This Blog on Hiatus

After some thought I've decided to retire this blog for the time being. I haven't had as much inspiration for it as I've had with The New Unitarian Universalist, and I don't have as much regular material as I do with The MHA Student. As a result I'm now closer to 300 posts on the first blog (as opposed to 60 posts for the same amount of time), with a lot of inspiration, a wide readership and some real passion; while the 2nd blog is one I'd really like to try to work on a little more and has value to me even if it doesn't for anyone else.

As a result I've decided to suspend this blog for the time being. I will leave it up and may come back to write posts from time to time (I've found my interest and enthusiasm in political issues tends to ebb and flow, and right now its ebbing, as it has been most of the past year, even during the 2008 Election). I will probably make a few political comments on my other 2 blogs, so I'm not letting go of the subject entirely.

In the meantime though this blog is retired until further notice, so don't look for updates. Feel free to look through my archived posts, and check out my other blogs. Until then...its been fun!

Right to Free Speech

Some people in this country need a basic civics lesson on what is and what is not covered by the "Right to Free Speech". Whenever we are silenced today-by our employer, by the media or whomever-we immediately cry that our "right to free speech" has been violated. The only problem with this is that most people have no clue what the First Amendment actually protects. Contrary to popular conception the First Amendment does not protect us from being silenced by anyone. The Amendment is binding only on the government-originally in fact it was only binding on the federal government (notice it reads "Congress shall make no law...") and was later extended to cover the state governments after the passage of the 14th Amendment and Supreme Court rulings that the Bill of Rights were transferred via the 14th to the states. Essentially, the government cannot take away our right to free speech.

But anyone else can. Your right to free speech is not protected anywhere else. When you are posting on someone's blog, forum or chat room online you have no "right" to free speech. When your employer tells you not to say certain things at work you cannot whine about your "right to free speech" being taken away. And in the world of the media, the right to free speech does not require any radio, TV, print or electronic source to run anyone's work-it is the prerogative of media outlets to determine what they will and will not air. The right to free speech does not equate to the right to be published, or the right to hear objective journalism. Those are issues for the media, their writers and their consumers to sort out. The government has nothing to do with this.

Charley Reese wrote a great column about this, noting "The First Amendment gives us the right to speak and to write. It does not give anyone the right to command that others listen to or publish or distribute what he or she says or writes or produces...I have the right to write an opinion column. That right, however, does not impose an obligation on anyone to publish it or to read it. If a newspaper declines to publish my column, it is in no way abridging my First Amendment rights. Nor is it engaging in censorship (only the government can censor). It is instead exercising its right to choose what it will and won't publish at its own expense."

Well said. Americans today-especially infantile liberals and conservatives who whine about free speech at the drop of a hat (what they are really whining about is they can't get people to agree with them) need a lesson on the First Amendment.

Regulating the Adirondacks

One of my favorite vacation destinations is the Adirondacks. For those unfamiliar with upstate NY, the Adirondacks is a region located in the northern part of the state. The term refers both to the Adirondack mountain range, as well as to the Adirondack Park that encompasses them. Unlike most state parks the Adirondack Park encompases both public lands (the Adirondack Forest Preserve) and private lands (more than half of the Park lies in private hands). Naturally this is a nightmare from a land management perspective, not to mention from a regulatory one. While local town planning boards have their say, and the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation has a job to do, the primary group charged with oversight of the park is the Adirondack Park Agency (APA).

While I love the character of the Adirondacks as much as the next person, I must admit I'm not a huge fan of the APA. The Adirondacks is a mass of pristine real estate, and the demand to own a piece of the park far exceeds the supply of pieces that are actually available for purchase. As a result prices for real estate in the park have skyrocketed in recent years. The soaring prices have begun to put a squeeze on the park's residents. At the same time owning property in the Park is no picnic. In an effort to "control" development and channel it around existing construction the APA stringently controls when, where and how any construction can proceed in the boundaries of the "Blue Line", the colloquial term for the park's border. The APA essentially dictates what private owners can and cannot do on their land-and in the opinions of many residents of the park the APA's meddling goes far beyond protecting the environment and ventures into the realm of violating constitutional rights.

There is come considerable dispute as to whether the APA is even looking for the best interests of the Park's residents. I corresponded for a time with Mart Allen, a columnist for the newspaper in the Old Forge region, who has been sharply critical of the APA. Mart told me that he was particularly disturbed by the fact that the State could come crashing down on some residents of the Park for the most minute of violations, yet would approve other development plans or look the other way when the environment was actually being harmed. The selective blindness of the APA was based on-what else?-the wealth of the individual who were"doing business" with the Agency. Mart told me he found the APA to be a "necessary evil", but the state had become so corrupt it was no longer working in anyone's best interest (he also had a few words about environmentalist and 'activist judges').

While I care as much about preserving the Adirondacks and the environment as the next person, I have to agree with Mart on this one. What many liberals don't realize is that regulation is not a cure-all for all issues-money still talks louder than what's right, and it can be quite easy to bribe regulators, prompting "elitists" (as Mart calls them) to take it upon themselvs to set things straight. Considering that several members of the APA board live outside the park, and the amount of money that changes hands in Adirondack deals, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that the APA does not put the interests of the Park's residents first-or even, for that matter, the environment. I've often wondered why people like this feel that they know more about how to take care of the environment than hunters and those who have lived their whole lives in wilderness-type areas. Of all people, they more so than anyone else would want the environment preserved and protected.

I have no solution to the dilemma of preserving the Park. I hate to see the Park transformed into the southwestern shore of Lake George (which is heavily built up), especially given that the destruction of the environment will ultimately screw the park over economically (the tourist industry which fuels the region's economy [arguably, it is the region's economy] is because of the wilderness-people aren't looking for Epcot when they visit the Adirondacks), and it could put an end to a way of life cherished by the residents of the Adirondacks.

There needs to be a better way, but if I knew what it was, I'd probably have a Nobel Prize.

Update

Just a short update on what is going on the political realm:

1) Justice Souter has announced his retirement. It will be interesting to see if an individual who is not a judge is not nominated for his seat, something which hasn't happened in recent years (Chief Justice Earl Warren wasn't a judge and had a bigger impact on the Court-and arguably the nation-than any other justice in American history). I was quite surprised that Souter was the first to step aside...American politics never disappoints. Souter was supposed to be quiet a character too...a man who lived in a different century more or less.

2) Steve posts on his blog about -Steve's post on torture It now appears that no charges will be filed after all. I absolutely oppose torture, but not out of sympathy for the terrorists (granted, I think they are still human, but I still don't have much sympathy for them). Rather I believe that if we torture people we become no different than the enemies we oppose-something that I would prefer not happen to us. But as Steve notes there is a difference between the torture of Saddam Hussein and the torture performed by US officials. In this situation I'm not going to be loosing all that much sleep. (That said, I think we need to be extremely careful here).

3) A continuing drama in the news these days is all the chatter about the "Swine Flu". I opted not to post this on my healthcare blog, since truth be told I think the media in many ways has blown this whole thing way out of proportion-starting a panic. There are some disturbing parallels with the 1918 pandemic, and we are years overdue for the next global flu outbreak, but with all of that said, the media has been unbelievably reckless here. Ah well, if nothing else the panic may lead to quarantines and overzealous precautions that prevent further spread of the disease- a small victory, but a "positive externality" as we would say in microeconomics.

4) Senator Arlen Specter has defected to the Democratic Party. I always liked Specter, because of his prudence, which was deeply refreshing compared to the ideologues (and it irritated the hell out of the hard-liners on the Right). I would have loved to have seen the look on Dr. Dobson's face when this was announced. On the one hand it would have been a move that probably would have delighted Dobson, but as Specter essentially admitted he can reelected much more easily as a Democrat and now Dobson can't have him trounced in the primary. Hey, at least Specter was honest about his political motiviations.

Right-Wing Extremists?

Recently the Department of Homeland Security released a report that discussed the possible of right-wing extremists, as noted in the news. Not surprisingly it has generated a nasty backlash on the conservative blogosphere, such as here and here. The draft has been recalled, and a new version is apparently underway (it also sounds like this one wasn't quite ready for release). Apparently there is a lawsuit in the works too. Fortunately, however, it seems that the matter was at least partially laid to rest when Secretary Napolitano met with the American Legion.

A few takeaways here. First, obviously, another PR blunder on the part of the Obama Administration. Whoops. Also another example of the political blogosphere going nuts with people reacting and overreacting. Did the Administration use the threat of right-wing extremism as a political mechanism? Probably. All administrations seem to have a tendency to use national and homeland security to their political advantage whenever possible-why would Obama be any different? Security threats make handy distractions for political threats (how convenient) and can be especially useful when the opposite side is somehow indicted (even more convenient).

All of that aside, one thing does trouble me about this. While returning veterans are hardly a threat to the nation (lets be honest, Timothy McVeigh was the exception, not the rule) many of them have been severely traumatized from their experiences-mental illness amongst those returning from war is a serious problem. And having done some research on this for a report last semester I can say that the VA health system is extremely ill-equipped for dealing with this. Our veterans are not receiving mental health care anywhere the quality they deserve. While this is unlikely to make the majority of them "dangerous" it is not out of the realm of possibility that those who are unable to get the treatment they need and deserve could become a risk to themselves or others-their skills that make so valuable in war could be quite dangerous in the hands of a mentally ill civilian.

The reality is our veterans deserve better on all accounts. If I was able to realize this during the uproar surrounding this report, maybe someone else will too.

Charles Murray

I recently had the opportunity to come across an article written by Charles Murray, a fantastic libertarian author and political scientist. The article, which appeared in The Herald Examiner of Ithaca/Tompkins County (a conservative publication for this region), was called "Not Like Europe the Pursuit of Happiness". The best parts of Murry's article are the following:

"If we ask what are the institutions through which human beings achieve deep satisfaction in life, the answer is that there are just four: family, community, vocation and faith...every time the government takes some of the trouble out of performing the functions of family, community, vocation and faith, it also strips those institutions of some of their vitality-it drains some of the life from them."

" The equality premise says that, in a fair society, different groups of people--men and women, blacks and whites, straights and gays, the children of poor people and the children of rich people--will naturally have the same distributions of outcomes in life--the same mean income, the same mean educational attainment, the same proportions who become janitors and CEOs. When that doesn't happen, it is because of bad human behavior and an unfair society. For the last forty years, this premise has justified thousands of pages of government regulations and legislation that has reached into everything from the paperwork required to fire someone to the funding of high school wrestling teams. Everything that we associate with the phrase "politically correct" eventually comes back to the equality premise. Every form of affirmative action derives from it. Much of the Democratic Party's proposed domestic legislation assumes that it is true.
Within a decade, no one will try to defend the equality premise. All sorts of groups will be known to differ in qualities that affect what professions they choose, how much money they make, and how they live their lives in all sorts of ways. Gender differences will be first, because the growth in knowledge about the ways that men and women are different is growing by far the most rapidly. I'm betting that the Harvard faculty of the year 2020 will look back on the Larry Summers affair in the same way that they think about the Scopes trial--the enlightened versus the benighted--and will have achieved complete amnesia about their own formerly benighted opinions."

The original article can be found here. Great stuff, expressed beautifully.

And I totally concur.

Political Experience

I'm really sick of the constant complaints of politicians not having enough "experience". In the words of Charley Reese, experienced politicians are roughly equivalent to experienced whores in a brothel...not necessarily a desirable trait. "Experienced politicians" generally equates to careerists who haven't been in the real world in ages-lifelong members of an exclusive club who haven't worked a real job in years, and have no real comprehension about life is like the for average American. And we want more of these people?

I have mixed feelings on the idea of term limits being used as a mechanism to stop career politicians-I'd like to see it to throw some of the current lifelong public leeches out of office (and I say that knowing that many politicians are quite likeable as individuals). On the other hand, the beauty of the American system is you get out what you put in...meaning that eventually the American public will get that they should be voting incumbents out as a general rule. I hope I'm around to see that day.

Back to experience...when asked in an interview if he had enough experience to be President, Barack Obama gave a very good answer in that only men who had occupied the office before were truly "qualified" for the position. Learning to be a public official isn't that hard, and maybe we could people who are more qualified from experience outside the political system. Just a thought.

At any rate...let's stop talking about experience as if it were sacred...too much of it is worse than too little.