Category: Uncategorized

I like focusing on good things that are happening in the world today, but I have to be honest about concerning things that are going as well. Here are a few of the latest, involving feeding the homeless, spying drones, and drug-resistant diseases:

Continue reading Reasons For Pessimism

It has been exactly one year since my first postlibertarian blog post: “What Is A Postlibertarian?” I have been blogging on and off about politics and economics since I was in high school, but on this new blog I applied the latest things I had learned about writing, marketing, SEO, and networking, turning this into my most successful blog yet. In my first year I published 145 posts and acquired 38,166 hits and 156 comments. (Actually, 1 of those posts and 105 of those hits belong to the honorable Nick Sacco.)

The posts with the most pageviews are on the sidebar, but I wanted to highlight a few of my favorite posts that haven’t gotten as much attention:

Continue reading One Year of PL Blogging!

It’s been a few months since I blogged about a crazy conservative email, but I got one this morning that was just too much to pass up. It’s from AmeriPAC, with a classic subject line of “Obama Threatens Supreme Court Again.” Inside, we learn the following:

President Barack Obama has again threatened the Supreme Court over ObamaCare – this time indicating that if the Court does not rule his way, he will take his revenge on senior citizens by destroying Medicare.

That paragraph is followed by some purported evidence that “Medicare will face disruption and ‘Chaos'” if ObamaCare is overruled. Oh no! If the Supreme Court overturns a big socialist government health program, Obama is going to destroy another big socialist government health program!

Wouldn’t that be a 2-for-1? Shouldn’t anti-socialists be rejoicing?

I know, the GOP has had trouble meshing their newfound love for fiscal responsibility with their old support for the biggest government program for their biggest demographic (seniors), but I still think it’s funny when they make the irony so raw and obvious.

Ah, but it gets better! (You didn’t think I would mock this email if it only contained one bit of silliness, did you?) Farther on we read about the real scary future about Obama and the Supreme Court:

Continue reading Obama The Socialist Will Destroy Socialist Programs!

When I first started learning about Ron Paul and economics and the wonderful world of the anti-establishment, I also stumbled onto those interesting ideas about 9/11. I hoped these ideas would have died down by now, but I’ve seen them creeping up again recently in multiple places. It appears that the Internet will keep these theories alive forever, so I thought it worthwhile to offer my explanation of why I’m not a 9/11 Truther, and why it has very little to do with analyzing the “facts.”

Continue reading Why I’m Not A 9/11 Truther: The Incompetence Argument

I’ve published some updates to my 2012 GOP Candidate guide to demote some candidates who are gone, insert a candidate who had been neglected, and update a lot of text to reflect more recent developments in the race. (I also added some interesting data I came across regarding the estimated value of each candidate’s home.)

In regular news, there have been some developments against SOPA and PIPA in recent days. Ars Technica does a good job summing the backpedaling that has emerged thanks to the clamoring calls of opposition from the tech community over the last few weeks. We also have more people joining the SOPA fight, a strange response from a Senator’s staffer (but proof that the opposition calls are working), and an interesting response from the White House. (Thanks to the misnamed “Hacker News” for the hat tip on all four of these links.)

In meta news, I’ve been chatting with Simon over on Classical Values about the possibility of doing a guest post responding to his position that closing our military bases around the world would create a dangerous power vacuum. We both have things that we like and dislike about Ron Paul’s policies, but Paul’s desire to bring our troops home from around the world has always been something that made sense to me, while admittedly not being very familiar with the “power vacuum” position. So I’m doing a little research and will hopefully find some time to express why I’m not afraid that the world would become a more dangerous place if we brought all our troops home, or at least offer the best reasons I can give that I don’t think I need to be afraid –  and give Simon, who seems to have more experience and knowledge on this issue, a chance to shoot them all down 🙂 Hopefully by putting this on a public blog post I will solidify my commitment to get such a post written in the near future. (And assuming I do so, I will either link to it from here, or if the guest post thing doesn’t work out, just post it here.)

It’s time for another Friday edition of “Thank Government For Something.” Last month my wife and I spent a lot of time on interstate highways on our way to and from visiting Great Smoky Mountains National Park (and National Parks are something else I thank the government for). The Interstate Highway System was authorized by Congress by the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956, and while it certainly has its flaws, I am very thankful for its existence. The interstate provides a relatively low cost to traveling across our giant country, which increases mobility and opportunity for individuals, and trade and commerce between the states. Now there may be issues with the large costs of maintaining these highways and the incessant need for construction projects, and we have a growing road tax problem, but overall I think our transportation infrastructure is a public good.

Continue reading Thank Government For Something: Interstate Highway System

Somehow I’ve gotten myself on a conservative mailing list called the Townhall Spotlight. Their mailings tend to be a little too confident and arrogant for my tastes but I’ve never unsubscribed because it’s kinda fun sometimes to see what theyre up to. Yesterday I got an apocalyptic message from them titled “2012: Horrific Predictions,” and it lays it on pretty thick:

Continue reading Townhall Spotlight: 2012 Horrific Predictions…

Conservatives love guns. And I don’t mean that in a “I’ve-got-a-small-firearm-locked-in-my-closet-in-case-a-gangster-breaks-into-my-suburban-house” kind of way. I mean it in a “I’ve-got-five-pistols-and-eight-rifles-in-my-basement-next-to-the-freezer-holding-seven-hundred-pounds-of-buffalo-that-my-wife-and-I-brought-down-last-weekend” kind of way. If you’re going to understand conservatives, this is the most important lesson in the world.

Continue reading Things Conservatives Like #1: Guns

Previously on Thank Government For Something, I considered the value of the National Weather Service. Here is another edition in that series…

Earlier this week we watched a DVD about some of America’s National Parks, highlighting the variety and beauty of the protected lands across the United States. I thought this made a great candidate for another T.G.I.F, I mean, T.G.F.S. (Thank Government For Something.)

The National Park system of the United States has an interesting history. In 1832, “Andrew Jackson signed legislation” to partially protect what later became Hot Springs National Park. In 1864, Lincoln signed legislation that gave the future site of Yosemite National Park to the state of California. Yellowstone was the first true National Park created in 1872, partially as a chance consequence of local political structure; unlike California with Yosemite in the previous decade, the land of Yellowstone was not yet part of a state but was still a federal territory, “so the federal government took on direct responsibility for the park.” Yellowstone is apparently considered the first national park in the world, and it inspired many other countries to do the same in the following decades. (What? You mean back in the day the American conservation movement was a trend-setter for Europe? Yep. But the difference between conservationism and environmentalism is a whole ‘nother topic.) Today the United States has 58 national parks covering mountains, deserts, forests, lakes, and other varieties of gorgeous natural phenomena.

Continue reading Thank Government For Something: National Parks

T.G.I.F. Thank God It’s Friday – or if you prefer the secularized version, Thank Goodness It’s Friday! But what about… Thank Government? It’s always fun to rant and rave about ridiculous government spending or frustrating government regulation, but I thought it might be appropriate to spend some time every now and then thanking the government for something good that it does. So I’m kicking off a new (possibly weekly) category called T.G.F.S: Thank Government For Something. And today, with Hurricane Irene skirting up the East Cost, I’m thanking government for the National Weather Service.

The National Weather Service is a subset of the United States government that gathers and disseminates information about weather all over the country. It is now considered part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, but according to Wikipedia the NWS has been around for 100 years longer – since 1870. From snowstorms to tornadoes to floods to hurricanes, they track everything that’s going on and issue warnings to citizens about dangerous weather. The best part has to do with how well they’ve made the transition to the digital age – all of their data is publicly available at what I consider to be one of the most important, if not one of the prettiest, websites in the world: www.weather.gov.

Right now they’re featuring all kinds of links to maps and information about Hurricane Irene, but the information extends far beyond that. In the water section you can find up-to-date information about gauge levels across hundreds of rivers, as well as historical information for every one of those gauges. You can find a decade’s worth of tornado and severe weather data broken down by state (although it’s easier to find the section by googling “tornado statistics” than by clicking around NWS’s imperfect navigation). And there are hoards of other kinds of information there available as well. From satellites to ocean buoys to Doppler weather radar systems, this government service provides an incredibly valuable amount of information about weather every single day.

Markets, and societies in general, require the flow of information to function properly. Individual citizens do not have the resources to personally track past, present, and (possible) future weather, but having access to that vast body of knowledge enables them to make much better (and safer!) decisions that lead to a much better society. Government has the necessary resources to be able to gather all of that information, and I don’t know that such reliable and comprehensive information could be trusted to come from the private sector. Sure, The Weather Channel’s weather.com is full of hurricane information, too, but would The Weather Channel have placed river gauges all along the Mississippi River to help track flooding if the government hadn’t, and also made that treasure trove of information freely available to the public? Would their meteorologists be able to tell us all about the latest wind speeds and millibars of pressure coming from Hurricane Irene without the National Weather Service’s investments? I’m not sure, but I doubt it.

When I read a book about Hurricane Katrina a couple of years ago, I remember recognizing a sharp contrast in some of the things that the government did. When it came to gathering and disseminating raw information about the hurricane’s size, shape, and location, the government did a fantastic job. When it came to figuring out how to distribute resources among the people who truly needed it vs. the people who just took advantage of it… eh, not so much. Local charities and organizations were much more effective (well, when FEMA wasn’t actively preventing them.) In both situations the effectiveness was a result of the flow of information. Local people had better information about the needs of other people close to them than a far-away government did – but the government was able to gather much better information about the hurricane than anyone in Louisiana could have on their own.

I think economists would call the information gathered by the National Weather Service a “public good.” It is something that each citizen can enjoy the benefits of without taking away from the benefits of another citizen (unlike, say, a dollar from FEMA, which if it goes to one victim can’t also go to another victim). If the population of the United States doubles, it doesn’t cost any more money to gather information about hurricanes and tornadoes and provide it to citizens than it did before, so we’re in fact getting more value out of our relatively cheap investment in the National Weather Service all the time.

This is not to say that there may not be inefficiencies or bloated pensions or any number of improvable aspects in the NWS, but I think it still provides us a very positive value by its overall existence, unlike many government agencies and programs that have a negative value that is constantly getting worse. There are some good-intentioned conservatives now trying to say that we don’t need the National Weather Service, but I don’t think they understand how much data the private weather stations get from them, and I’m not sure they understand what a public good is.

So, thank you, National Weather Service, for helping us stay informed about the weather. Information is a valuable thing. Thank Government For Something!