FREE WHITEWATER

Recall

In a gubernatorial recall, winning or losing matters greatly

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Consider the following assessment, from the online Governors Journal and repeated in an editorial from the nearby Janesville Gazette (1.4.12):

Note however, how Governors Journal concluded its story: ‘Even if Walker is removed from office, he still wins the debate. Any setback will be temporary. Pension reforms are a reality.’

Consider that if you’re still contemplating whether to sign a petition.

Well, I have considered that statement, and it’s unpersuasive. (I will leave aside the motivations and nature of Governors Journal, and address only the statement.)

It matters enormously whether Walker wins or loses. There are very few Republicans who think it doesn’t matter, as though victory could be had as well (and more cheaply) with a Walker defeat.

Winning or losing will determine the course of the debate.

If Walker wins, his influence in the GOP will grow; if he loses, he’ll be pushed aside by other national GOP politicians who’ve won their elections (without having been through a recall attempt). Other Republicans won’t defer to Walker, or mimic his approach, if loses in the recall. They’ll push their own ideas, in their own names, to the fore.

It’s also false to think that this recall is simply about pension reform. Like Walker or not, he’s not known principally (and never will be) as a pension reformer — he’s known as someone who took on public employee unions through a reduction in their collective bargaining rights. (Walker denies that they’re collective bargaining rights at all.)

Walker’s program is far greater – whatever one thinks of it — than making public employees pay more toward their pensions. He could have done that through other means, but he chose a particular and far-reaching method. Not all reform programs are identical, or even equally sound.

Walker may win or he may lose, but it makes a difference. Pensions may be reformed, but how that’s done makes a difference.

It’s disingenuous to assert otherwise.

Free Markets, Immigration, Laws/Regulations, Politics

The GOP’s Wrong Turn on Immigration

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Over at National Review, libertarian Daniel Griswold makes the case for liberalized immigration policies, by reminding Republicans that current GOP Candidates Betray the Spirit of Reagan on Immigration.

Commenters at the site will have none of it, and are highly critical of Griswold’s views. Their criticism matters no more than if flat-earthers railed against the idea that the world was a sphere. It is and will remain a globe no matter how much others insist against the fact.

There is no better large-scale arrangement on immigration than a free market in labor. All else is inferior, being less efficient and less fair. For resources on immigration, see the Cato Institute’s thorough collection of studies.

Griswold makes the good and reasonable case for reformed, not restrictive, immigration policies:

Conservatives should be friendly to immigration, and the first to seek expanded opportunities for legal immigration. Immigration has been integral to America’s free and open economy. Immigrants embody the American spirit. They are self-starters seeking opportunity to support themselves and their families in the private sector.

Current immigration is driven largely by demand and supply. Immigrants come when there are jobs available that not enough Americans are able and willing to fill. That’s why immigration rates, legal and illegal, tend to fall when the economy is struggling, and to pick up as the economy grows. Immigrants stimulate job creation for natives by promoting investment, creating new products and services, and increasing demand for housing and other goods. Immigration keeps America demographically healthy while other, less open Western nations struggle with declining workforces.

Griswold correctly notes that immigrants not only boost our economy, but that they are less dangerous, and less likely to commit crimes, than native-born Americans.

Some GOP candidates today reject these truths, but Reagan understood and advocated for markets throughout his career. (Disgracefully, former GOP contender and all-around embarrassment Herman Cain even called for a lethally-electrified border fence between American and Mexico.)

There are, sadly, worse things than calling for an electrified fence. The harshest proposals call for a dramatic expansion of state power to detain and deport. (See, Wisconsin Assembly Bill 173.)

The most extreme proposals call for all these things in the name of the rule of law, as though any law were a good law. In this way, these harsher proposals serve as contemporary versions of Jim Crow – they are laws wrongful and shameful, no matter how they are enforced. (See, The War on Immigrants.)

Toward these unjust proposals, there can and should be no compromise. (See, Eight Steps for Responding to Political Wrongs.)

It’s a long and tough year ahead, on immigration and a dozen other topics. No matter: either one year or several should be met with the same diligent and zealous perseverance.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 1.5.12

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Good morning.

It’s a mostly sunny day with a high of forty-two ahead for Whitewater.  In Pensacola, it will be a mostly sunny day with a high of sixty-six.

Yesterday’s Google puzzle was one of distance: “What’s the difference, in feet, between the highest point on land and the deepest point in the ocean?”  Turns out, Google didn’t have in mind the distance between these two measurements, but simply the difference between them.

Google’s answer: “Search [deepest point undersea] to find that Earth’s deepest point is the Challenger Deep at around 36,000 feet. Estimates of depth vary from 35,813 feet to 36,168 feet. Search [highest point above sea level] to find Mt. Everest at 29,035 feet. Google the difference: [36,168 – 29,035] to find that the ocean’s deepest point is 7133 feet deeper than Mt. Everest is tall.”

Neither the span between depth below and height above, nor the linear or spherical distance between the highest and deepest points, mattered to Google.  They were looking for a simpler answer.  So was the question ambiguous, or did I over-complicate the possibilities?  I’ll go with over-complicate, as the question’s just asking for a difference, not a span.  I don’t have any New Year’s resolutions, but that’s not a bad lesson for the new year, five days in: simple is often right.

For today’s puzzle: “Consider the element that makes rubies red. What color does this element become when it’s added to beryl to create another precious gem?”

How’s this for the person who has almost everything? A personal drone:

Economy

Adam Davidson: The Other Reason Europe Is Going Broke

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The rigidity of over-planned, over-regulated economies underlies Europe’s other, deeper problem:

….G.D.P. per capita an insufficient indicator, but one most economists use in the U.S. is nearly 50 percent higher than it is in Europe. Even Europe’s best-performing large country, Germany, is about 20 percent poorer than the U.S. on a per-person basis and both countries have roughly 15 percent of their populations living below the poverty line. While Norway and Sweden are richer than the U.S., on average, they are more comparable to wealthy American microeconomies like Washington, D.C., or parts of Connecticut — both of which are actually considerably wealthier. A reporter in Greece once complained after I compared her country to Mississippi, America’s poorest state. She’s right: the comparison isn’t fair. The average Mississippian is richer than the average Greek.

Europe is undergoing not one but two simultaneous economic crises. The first is a rapid, obvious one — all about sovereign debt, a collapsing currency and austerity measures — that we hear about all the time. The second is insidious but more important. After decades of trying, Europe as a whole still can’t quite figure out how to be flexible enough to compete in the global economy….

Where does this leave Europe?  Worse off even than Europeans’ own critical (and false) view of America:

European leaders like to mock the U.S. for its inequality and lack of social safety net. Though, for now, it looks as if Europe is headed for a two-tier society without any plan for improving the lot of the lower tier….

Via New York Times.com.

Federal Government, Laws/Regulations

Dallas teen missing since 2010 was deported to Colombia

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Some of the same gentlemen who campaign on the need for small government are willing to support aggressive federal immigration enforcement. Their confidence in the efficiency and fairness of Immigration and Customs Enforcement is absurdly misplaced:

There are still many unanswered questions about how an African-American girl who speaks no Spanish is mistaken for a foreign national. Immigration officials are investigating and released a statement late Tuesday.

ICE agents took fingerprints, but apparently never checked them before deporting Jakadrien Turner to Colombia, a place from which she has no ancestry.

Here one finds a level of carelessness and mediocrity unworthy of public funding or support. Even more startling is that this fourteen-year old American was accepted as a twenty-two year-old Colombian woman.

There are people who live their whole lives not half so negligent as the officials who deported this girl.

Yet, there are those far – and near – who would expand government authority to detain and deport. This expansion rests on a foolish confidence in government.

Via WFFA.

Libertarians, Presidential race 2012

Brian Doherty on a Night at the Caucus, and a Ron Paul Victory that Wasn’t

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Brian Doherty, an historian of libertarian politics, surveys the scene in Iowa. Libertarian-leaning Ron Paul came in a respectable third, as all America now knows.

Is there any doubt that he would have done even better without the newsletter controversy (something Doherty has assured couldn’t matter, and about which he does not write in his post-election report)?

In any event, Paul’s not going away, but he might have pulled away in Iowa without the newsletter issue.

See, from Iowa, Doherty’s account of the caucuses.

City, Laws/Regulations, Politics

For Whitewater, some contested races are better than none

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Whitewater will see two contested Council races this year, for a district and an at-large seat. The at-large race will assure the city at least one new Council member from the two candidates; the district race has one incumbent and one challenger. (The school district has no contested races.)

If our laws were less burdensome, we’d have more candidates. I understand that these regulations are meant to assure ‘serious,’ candidates, but that’s the very problem: rather than let voters decide who’s serious in their own eyes, the law winnows presumptively.

There’s a lack of confidence in popular sovereignty that infuses fussy regulations. If this involved the work of engineering a spacecraft, one would understand the attention to minute detail – every millimeter counts. Election laws are nothing like aerospace engineering; campaign requirements for local office are unnecessarily demanding.

Along these lines, see How to Keep Roma or Bedouin from Dominating Whitewater, Wisconsin’s Politics.

There are lots of good questions about policy in Whitewater, and questions one could pose to these candidates. There may be an opportunity to pose them at one public forum or another.

This will be a busy year, and events elsewhere are sure to demand notice. Yet, it would be a shame if these races were ignored, and forgotten for Wisconsin recalls and federal senate and presidential races.

There’s time enough to think about both.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 1.4.12

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Good morning.

It’s warmer in Whitewater today than yesterday, and the high today will be thirty-five, with mostly sunny skies. In Manchester, NH, today will be increasingly cloudy with a high temperature of twenty-three.

There’s a Landmarks Commission meeting this afternoon in Whitewater, at 5 PM. The meeting agenda is available online.

On this day in 1923, in trying to prevent the kind of raucous behavior that might led to the collapse of Wisconsin’s social order,

1923 – Student Dancing [Was] Banned

On this date Milton College president A.E. Whitford banned dancing by students in off-campus, semi-public places such as confectionery stores. [Source: Janesville Gazette]

Via Wisconsin Historical Society.

Today’s puzzle from Google is one of measurement: “What’s the distance, in feet, between the highest point on land and the deepest point in the ocean?”  Which distance, though, does Google mean?  They might mean the distance between height and depth (most likely), or they might mean the linear or spherical distance between these two points.  The first is the predictable answer, but I don’t think either of the other two would be wrong. We’ll see what they really meant when they reveal the answer tomorrow.

Of distances, is there a more impressive route than along this distance? Not likely —

Time Lapse From Space – Literally. The Journey Home. from Fragile Oasis on Vimeo.

Libertarians, Politics, Presidential race 2012

Rick Santorum’s nephew supports Ron Paul

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I’ve had some doubts about whether Ron Paul is libertarian enough, but I’ve no doubt that he’s better on issues of market and political freedom than Rick Santorum.

Santorum’s nephew feels the same way about his uncle, and so is supporting Paul:

It is not the government’s job to dictate to individuals how they must live. The Constitution was designed to protect individual liberty. My Uncle Rick cannot fathom a society in which people cooperate and work with each other freely. When Republicans were spending so much money under President Bush, my uncle was right there along with them as a senator. The reason we have so much debt is not only because of Democrats, but also because of big-spending Republicans like my Uncle Rick.

It is because of this inability of status quo politicians to recognize the importance of our individual liberties that I have been drawn to Ron Paul. Unlike my uncle, he does not believe that the American people are incapable of forming decisions. He believes that an individual is more powerful than any group (a notion our founding fathers also believed in).

Santorum’s nephew, John Garver, is right about Santorum, who while a senator was also quite the big spender.

Garver also shows a libertarian confidence and optimism in ordinary people’s judgment that Santorum’s more restrictive and regulatory views lack.

Via The Daily Caller.

Law, Liberty

Pres. Obama Signs Indefinite Detention Bill Into Law

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The indefinite detention bill passed the Congress with support from both parties, but that only means it was a bad idea with bipartisan backing:

President Obama’s action today is a blight on his legacy because he will forever be known as the president who signed indefinite detention without charge or trial into law,” said Anthony D. Romero, ACLU executive director.

“The statute is particularly dangerous because it has no temporal or geographic limitations, and can be used by this and future presidents to militarily detain people captured far from any battlefield. The ACLU will fight worldwide detention authority wherever we can, be it in court, in Congress, or internationally.

Signing the bill with serious reservations is still allowing it to become law, and that indefinite detention is now part of American law is worse than a confession of serious reservations.

Via ACLU.

Foreign Affairs, Freedom of Speech, Laws/Regulations, Liberty

China’s President Pushes Back Against Western Culture

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BEIJING — President of Hu Jintao of China has said that China must strengthen its cultural production to defend against the West’s assault on the country’s culture and ideology, according to an essay in a Communist Party policy magazine published this week. The publication of Mr. Hu’s words signaled that a new major policy initiative announced last October would continue well into 2012.

The essay, which was signed by Mr. Hu and based on a speech he gave in October, drew a sharp line between the cultures of the West and China and effectively said the two sides were engaged in an escalating culture war. It was published in Seeking Truth, a magazine that evolved from a publication founded by Mao as a platform for establishing Communist Party principles.

A defensive effort of this kind stems from weakness. It may score successes now and again, but irrestible state control of culture is possible only in places like North Korea.

Those who insist loudly and nervously that they ‘just have to get their message out’ are already losing the battle of ideas.

Via New York Times.

Libertarians, Presidential race 2012

The Libertarian Party’s New Executive Director

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The national LP picked Carla Howell, of the Center for Small Government, to be its next executive director. (For more about the Center, see Center for Small Government: “Small Government is Beautiful”.)

Her longstanding commitment to small government (advocated from her home state of Massachusetts) will leave her in good shape as the party’s ED.

The LP’s leadership will push, so much as they can, to assure that former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson becomes the 2012 LP presidential nominee in May. Howell and others are right to push the party to pick an experienced politician; the party’s message needs a messenger who’s campaigned before.

There will be other nominees, and perhaps a few rounds of balloting between Johnson and other candidates known only to Libertarian activists. I’d expect Johnson to win the nomination, but after that I think he’ll have a hard time attracting attention. (The right-leaning Bob Barr had trouble in ‘08, and the left-libertarian Johnson probably won’t fare better.)

Americans may not be well-satisfied with a choice between Pres. Obama and the GOP nominee (most likely Romney), but enough will stick with one of the two, thereby keeping third-party voting down to a small percentage of the presidential vote.

Still, Johnson’s nomination would be good for the LP, and one hopes Howell’s selection as executive director is auspicious, too.

For Howell’s optimism, see 2012 – Possibility and Hope for Libertarians.