Well, the Christmas tree tax sprouted and got chopped down before I had time to blog about it, but I’m going to blog about it today anyway. The audacious folks of Fox News almost certainly had a part in destroying the plan before it started by combining the words “OBAMA and TAX and CHRISTMAS” enough times in enough headlines to scare the Administration off. I have a love-hate relationship with those folks; they spend a lot of time, er, barking up the wrong tree (like complaining about Obama visiting a mosque that George Bush also visited), but when I don’t like the tree I’m glad to have them around doing all that barking, if you take my meaning. Though I sympathize with Cato’s disappointment that the GOP also had hands in the history of this proposal and “certain people saw the ‘Christmas Tree Tax’ as an opportunity to further partisan aims rather than provoke a discussion and debate on the proper role of the federal government.”
A Conservative Reason To Oppose The Drug War (Or, Don’t Track Me, Bro)
Barely more than 24 hours after writing about my opposition to government invasions of privacy, I learned yesterday about a case going before the Supreme Court to determine if police need a warrant to place a GPS tracking device on your car:
Continue reading A Conservative Reason To Oppose The Drug War (Or, Don’t Track Me, Bro)
Are Governments Worse At Projects Than Businesses?
The L. A. Times notes the latest development in the, er, lack of development on California’s high speed rail program:
The bullet trains from Anaheim and Los Angeles to San Francisco will not cost $34 billion as originally estimated, or $43 billion as the authority insisted just two years ago, but closer to $100 billion….
The original system included Sacramento and San Diego. They are not part of this estimate. They will be added in Phase 2, and the authority does not say what Phase 2 will cost. Critics of the plan estimate the total cost at $180 billion.
It’s not at all surprising to read about a government project that is now projected to cost three times its original budget even after removing some of the original goals. Just a few days ago I was reading about NASA’s latest Mars mission being “24% over budget and… by October 2008 MSL was getting closer to a 30% cost overrun…” The CATO Institute has a dutiful article about the infamous history of government projects (though of course they prefer the more politicized phrase “government schemes”), from the Boston “Big Dig” transportation project that ballooned from $2.6 billion to $14.6 billion to a series of defense vehicles that took millions more dollars and several years longer to arrive than originally estimated.
Continue reading Are Governments Worse At Projects Than Businesses?
My New Favorite Analogy For Opposing Privacy Intrusion
I have a new favorite analogy for protesting privacy invasions that are done in the name of security, courtesy of darleen click commenting on a Volokh post about intellectual property:
I have a great way to cut down on undiscovered crime — we all must provide copies of our house keys to our local police departments and never bar them from rummaging through our homes to make sure we are law-abiding.
I mean, if you don’t have anything to hide, why should you object? The local government only has your best interests at heart…
I’ve tried to explain before why I oppose the government reading my emails or patting my genitals under the guise of defending the nation, even if I have nothing to hide. I usually try to explain this position with philosophical ramblings about how a government bureaucrat’s definition of “doing something wrong” may be different from mine, but I don’t know that I always get my point across very well.
Continue reading My New Favorite Analogy For Opposing Privacy Intrusion
Thank Government For Something: Interstate Highway System
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
Safety Creep 2: Anatomy of a Conservative Freakout
Attention, conservatives! The freakout regarding TSA screenings on Tennessee highways has been cancelled! OK, not cancelled, just dialed back a wee bit… According to autos.aol.com, the TSA “came in for just three days – Oct. 18, 19 and 20 – to help the state improve communication between state, federal and local agencies during a crisis. It does not plan to stick around, and won’t be setting up permanent checkpoints in the state…”
Continue reading Safety Creep 2: Anatomy of a Conservative Freakout
Safety Creep: TSA Comes to the Interstate
UPDATE: There is less reason to freak out than previously suspected, although there is still reason to be concerned..
Attention, conservatives! Did you get the latest memo? There’s a new Thing For Conservatives To Be Freaked Out About. The TSA now has checkpoints on Tennessee highways.
Now sometimes conservatives get a little hysterical about all the evil, socialist things that Obama and the government are doing. Remember when the food bill was going to make backyard gardens illegal? Whatever happened to that anyway? But some actions by the government do seem legitimately frightening. (Don’t forget about the Gibson guitar raid.) And with as much reasonableness I can muster, I think this new venture by the TSA is something to be rather concerned about.
Reasons For Optimism 5-6
5. The latest Gallup poll puts public support for legalizing marijuana at 50% for the first time. Regardless of your personal feelings about what people should be allowed to do, I think it’s rather obvious that the “war on drugs” has been very costly yet very unsuccessful. It is very costly to find people with marijuana and catch them and build prisons to put them in and keep them in. The law and its enforcement has not killed the demand for the drug but only sent it to the black market, supporting violent drug cartels. It makes little sense to put people in prison for consuming something that hurts themselves and no others, especially when prisons often merely serve as a network for recruiting and running the drug cartels – creating more problems for law enforcement, not less.
Sooner or later I expect California to be the first state to successfully pass a public resolution to legalize marijuana, and as overall public support continues to increase, I expect an alliance to emerge between varying political factions that will begin to see legalizing marijuana as a silver bullet to decrease budget costs, increase tax revenue, reduce border violence, and more. (Though I also hesitate to express that expectation with too much confidence or put a time interval on it.)
6. One of the leading iPod developers has created a smart thermostat. Technology has been hurtling forward in devices like phones and cars, but the programming in most thermostats is still clunky and hard to use. Tony Fadell has done his part to bring that device into the digital age, and it’s supposed to have Apple-inspired ease of use combined with enough artificial intelligence to save energy – and money – on your air and heating bills. $249 isn’t a bad starting price, and that’s before competition brings it down.
Competition In The Texting Marketplace
I wasn’t as fast as the typical Apple fanboy, but over the weekend I finally upgraded my iPhone 4 to iOS 5.0. Among other things, this means that any text I send to or receive from another iPhone will no longer count towards my $5 limit of 200 texts per month, because Apple will send it as data instead of through AT&T’s texting system. Over 3G the texts will instead count as a little bit of data, and when I’m in wi-fi the texts are now essentially completely free. My economic beliefs have led me to expect this event for several years, and even though it took longer than I expected, and did not take the form I expected, it is finally here. (Aside: I realize Blackberry has had a similar feature for some time, but I never had a Blackberry, and neither did most of my friends. The effects of the marketplace competition have finally reached me.)
The Right To Keep Exotic Animals
It’s not the kind of news story you read every day. “Dozens of exotic animals, including bears, lions, tigers, cheetahs, wolves, giraffes and camels… on the prowl in eastern Ohio…” I found the media’s ubiquitous use of the word “exotic” interesting, as I had always considered the word to have an “unusual” connotation, and I don’t think lions and tigers are all that unusual since pretty much any zoo worth visiting has a few. (Let’s talk about Komodo dragons or a giant squid!) But I suppose it’s pretty unusual for Bengal tigers to be running free around a town like Zanesville, Ohio.
By now we all know the basic facts: 62-year-old Terry Thompson owned a “wild animal farm,” and on Tuesday he apparently set his animals free and killed himself. Local sheriffs and deputies ended up having to kill most of the animals as tranquilizing was not really in the logistics for public safety as nightfall ensued – something that even animal rights activists seem to be conceding, though sadly.