everyone who disagrees with him says a lot more about MacKinnon than it says about those who disagree with him.

I believe that if MacKennon wants to secede from the union, he should feel free to do so. Just have him leave Montana behind for those of us who love and respect our Constitution.

Re: TownHall.com – 3/8/2008 – “On Those Oil Profits” – Robert Murphy

Murphy says of raising oil company taxes “it won’t provide meaningful relief revenue, but will certainly raise the price at the pump”. Duh … that’s exactly why taxes on the oil companies should be raised! As prices go up, demand goes down. And most of our current economic problems, excluding our current credit crisis, rise from our inefficient use of petroleum based fuels, especially foreign oil. Oil will not be used efficiently unless it is expensive --- our domestic oil consumption problem is not that oil is too expensive but that it is too cheap. If oil was more expensive we’d use much less of it. Clearly, too high taxes on oil companies can have extremely unfortunate consequences. But tax levels in Europe indicate that there’s a lot of tax revenue available in oil pricing that we could extract without damaging either our economy or the oil companies.

Although some people want to “punish” the oil industry for their success, I am not one of those people. I’d be perfectly happy to redirect the revenue back into the energy industry for research and development in oil extraction and refining efficiency and alternate energy development. Some might claim that government actions encouraging reinvestment in one area instead of another by tax policy is unwise. But we do it all the time, especially for the oil extraction industry, as with depletion deductions. There was a time where expediting the finding and extraction of oil reserves made really good economic sense --- the amount of undiscovered and undeveloped oil sources was huge compared to available supply and demand. But times have changed. There’s much less undiscovered and undeveloped sources of oil now (the undiscovered oil that were there before, less the oil we have discovered and developed since then) and demand in not only much larger, but still growing at a fanatic pace. Perhaps the time has come where more oil can be made available by increasing efficiency (using 1 barrel to do the work of 2 in effect is the same as finding an extra barrel of oil) and where other energy sources are price competitive with oil. Our tax policy should reflect this current situation (or probable future situation) rather than the situation 50 years ago.

Re: TownHall.com – 3/6/2008 – “Listen Up: Should the Telecoms be Punished for Helping Protect You from Terrorists” – Cliff May

What a dumb question. Of course the Telecoms should not be punished for helping to protect us all from terrorists. But they should be punished for breaking the law, just like any other lawbreaker should.

I find it ironic that the president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies has so little faith in that which he purports to defend that he thinks that democracies can be defended only by violating the rule of law. 

Am I accusing him of being a fear-monger? Not at all. I just question the strength of his faith in democracy.

Re” RownHall.com – 3/6/2008 – “Judging Gun Rights: Are They Inalienable?” – Ken Blackwell

Blackwell and Froman greatly oversimplify the legal issues involved here. The Supreme Court has many options including:

(1) Completely ignore the “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state” prefix to the 2^nd Amendment, the specific provisions of control of the militia in the Constitution itself, the discussions in the Federalist Papers on the militia, and the noticeable scarcity of constitutional-era writing relating the 2^nd amendment to issues other than the militia and conclude that the 2^nd Amendment was a fundamental (rather than derived) individual right reserved to the people individually and that any regulation of arms violates the 2^nd Amendment. Under such an interpretation, the statement “The government has the power to regulate X”, where X is a weapon, is false, even if X = “atomic bomb”.

(2) Hold that firearms are beyond regulation but that ammunition is not, and that requiring guns to be kept and carried unloaded was not unconstitutional --- even strict constructionalist justices could (but probably would not) claim that if the Founding Fathers wanted ammo to be a protected right, they would have said “the right of the people to keep and bear arms and ammunition” or “the right of the people to keep and bear loaded arms” instead.

(3) Hold that the 2^nd Amendment refers to the rights of individuals but that reasonable regulation on firearms (and imposition of sale and property taxes on firearms) need not be construed as infringing on the “right of the people to keep and bear arms”.

(4) Hold that the Founding Fathers used “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state” prefix to the 2^nd Amendment because they saw the right to keep and bear arms as a derived right (as opposed to such fundamental rights as religion, speech, press, association, and petition), and that in a conflict between firearm regulation and other more fundamental individual rights or government responsibilities under the Constitution, those other rights and/or responsibilities, being more fundamental, should take precedence. Only lacking such a conflict would the 2^nd Amendment holds absolutely.

The Supreme Court, based 2^nd Amendment interpretations #2, #3, or #4 presented above could conclude that the D.C. law as unreasonable regulation (which is what it sounds like to me) and is unconstitutional under the 2^nd Amendment on that ground.

The Blackwell and Froman understanding of strict vs living constructionalism is oversimplified as well. The words of the Constitution are not completely unambiguous. As one example, Article II Section 2 #1 makes the President “commander in chief of the army and navy” while Article I Section 8 #12-14 gives Congress the power to raise, support, provide, maintain, and regulate the army/land and naval forces. Notice that these two constitute two of our armed services; noticeably missing are the marines and the air force, not to mention the coast guard. Strictly constructed, the Constitution might justify the marines (surely we could fit it in somewhere as a land force) and the coast guard (as a naval force). To justify the air force, however, strict constructionalists must argue that the army and navy (or land and naval) forces were meant be taken together to mean the armed forces and not the army/land or naval forces separately, and thus the Founding Fathers actually intended to include all future armed forces beyond land and sea including air, outer space, cyberspace, etc. Another good example of constitutional ambiguity is the 2^nd Amendment. To me, it looks like a sentence in the form “X is true, therefore Y is true” where X = “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state” and Y = “the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed”. I find it hard to imagine what other purpose the “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state” serves in the 2^nd Amendment, and I must conclude on linguistic grounds that strict 2^nd Amendment supporters have no viable alternate explanation. And in logic, X→Y says absolutely nothing about Y when X is NOT true.

From a practical (but not a legal) stance, I see the right of keeping and bearing of arms subject to reasonable regulation dependent on context --- that is, arms for protecting home from forcible invasion, livestock from predators, crops from grazers, and arms for hunt in areas so designated, etc, should be much less regulated than bearing arms on city streets, in schools, national parks closed to hunting, etc.

I am a firm believer where ever and no matter what regulation, keepers and bearers of arms be subject to the strictest liability for any harm arising our of their keeping or bearing arms, regardless if the harm came from accident or design --- the act of bearing arms implies the bearers understand and assume all risk for their choice of bearing arms.

Re: TownHall.com – 2/29/2008 – “The Freedom to Lobby” – Charles Krauthammer

The real problem with lobbying is not with the concept of lobbying itself, nor with the content of the proposals that get lobbied, but with some of the tactics that are used in lobbying.

It’s hard to argue constitutional law against the right to lobby.

But the way in which lobbying can be carried out is not protected in the Constitution. Certainly anyone is free to petition Congress to remove a President from office by impeachment. But the act of physically attacking the President as a symbolic gesture to Congress of your displeasure with the President is not protected under the right to petition. Clearly Congress has the right (and duty) to define reasonable limits on the methods of lobbyists, namely to restrict lobbying methods that otherwise violate laws implemented under Congress’ enumerated powers.

It’s not that lobbying is a notch below waterboarding. Lobbying, like intelligence gathering, is legal and necessary. But waterboarding is not intelligence gathering but a method of intelligence gathering. One may argue convincingly that waterboarding ought to be an illegal method of gathering intelligence and one would have little ground to stand on to claim that waterboarding is a Constitutionally protected method of information gathering since Congress has the authority to regulate methods of intelligence gathering under Article 1, Section 8 #14 and thus may regulate wateerboarding out of existence if it so chooses.

No, the problem with lobbying is some of the methods of lobbying are a notch below waterboarding, and Congress has both the right and duty to see that such methods of lobbying are illegal.

Re: TownHall.com – 3/19/2008 – “Forget about revisionist history; lets finish the job” – Douglas MacKinnon

Now that Iraq has no weapons of mass destruction and no Saddam Hussein, just what of the original job is left? Perhaps to force a form of government we like down the throats of the Iraqis that the Iraqis clearly refuse to rally around. Perhaps the only way to finish the job we set out to do is to get out of the way of the Iraqi people and let them form whatever form of government they wish.

Re: TownHall.com – 3/7/2008 – “A Looming Congressional Threat to Small Businesses” – Paul Weyrich

Weyrich says “The bill would create a government-sponsored website which would allow people anonymously to smear companies” He obviously distrusts the objectivity of the government and the people. Weyrich also says “The measure would create a new tool for State Attorneys General antagonistic toward business to harass companies”. He also apparently distrusts the states. Just who does he trust? Apparently he trusts the unfortunate small businesses who “unknowingly [sell] a dangerous product”, and whose ignorance should obviously protect them from legal responsibility for the safety of the products they sell.

Weyrich says “Currently a business only has to comply with one set of laws and regulations, that of CPSC. This law would allow each state the opportunity to set up its own consumer product regulations. Potentially a company could be forced to comply with fifty different sets of rules and regulations”. Whatever happened to states rights? I wonder what Weyrich would say on issues where the states are friendlier to businesses than the Feds?

Does Weyrich really believe that everyone who might possibly find fault with business is obviously too biased to be trusted and must be restricted by law from acing on their biases, all in order to protect businesses when they fail in their responsibility to act responsibly. 

Re: TownHall.com – 3/21/2008 – “10 Of The Greatest Pieces Of Conservative Wisdom” – John Hawkins

Hawkins seems to think that conservatism’s principles are necessary and sufficient to solve any political, economic, and social problems, and any principles not associated with conservatism (especially liberal principles) are unnecessary and even counterproductive.

Ignoring for a fact that there may be principles outside of liberalism and conservatism that are useful, there is still an alternative (centralism) that recognizes that neither conservative nor liberal principles apply neither everywhere nor nowhere, and that real problems require both liberal and conservative principles in their solution.

Articles like Hawkins’ and liberal writings of the same slant sound to me like that beer ad that promises you the ability to talk to animals, and then all your dog has to say is “Sausages! Sausages! Sausages! …”. Like what’s the solution to war, poverty, immorality, disease, the square root of 27? Conservative principles! Conservative principles! Conservative principles! Conservative principles! Conservative principles?

Get real. Be smarter than your dog. The same answer to every question is bound to be a stupid answer.

Re: TownHall.com – 2/20/2008 – “Costs vs. Benefits” – Walter E Williams

While agree 100% with Williams’ basic premise on cost vs. benefits, I disagree strongly with the cost/benefit analyses he presents.

William’s first serious mistake is that he sees costs in a very limited way. He thinks that the “costs” of 9/11 were the “value” of lives and property lost. Unfortunately that vastly underestimates the true costs of 9/11. The major costs of 9/11 were the “value” of the fear it instilled in us. As a direct result of 9/11 fear we engaged in an expensive war in Afghanistan and then as an indirect result a war in Iraq, with a loss of life and an expenditure of financial resources far in excess of the physical damage to a few blocks of NYC and Washington DC real estate. We increased expenditures on anti-terrorism measures including airport security and the creation of a top-level bureaucracy to oversee the operation of a bunch of existing federal agencies. The transportation industry, especially the airlines, was devastated by potential travelers’ fear of terrorism. And under the fear of terrorism, we allowed infringements on our personal liberties that we would never have allowed without 9/11.

Williams’ thoughts on organ transplant, if serious, are misguided. Using the same reasoning, he should support legalization of prostitution --- after all, isn’t the prohibition of prostitution just an infringement of the right to lease your body parts for financial gain? Williams also seems to miss the fact that controlling the supply of body parts for transplants is the best (and perhaps only) way to fight criminal harvesting of body parts from unwilling donors. I guess Williams just isn’t tough enough on crime.

Re: TownHall.com – 2/18/2008 – “Judges hold no rank in the chain of military command” – Phyllis Schlafly

The fact that no (or few) Supreme Court justices have military experience is just as immaterial as the fact that no one in the military command has experience as a Supreme Court justice.

Constitutionally, the Supreme Court is not in the military chain of command, but sits along side of Congress, both of whom have significant military authority.

The President has the somewhat ambiguous role of “commander in chief of the army and navy” [Article III Section 2 # 1] and presumably of the marines and air force --- although strict Constitutionalists might want to argue that if the Founding Fathers wanted the President to be commander in chief of the air force they would have said so. Anyone believing in limited powers of government understands the roles of chief executive and commander in chief to be limited to by the laws of Congress within the constraints of our Constitution.

Congress has several military roles under the Constitution: (1) “To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water” [Article I Section 8 #11]; (2) “To raise and support armies” [Article I Section 8 #12]; (3) “To provide and maintain a navy” [Article I Section 8 #13]; and especially (4) “To make rules for the government and regulations of the land and naval forces” [Article I Section 8 #14]. Anyone believing in limited powers of government understands that Congress’ power is limited to these enumerated powers granted to it and by the powers explicitly excluded from it by the Constitution.

According to our Constitution, “The judicial power shall extend to all cases in law and equity, arising under this Constitution, and the laws of the United States, and all treaties made, or shall be made, under their authority” [Article III Section 2 #1]. That means if someone sues the government over the validity of a military regulation, the Court has final say. If, in the Court’s opinion, the regulation violates existing law, the regulation becomes unenforceable. If, in the Court’s opinion, the regulation and/or the law that authorizes it violate the Constitution, the regulation and/or the law becomes unenforceable. Final say on such issues is not decided by supporters of either side of the issues but by the Court. You don’t have to like the Court’s decisions and you don’t have to like the way the Constitution provides for making such decisions, but it is the undeniable conclusion of the spirit and the letter of the law that the Court has the right and duty to make such decisions. For those of you who feel that the final authority on what the Constitution says is the chief executive, you are supporting a form of government that has a name of its own --- a dictatorship.

What is Schlafly asking for?

She is asking that the military should decide what is necessary for it to do to protect us. That’s like saying the economy is best left to the experts (the professional economists). She seems to say that if the military wants to test how a new weapon will effect people, it can just go about in secret doing so on people who are given no choice but to participate in the test whether they know about it or not. Given unlimited authority to decide what is necessary, the military (like any other organization or individual) will confuse necessity with convenient without giving adequate consideration to others. The military, in times of emergency, should be given some leeway and the benefit of doubt, but that limit must be set by Congress and the Constitution, as interpreted by the Court, and not by the military or its commander in chief.

Schlafly asks “What if a federal judge had ordered President Harry S. Truman not to drop the atom bomb on Japan because of its environmental impact”. First of all, during WW-II we were in a declared war with the foreign power we bombed; the seriousness of current sonar testing pales in comparison --- the need to test new sonar now and as proposed is not a “national emergency” --- and during WW-II there was no such environmental law that would have prohibited bombing. So even if a suit were filed no judge would have allowed the suit and even if some judge did issue such an injunction the order would have been overturned immediately by a higher court. Secondly, if a law of Congress made such bombing illegal, hopefully the Court would tell the President to go to Congress and get the law changed, but unless faced with a national emergency, obey the law until it was changed.

Schlafly brings up the issue of a fence across the US/Mexican border. Note that the fence was eventually built because Congress passed a law allowing it to be built without further court interference. Exactly what Congress can do with the sonar test issue if it so chooses --- the courts would certainly uphold such a law and the sonar would get tested legally. As an aside, the pressure against the further extension of the US/Mexican border fence and related security measures across the length of the border is not just from environmentalists but from local land owners who would loose access to the river’s banks and water, and by industrial and agricultural interests who would loose access to Mexican migrant workers and face delays in transportation of materials and products at border crossings.

Schlafly says that “Congress, including many Democrats, has already stripped jurisdiction from federal courts over the detaining of enemy combatants in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba” and “When the Supreme Court found a way to bypass that law, Congress, including many Democrats, passed a new law to reinstate the withdrawal of jurisdiction more broadly, and that law is now before the U.S. Supreme Court”. So far the Court itself has decided how far it will or will not step into the Guantanamo issue. It is unclear that Congress has the power to limit the Court’s authority on this issue since the Court’s power is explicitly provided in the Constitution, and it is only the Court, at their option, who can decide whether or not the military actions at Guantanamo were legal, especially if not explicitly authorized by law. Of course, if Congress changes the law that is not inconsistent with the Constitution, the Court would base its decisions on the new law.

Schlafly says “When the anti-military MoveOn.org published its insulting attack against U.S. Army Gen. David H. Petraeus last fall in the New York Times, the Senate voted 75-25 to condemn that ad. But talk is cheap, and Senate resolutions do not have the force of law.” Great. Schlafly thinks no only should the military be allowed to do anything they want in the name of national security, but that anyone who dares “insult” the military should be subject to the force of law.

Schlafly seems to be saying that the executives who are charged with enforcing the law have the sole right to interpret the law and to decide if their actions are constant with the law, and that anyone who criticizes the persons or actions of the executives should be punished for their criticism. Does Schlafly understand that in so doing she has completely rejected the foundations of American democracy?

Re: TownHall.com – 2/11/2008 – “Hillarycare Is Not the Answer” – Star Parker

Parker asks “Why have health-care costs gone out the roof when the prices of just about everything else have gone down?” and then answers her own question with “Because health care already has become a highly regulated, highly bureaucratized industry”.

But regulation and bureaucracy are only minor components of the rise in health care costs, and the bureaucratic burden is found in the private sector health care insurance industry as well as the government health care payment systems --- bureaucracy arises in a system where a third party payer tries to “simplify” their internal processes without much regard for the other two parties, and the insurance industry as well as government are equally driven in that direction. Speaking as someone who ran finances for my wife’s medical practice, government regulation of insurers (at least to the point of having them all use identical billing procedures) would reduce, not increase, health care costs.

What are the significant cost drivers for health care?

One health care cost driver is the increase in demand for care in our society. That increase in demand is driven by several factors:

(1) Advances in health care allow treatment of health problems that previously remained untreated. Where patients used to just live with their problem untreated or be killed by it, they are now treatable at substantial cost. Where patients used to be a financial burden only to their family (and/or to their employers who lost their productivity), patients’ health care financial burdens are now classified in the health care sector. And the most cost intensive treatments seem to be of health problems where continuing treatment but not cure is possible, and as the suffering patients live longer due to the treatment, the total cost of treatment grows, even if the unit cost of treatment remains constant.

(2) As health care can accomplish more, more people demand the new health care capabilities, some of these (lifestyle treatments such as elective cosmetic surgery and Viagra) having little to do with health.

(3) Shamelessly advertising in a way designed to demand more health care services than health really needs. Inventing new “diseases” that their commercial products can treat and promoting new and “improved” treatments that offer little benefit over older treatments but at much higher cost are two successful techniques that the health care industry uses to jack demand, raising both volume and unit cost simultaneously. Getting the government to mandate and/or finance use of their products is another obvious marketing ploy.

(4) The unhealthy lifestyle our society has adopted leads to the incidence of diseases far sooner and more frequently than they would in a healthier population. Leveraged by health care’s success in prolonging the lives (and thus the treatments) of those with these diseases is a particularly large cost driver factor.

Another health care cost driver is the direction of research and development to develop newer (and more expensive) treatments of problems with already existing reasonable treatments at the expense of investment in cost reduction of current treatments. I believe health care is unique in this respect, with the unit costs of developing and marketing new treatment (especially new drugs and medical devices) so expensive that reducing manufacturing costs has little effect on total costs which to a large extent is the recovery of development and marketing costs.

Parker claims that in the past 45 or so years, per capita health care expenditure has quintupled. Pardon me for my math, but isn’t that about 3.5% per year? How much faster than inflation is that?

Parker is right in pointing out that if free, health care demand can become frivolous and ineffectual. And Parker should add, nearly infinite. But long before government stuck its head into health care, unions demanded for their members and corporations offered their employees employer covered health care payment policies not unlike what government now provides for many people. If Parker wants to blame government for health care coverage induced inefficiencies, she should fault the private sector for inventing and implementing the model government used to form its current system.

Parker is right about Clinton’s health care plan, but for the wrong reasons. Something must be done to provide health care to those who cannot afford it --- without it we will become a nation split between those who have access to health care and those who cannot get it, and therein lay the seeds of workplace inefficiency and perhaps civil unrest. Someone will have to fund that health care and it is unlikely to be funded by those who can’t afford it. Is society really willing to deny emergency health care to those who refuse to pay for it? Clinton’s health care proposal recognizes these problems and tries to do something about them. Unfortunately, her proposed solution is completely unacceptable, not because it involves the government but because it is an absurd plan in its own right and will make the health care problem worse, not better. Parker should admit to the real problem with health care access and that government involvement is a necessary (but not sufficient) component of the solution. Parker should also do more to contribute to that solution. Rejecting HillaryCare is an important first step, but denying the need of government in the solution is a very poor second step indeed.

So what if “generating enough electricity to power NYC requires huge turbines across an area the size of Connecticut, and they only work eight hours a day on average”. The beauty of electrical power is that its use is independent of its source. The same light bulb can be powered by coal generated electricity, hydro generated electricity, nuclear generated electricity, wind generated electricity, or electricity generated by any other means. You add incremental electricity generation capacity by building what is most efficient based on current economics; I can recall periods of incremental electricity generation capacity by coal, nuclear, and most recently, natural gas. Most good hydro cites are long gone, but west coast ocean wave power is now being tested in a few projects. Geothermal has long been used in California and a new facility under the Cascade Mountains in Washington is being considered. Home scale solar hot water heating is already cost efficient for some new home construction, even in such places as western Washington State, about as far north as you can get in the US (further north than Presque Isle ME, Duluth MN, or Fargo ND) and with not much bright sunlight either. And in many places, the most cost efficient way to meet incremental energy needs is to improve energy efficiency. Given a choice, many public utilities would choose to finance additional insulation in residential and commercial buildings if they were allowed to capitalize their investment in energy savings rather than build incremental generating capacity.

No competent scientist thinks fossil fuel produced CO2 is the only or even the largest component in earth’s temperature control system. But fossil fuel produced CO2 is very important never-the-less because all the other components are more or less balanced against one another and controlled by their own natural cycles, while we are generating fossil fuel produced C02 at a monotonically increasing rate that appears to be beyond the capacity of nature to regulate.