Category Archives: Politics

Politics, Science and Edumacation

No to Good Schools

It’s really depressing that school vouchers keep losing. But it’s hardly surprising. They are opposed by one of the wealthiest, most powerful, most shameless, most vicious special interests in the country. God forbid we should quit doing what hasn’t worked for the last thirty fucking years.

Vouchers don’t stand much of a chance in referenda, which is why the teacher’s goonions love to put them up for vote. The reason is that the majority of parents either (a) have access to the good public schools; (b) have the money for private schools and don’t want those nasty poor kids getting in; (c) have the money for private schools but support “the system” out of guilt or misguided ideology; or (d) have neither the time nor the money to get educated about the idea and so listen to whatever lies are being poured into their ears.

The only people who lose here are poor people, poor kids, teachers in inner city schools, principals, the United States, the human race and the planet Earth. But at least the teachers unions get their membership and influence, the Democrats get their campaign donations and rich people keep poor kids out of their schools. So who cares if everyone else gets it in the ear?

Me? Next time I give to charity, I’m going to find one that provides scholarships for poor kids.

Politics

One Year From Now

1 Comment

Well, I guess I’ll play pundit today – not that I’m ever a model of restraint with my self-important opinions. But let’s look ahead to the 2008 election. I’ll only stick to the candidates who have a chance in hell. It’s a pity, since I like Bill Richardson and Ron Paul. But this is punditry cum prediction.

  • Hillary: If she can use one name, I can. She seems inevitable. But so did Musky. I can’t stand her and I’m relieved that the real Hillary – brutal, manipulative, cynical and arrogant – is coming out. I just don’t think enough people are paying attention and will vote for her just for the thrill of having the first woman president.
  • Barack Obama: I like him, which is not necessarily a good thing. The best thing about Barack, as said by Sullivan, is that his election would finish the Baby Boomers once and for all as a political force. A lot of people are writing him off. But think about it. At this point in 2003, who knew who John Kerry was? (Actually, at this point in 2004, who knew who John Kerry was?). People like Barack; they don’t like Hillary.
  • John Edwards: The only other viable Democrat. I’m well know for loathing the Fetus Whisperer. He hasn’t got a chance. Thankfully. I suppose it’s remotely possible he could pull of a Kerry – he’s got all that lawyer money. But don’t bet on it.
  • John McCain: I disagree with him on a lot of issues, but he would repair our image aboard, end torture and continue the fight in the War on Terror. He’s also a true conservative and a good man – which is why he has no chance.
  • Mitt Romney: Peaked early and his flip-flopping is hurting him. Good. He’s too oily for me.
  • Rudy Giuliani: As time goes on, he is being revealed for the power-hungry asshole that he is. Right now, he’s the front-runner. But I can’t think that anyone so nasty can get the nomination.
  • Mike Huckabee: I can’t stand him. He’s a radical religious right, nanny-state, big government “conservative” who will basically offer us four more years of Bush. I’m going out on a limb here — I think he gets the nomination. Yeah, I said it. The religious right loves him. The Fair Tax Movementarians like him. He’s a dreadful candidate and will get slaughtered by just about any Democrat. But he will get the nomination.
  • Fred Thompson: I’m liking him more and more. He’s one of the few mainstream candidates who seems to give a shit about the Constitution. I don’t think he’ll get the nomination – he lacks the oomph and the religious right is likely to bail since he won’t support the marriage ammendment, won’t outlaw abortion and has a young pretty wife.

    • If I had to pick now, I’d say that Hillary beats Huckabee a year from now. But Obama has a chance – if he plays his cards right. My preference? In order, I’d say Thompson, McCain, Romney, Obama, third party candidate, Huckabee, Clinton, Edwards, Giuliani. Yes, I would probably support Hillary over Giuliani. I never, in a million years, thought I’d type those words. Both are nasty individuals who would happily destroy the Constitution to empower themselves. But at least with Hillary, the Republicans might oppose it.

    If this were 2000 or even 2004, I would support Giuliani over Hillary. But Rudy is the last thing we need after the damage Bush has done to our political system.

    Law and Order, Politics, Science and Edumacation, War on Terror

    Monday Linkorama

  • I’m a big supporter of free speech in academia and I oppose the flag-burning ammendment. Still. What an asshole.
  • I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the biggest impediment to global warming being taken seriously is the tendency for supporters to link everything to it, including Darfur, for some reason.
  • Simulated drowning isn’t torture? Well, maybe half-drowning is.
  • John Ashcroft makes the case that the phone companies should not be sued for complying with government surveillance demands.

    Longstanding principles of law hold that an American corporation is entitled to rely on assurances of legality from officials responsible for government activities. The public officials in question might be right or wrong about the advisability or legality of what they are doing, but it is their responsibility, not the company’s, to deal with the consequences if they are wrong.

    To deny immunity under these circumstances would be extraordinarily unfair to any cooperating carriers. By what principle of justice should anyone face potentially ruinous liability for cooperating with intelligence activities that are authorized by the president and whose legality has been reviewed and approved by our most senior legal officials?

    He makes a good case. (Hat Tip: Overlawyered.com, which is rapidly becoming one of my favorite all-purpose blogs.)

  • Balko on California’s attempt at criminal justice reform. I’ve moved quite a bit on this issue. I used to be more in the “hang ’em all, let God sort ’em out” camp. I’m still very much a law-and-order type who thinks some criminals should be tossed in prison for the rest of their lives. But I’m getting more and more leary of the “tough-guy” attitudes.
    • 'Culture', Law and Order, Politics, Sports, War on Terror

    Friday Nights Linksorama

  • Nice work, if you can get it. Wish I could get paid half a billion dollars for shuffling papers.
  • An Islamic cleric explains how to beat your wife. I was actually expecting something much worse. He regards women as children, which is an improvement, I guess, over regarding them as animals. The scary thing is, he’s a liberal by Middle Eastern standards.
  • Ah, cat butter. The salad days are over for Mac users.
  • At last they find a way to honor John Jordan O’Neill. Fantastic.
  • Megan McCardle on the importance of failure. As a scientist, I can tell you that an experiment that works precisely as planned tells you nothing.

    Failure, to put it bluntly, works. Failure is nature’s way of telling you “Hey, that doesn’t work!” The American economy is vastly strengthened by the fact that companies are allowed to fail–and also by the fact that our crazy culture encourages us to try things that don’t work.

    In the first few iterations, this often looks inferior to a centralized system. Look, the critics say, they sat down and planned it all! Compare that to our messy, fragmented market where half the stuff doesn’t work!

    It can take a decade or more before the cracks in the planning appear. The planners, it turns out, didn’t foresee that the world would change, and now the giant, planned system can’t cope.

    Speak it, sister.

    • Politics

    Bias

    An interesting study from Journalism.org on media bias. It tracks postive and negative coverage of Presidential candidates. There is nothing surprising here and nothing that will make the libs shut up about Fox news. But for the record:

  • They find newspapers are heavily biased toward Democrats. No surprises here. I’ve made a recurrring feature on how the NYT editorial page is basically a faxed-in Democrat party platform.
  • A fairly large bias on ABC/CBS/NBC toward Democrats. PBS tends to be negative on everyone.
  • Cable news is far more balanced. CNN and MSNBC have an anti-Republican title, FOX has a pro-Republican tilt.
  • Interestingly, conservative talk radio is more balanced than liberal, although both are very partisan. I have no problem with this — talk radio is opinion not news. Conservative talk radio is generally far more positive on Republicans and more negative on Democrats. But liberal talk radio, with the exception of Hillary, is incredibly partisan. Again, to be fair, this reflects more of conservative disaffection for the current GOP crop. And before Neal Boortz and Rush Limbaugh say, “See! It’s fair! Equal bias!” conservative talk radio has three times as much airtime as liberal radio.
  • It comes as no surprise to me that NPR is fairly partisan Democrat.

    • So, the liberal can scream about Fox News and talk radio and have the facts on their side. But they need to at least acknowledge that ABC, NBC, CBS, NPR, PBS, CNN, MSNBC and every newspaper is biased left. Why can’t they just admit this? Why does “bias” only exist when it’s conservative bias?

    Oh, I keep forgetting. Because Democrats are always right. The reason there is much more positive coverage of Dems than the GOP is because the Dems are so superior. Why, it shows incredible conservative bias that the tilt is 100% toward Democrats!

    Culture War, Politics, Taxes and Spending, The Nanny State

    Wednesday Night Linkorama

  • Fred Phelps and his gang of assholes have been fined $11 million for their protests at military funerals. And before anyone screams “free speech”, the court decision was that this is a private event. The First Ammendment does not give you the right to bust into people’s funerals and scream at them.
  • Read about Karen Tandy, the outgoing Nanny in Charge of Drugs. Ugh.
  • The Democrats tax and spend and tax and spend. If only we had a conservative option.
    • Politics

    No New Taxes

    Looks like the internet tax ban is going to stay. This is good. Cato has been particularly informative about how putting sales taxes on internet sales will be crippling to start-ups, who would have to write six millions checks a year to every country, city, municipality and state in which someone bought their products.

    The answer to internet taxation, by the way, has been obvious for years. Require every internet company to declare a “home state” and have them charge sales tax based on where they reside. Best thing: it will create tax competition between states.

    Politics, Science and Edumacation

    Vouchers

    I’ve just discovered Megan McArdle’s excellent blog. Today has a fantastic post on school vouchers, where she takes apart the arguments of the opponents.

    My favorite:

    5) Vouchers destroy the public school system So? Having a public school system seems like a dumb goal to me, but even assuming that the very existence of such a system is somehow a worthy thing to aim for, surely it’s achievement should be a second-order priority. The primary goal, it seems to me, should be educating America’s children to reach their fullest potential; after that goal has been achieved, we can turn our attention to things like having teacher’s unions and public schools.

    Read the whole thing. I’m not completely sold on vouchers since I worry about creeping government control. I would prefer to start with simple school choice. But vouchers would certaintly be an improvement over what we have now.

    Culture War, Politics, The Nanny State

    Dead Potheads

    Just another dead pothead:

    Robin Prosser, a Missoula woman who struggled for a quarter century to live with the pain of an immunosuppressive disorder, tried years ago to kill herself. Last week, she tried again. This time, she succeeded.

    After her earlier attempt failed, Prosser wound up in even more trouble after investigating police found marijuana in her home. She used the marijuana to help cope with pain.

    That marijuana charge was eventually dropped in an agreement with the city of Missoula, and Prosser had reason to rejoice in 2004 when Montanans passed a law allowing medical use of the drug.

    She was a high-profile campaigner for the Montana Medical Marijuana Act, and like others, she was dismayed when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that drug agents could still arrest sick people using marijuana, even in states that legalized its use.

    The ruling came to haunt Prosser in late March, when DEA agents seized less than a half ounce of marijuana sent to her by her registered caregiver in Flathead County.

    At the time, the DEA special agent in charge of the Rocky Mountain Field Division said federal agents were “protecting people from their own state laws” by seizing such shipments.

    Another casualty in the War on the Sick. George Bush, Alberto Gonzalez, John Ashcroft, John Paul Stevens, Anthony Kennedy, David Souter, Ruth Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Antonin Scalia – there is blood on your hands, you puritanical Constitution-raping assholes.

    Politics

    Jena

    Craig Franklin’s rather idealistic portrayal of Jena has been making the conservative rounds. Radley Balko responds:

    As recently as the early 1990s, LaSalle Parish (where Jena is located) voted for white supremacist and former Klan leader David Duke by a two-to-one margin. In fact, they gave him that margin twice—for governor, and for U.S. Senator. In 1996, the parish again gave Duke the majority of its votes for U.S. Senator.