Category: Politics

Congressman Brad Sherman Is Wrong On Circumcision

This is why I don’t like the political process for ending non-therapeutic circumcision of male minors.

Congressman Brad Sherman announced today that he will be introducing the Religious and Parental Rights Defense Act of 2011, a bill to prevent San Francisco and other municipalities from banning the circumcision of males under the age of 18.

Sherman’s new bill is in reaction to a measure that has qualified for the November 2011 ballot in San Francisco that would make the performance of circumcisions on males under 18 a misdemeanor—with a possible $1,000 fine and one-year prison term.

He’s framing the problem incorrectly, which allows him to protect a “right” that doesn’t exist and ignore a right that does. The proposed bill in San Francisco would prohibit non-therapeutic circumcisions on males under 18. Healthy children do not need surgery, even if the parents’ god says so. California law already restricts the rights of parents to cut the healthy genitals of their daughters for any reason, including religious claims. Is that an infringement? Of course not. Likewise, there is no First Amendment right to inflict permanent harm on one’s children sons (only).

Sherman expressed concern over the motivation of the provision. “To infringe the religious rights of so many Americans, San Francisco should have some compelling medical reason; however, the medical literature actually shows clear benefits of male circumcision.”

The provision, shown by its generally-applicable wording, would protect the right of all healthy males to keep their normal body intact and free from the objective harm of non-therapeutic surgery to which they do not consent. It’s the same right U.S. and California law protects for their sisters. That right is being violated. It must stop. This is a way to achieve that, even if it may not be the best way.

But if we incorrectly assume this infringes a legitimate religious right, San Francisco (and every other locality) has a compelling medical reason to prohibit non-therapeutic male child circumcision: it’s non-therapeutic genital cutting imposed on a non-consenting individual. The healthy child does not need circumcision any more than he needs an appendectomy. If he has an appendectomy, he will never get appendicitis. That is a potential benefit. Should we therefore allow parents to have a surgeon cut their healthy children sons (only) to remove his potentially harm-producing appendix? In the name of parental rights? No, because that would be stupid. The ability to chase some possible benefit can’t be an ethical justification to perform an invasive, unnecessary surgical intervention on a healthy child.

Congressman Sherman added:

“Congress has a legitimate interest in making sure that a practice that appears to reduce disease and health care costs remains available to parents,” Sherman said. “And, nothing in my bill prohibits statewide law ensuring that male circumcision occurs in a hygienic manner.”

To the extent that Congress has a legitimate interest¹ here, it’s in protecting the individual rights of every citizen, including male children. It already protected female children with the Anti-Female Genital Mutilation Act of 1996. That prohibits non-therapeutic genital cutting on non-consenting female minors for any reason, including religious claims by the parents. Does that infringe on parental religious rights? Are we illegitimately denying religious rights by not permitting other acts by parents sanctioned by various religious texts? Are the healthy genitals of male minors beneath the equal protection of the Fourteenth Amendment?

“Congress has historically legislated to protect the free exercise of religious rights from state and local intrusions,” Sherman said. “In 2000, Congress passed the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, designed to protect religious institutions from unduly burdensome local zoning laws.”

The logic of the law Congressman Sherman cites favorably requires the conclusion that his proposed bill is flawed. The Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act establishes that the government may not impose a burden

…unless the government demonstrates that imposition of the burden on that person, assembly, or institution–
(A) is in furtherance of a compelling governmental interest; and
(B) is the least restrictive means of furthering that compelling governmental interest.

(A) Protecting children from unnecessary, objective harm is a compelling governmental interest. Circumcision, as surgery, inflicts objective harm in every instance. When there is no offsetting medical need, the harm is the only guaranteed result. Preventing that is the premise behind prohibiting all female genital cutting on healthy female minors, even genital cutting that is less severe, damaging, or permanent than a typical male circumcision. The government recognizes that girls are individuals with rights that deserve to be protected. Infringing on a non-existent parental right to cut the healthy genitals of their daughters children is a legitimate state action.

(B) The least restrictive means would be for parents to understand that non-therapeutic genital cutting on healthy children is ethically and medically wrong and, thus, refrain from imposing it on their sons. Yet, religious and non-religious parents alike cut the healthy genitals of their sons. How else is the state supposed to stop it without exercising its legitimate police power?

Congressman Sherman should withdraw the Religious and Parental Rights Defense Act of 2011 immediately. He should also introduce a bill to remove the gender bias from the Anti-Female Genital Mutilation Act of 1996 to create the Anti-Genital Mutilation Act of 2011, if he’s serious about using the powers of Congress correctly to protect the rights of all American citizens.

Update: More from Congressman Sherman:

Sherman said he did not consult the text of the Federal Prohibition of Female Genital Mutilation Act of 1995 in composing the bill he will put forth in Congress.

“I think people who make that analogy are so wrong that their thinking does not color my thinking,” Sherman said.

Since he’s working with a closed mind, I’ll simplify: non-therapeutic genital cutting on a non-consenting person is wrong. The extent of the damage is irrelevant. The reason cited is irrelevant. The gender of the victim is irrelevant. Non-therapeutic genital cutting on a non-consenting individual is wrong.

¹ I want to be proved wrong on this, but Sherman’s statement is further evidence of my prediction that ceding power to the government on health care would lead to arguments that child circumcision provided fiscal benefits to the nation. It wouldn’t change the ethical violation involved, but Congressman Sherman doesn’t provide a cost-benefit analysis for his claim. Only in Congress can spending money always mean saving money.

Some Debates Don’t Have Two Sides

Yesterday in the Los Angeles Times Op-Ed section, Cato policy analyst David Rittgers wrote about the renewed discussion of waterboarding and whether or not it’s torture.

The successful raid on Osama bin Laden’s safe house in Pakistan has reinvigorated debate over the role that “enhanced interrogation techniques” have played in fighting Al Qaeda. No one is switching sides, which has turned the argument into a theological one between two sets of true believers. Each views the other as heretics.

Get over it. The whole of the debate is pointless posturing. There is no way to prove or disprove the real worth of America’s experiment with waterboarding and coercive techniques. More important, enhanced interrogation isn’t coming back.

I agree that what is now happening is posturing. I disagree that it’s pointless. In the same way I wanted to know in the middle of the Bush Administration, I want to know now who supports the use of torture. Those people should be exposed as quickly and as completely as possible so that they’re removed or kept away from public office. If they wish to expose themselves, so much better.

Link via Cato @ Liberty.

Krugman’s Tale of Inaccurate Caricatures

Last week, Paul Krugman did his hacktastic best to suggest that the two competing sides of government philosophy are the far right and the center. He paints himself as part of the caring center, of course, opposed to the meanies on the right who inevitably despise anyone lesser. It’s all kinds of ad hominem fun, and concludes with this bit about how we need to end the heated political rhetoric that’s apparently only been happening since President Obama’s election in 2008:

It’s not enough to appeal to the better angels of our nature. We need to have leaders of both parties — or Mr. Obama alone if necessary — declare that both violence and any language hinting at the acceptability of violence are out of bounds. We all want reconciliation, but the road to that goal begins with an agreement that our differences will be settled by the rule of law.

Or Mr. Obama alone if necessary? President Obama can do nothing constitutionally to end such not-new rhetoric. Krugman’s point is silly and makes me think of this:

That seems about right.

Gun Violence: Method versus Reason

The murders and attempted murders in Arizona yesterday at Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords’ constituent gathering doesn’t need any specific comment from me. Nor am I much interested in the partisan nonsense that predictably followed. My only response was to wield a clumsy, permanent “Unfollow” hammer on Twitter on anyone who blamed someone other than the (alleged) murderer for his crimes. Productive for nothing other than my sanity, but that’s something for me.

I am, however, interested in one inevitable angle of the aftermath that I think is worth discussing. Two comments that crossed my Twitter feed. First:

It is unacceptable to defend the legality of firearms. It is both irresponsible and horrifically misinformed. Guns kill. Fuck guns. End of.

Second:

“England, where no one has guns: 14 deaths. United States…23,000 deaths from handguns. But–there’s no connection…” ~Bill Hicks

To be fair to both persons, they are Brits, so an American perspective has a way of slanting away from their understandable sentiments. But, both are still flawed, regardless of the cultural difference.

The obvious reason is the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution. As long as that is still valid, guns will be legal in the United States. Simply pretending that it’s not would fight chaos and lawlessness with chaos and lawlessness. Neither of the comments above implies that America should ignore the Second Amendment. We still need to explicitly accept its existence.

Details on why the murderer felt this was justifiable are still unclear. (Mostly, but I’m not going to speculate.) Lost on too many is the idea that guns aren’t the only way to kill people. Sure, it’s a simple process, but plowing a car through a crowd would have similar results. We recognize how stupid it would be to outlaw cars, so it’s reasonable to me to expect that level of thinking applied to guns, as well. Whatever the underlying motivation, the cliche is true: guns don’t kill people. People kill people.

The second Tweet above is slightly off, since the U.S. has approximately five times the population of the U.K. The difference between 14 and 70 is trivial when compared to 23,000, but it raises the question of adequately comparing countries. (I’m ignoring the context of the 23,000 figure and its validity because it’s tangential to my point.) Too many cultural differences exist to compare directly. What are the underlying issues? Why do people shoot/kill other people? And so on.

For example, whatever the percentage, I’m sure much of that number is related to the drug war in the U.S. Other countries are fighting the same war, but the consequences are influenced by culture. The U.S. tried the same war with alcohol prohibition in the early 20th century. We’re now recreating the same results. To mangle another cliche, you can’t legislate for the country you wish you had. You must legislate with the country you have. The human response to prohibition is predictable. But the U.K. and its gun prohibition isn’t the U.S. and its Constitution. What to do isn’t as simple as the seductive “no guns, no murder” mantra.

**********

I have a final point, which I’m separating to hopefully avoid the perception that I’m engaging in a logical fallacy. Understand that this informs nothing other than my personal experience and is not meant to prove me any more an authority or voice in the discussion.

My father died of a gunshot wound when I was three-years-old. He and a friend were playing a game of quick-draw in the front seat of his friend’s car. My father’s friend apparently didn’t realize his gun was loaded. Upon pulling it out, it discharged a fatal blast into my father’s chest.

If guns were illegal, it’s unlikely they would’ve been playing quick-draw knife throw. But there’s also no way to know that they wouldn’t have been playing quick-draw with guns. Life happens. There are legitimate reasons to detest guns and legitimate reasons to value them. There’s a large measure of subjectivity in each of these. It adds nothing to simplify the discussion into a belief that 300,000,000 Americans should fit one mold of thinking, or that an opinion in favor of gun ownership implies a desire, preference or acceptance of gun violence.

Expect the Unexpected: Revisited

Our political obsession with identifying Others is potentially as dangerous as it is offensive. Safety is a legitimate role for the government, to the extent it can reasonably be achieved. But we need to uncover the psychopaths (or related variants) who would be murderers, regardless of skin color. Racial profiling is the appearance of safety for political cover. With this week’s news about Colleen Renee LaRose, the Philadelphia woman (Image) suspected of recruiting for terrorist organizations, I want to repost an entry I wrote almost five years ago.

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With a new terrorist threat to the New York subway system gripping the nation, the blogosphere is abuzz. I obviously share everyone’s concern and want our police and security forces to thwart any (potentially) forthcoming attacks. In an effort to accomplish this, the debate seems to descend to an argument simple profiling. When the constitutionality of profiling inevitably arises, the proponent either responds with some variation of “Constitution be damned” or “random” searches. New York implemented a random search policy for backpacks, which was incomplete, at best. (ed. note: Dead links omitted.) Yet, the proponents of profiling continue to advocate ineffective policies. Consider this from La Shawn Barber, who writes extensively and credibly about the threat of terrorism:

Will Islamofascists bomb the NYC subway? Is it all just a rumor? Your guess is as good as the government s. Flip a coin. Draw a straw. Throw it against a wall and see if it sticks.

Are they still searching little old ladies and skipping young men of Middle Eastern descent because it would be racist to search them? Probably.

It would be racist but I’m not against if for that reason. Immediate threats to safety must shake the debate from simple intellectual discourse. But within that intellectual discourse, reason can provide insight into how such a policy could fail, and fail miserably.

I don’t normally agree with Michelle Malkin on much, as evidenced by the posts here where I’ve referenced her blog. But with her reporting on last weekend’s suicide bomber in Oklahoma, she’s doing excellent work highlighting deeper facts in the case. There are indications that the bomber, Joel Henry Hinrichs III, was a Muslim. He attended a local mosque in Norman, OK. His Pakistani roommate hasn’t been heard from since the bombing. Mr. Hinrichs’ bomb included TATP, an explosive compound not commonly used in America, but popular with terrorists. He tried to purchase a large amount of ammonium nitrate. On Saturday, he apparently tried to enter the stadium during the Oklahoma football game before settling on the bench where he blew himself up (intentionally or unintentionally). Etc. I don’t know what story these and other facts will eventually tell, but it seems clear that there is more to the story than just some depressed guy commiting suicide. While I’m not ready to declare this an Islamofascist suicide bombing on American soil, the details of this case should be pursued.

This case also highlights the ineffectiveness of racial profiling in our attempt to prevent further terrorism. Click this picture of Mr. Hinrichs. (Image Source) Ignore the beard; a roommate of mine in college had a beard like that and he was no terrorist, unless you count accidentally killing fish when his hydroponic fish tank failed. So let me ask the obvious question. Say Mr. Hinrichs had tried to bomb the New York subway. Would racial profiling for “young men of Middle Eastern descent” have caught him? Is it reasonable to assume that if we rely on racial profiling, terrorists will switch tactics to include racial (and gender) profiles we’re not looking for?

Correlation Still Does Not Equal Causation

Nancy Pelosi’s office blogged about the Department of Labor’s latest jobs report. This graph is included in the brief entry:

Pelosi_jobs.jpg

From this, Rep. Pelosi declares:

Today’s jobs report marks a welcome step in the right direction for our economy and our families: the unemployment rate is going down. The Recovery Act, which Congress passed one year ago to pull our economy back from the brink of collapse, has already created or saved nearly 2 million jobs so far.

Yet our work is far from over. This recession that President Obama inherited has taken the worst toll on our job market since World War II. Too many workers have lost their jobs through no fault of their own. Leaders of both parties must work together to keep our recovery on track by helping small businesses create jobs, investing in our infrastructure and clean energy industries, and keeping police, firefighters, and teachers on the job. Congress will continue to act to build a new foundation for long-term prosperity.

I see the correlation I’m supposed to perceive, but that doesn’t prove what Rep. Pelosi expects me to assume, that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is the reason the graph looks as it does. It’s easy to claim success when you establish superficial results as the standards for success. If she’s going to make this claim, she must defend it with specific details about how money was spent and how that improved the jobs situation. Saying it isn’t enough if you’re skeptical of power rather than merely skeptical of your ideological opponents.

(Via Irene retweeting Markos Moulitsas)

Massachusetts Will Debate The Right to Bodily Integrity

The Massachusetts legislature is considering a bill that would make non-therapeutic genital cutting (i.e. circumcision) on healthy minors illegal.

…

(a) For the purpose of this section, the term “genital mutilation” shall mean the removal or cutting or both of the whole or part of the clitoris, labia minora, labia majora, vulva, breast, nipple, foreskin, glans, testicle, penis, ambiguous genitalia, hermaphroditic genitalia, or any genital organ.
…

Reading the bill in its entirety shows that the author(s) shaped it directly from the Federal Prohibition of Female Genital Mutilation Act, while correctly updating the text to remove the federal law’s gender discrimination. It includes protection for females, which is useful (if likely redundant) since Massachusetts does not have a state law prohibiting female genital mutilation. The Massachusetts bill is reasonable and should move out of committee, where it’s scheduled for a public hearing on March 2nd, and pass into law.

It won’t, of course. I’m hopeful it will at least get an honest hearing, but I’ve worked on this topic too long to be that naive. Too many people are unwilling to consider all facts, particularly those detrimental to their status quo preferences.

For example, this editorial from Massachusetts, from Wicked Local, reveals that its authors fail to understand even the actual text of the bill.

Thumbs Down:

Circumcision is a crime? Through state Sen. Michael W. Morrissey, Charles Antonelli of Quincy has decided to waste the Senate’s time with a bill that would ban male circumcision of anyone under the age of 18 in Massachusetts unless medically necessary. The measure would get right in the way of parental rights, imposing a fine and/or up to 14 years in prison on people who violate this ban. Antonelli is the Massachusetts director of MGMbill.org — a group of “we know better than the majority of doctors” nuts working to ban what it calls “male genital mutilation.”

Is it a waste of time to get in the way of parental rights to alter a daughter’s genitals? Because the bill does that, as the excerpt above proves. The federal Anti-FGM act does the same. So, the question here is what is the full list of plenary parental ‘rights’ that require only that the child have a penis?

For what it’s worth, if a doctor believe a healthy child needs surgery, yes, I’m more informed than he or she is. And he or she violates the Hippocratic Oath when recommending genital cutting, regardless of the healthy patient’s gender.

This group shoves aside the belief held by most of the medical community that circumcision reduces susceptibility to HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases as well as urinary tract infections and penile cancer. The anti-circumcision group declares “those findings are not a valid reason to amputate a healthy, functioning body part of a child.”

I won’t speak for those involved with MGMBill.org, but for me, I shove nothing aside. Prophylactic circumcision has the potential to achieve those results, statistically. So what? Because, somehow, possessing an objectively healthy, functioning body part does not indicate that surgery is not valid for that healthy, functioning body part. There are apparently no ethical considerations involved. There is apparently no need for an objective look at the relative and absolute risks involved. There is apparently no need to question whether or not the child might want his normal, healthy foreskin.

It’s frustrating that Wicked Local defiantly states that circumcision reduces susceptibility to HIV without also noting that every study showing this risk reduction involved only adult volunteers, not non-consenting children. Note, too, that the studies only found a reduction in female-to-male transmission through vaginal intercourse, a significantly smaller problem in the United States than in Africa.

But Wicked Local seems to perceive the issue to be about only potential benefits, no matter how trivial or easily avoided with lesser methods the risks posed by the foreskin. So surely we are failing all children by not proactively removing dangerous body parts from their bodies. To avoid getting in the way of parental ‘rights’, when do we start studies to determine whether or not there is a potential medical benefit to be achieved from prophylactic breast tissue removal? Although, since some adult women are already voluntarily having their breasts removed pre-emptively, we can assume that a plenary parental ‘right’ to remove the healthy, functioning breast tissue from daughters exists. What’s good enough for the parents is good enough for the children. Right?

That’s all intentionally absurd, of course. But without a boundary, there is nowhere to end the madness. The subjective boundary Wicked Local establishes here is arbitrary and based on its editors personal preferences. The law cannot be based on such whim. For proxy consent, the child’s objective needs matter first. Where there is no objective need for intervention, there is no parental ‘right’ to intervene. Surgery must be prohibited. That is a clear standard that applies to males and females, genitals and not genitals.

Also ignored is Jewish and Muslim tradition in which all males are usually circumcised as part of their faith.

Passive voice, males are circumcised. They do not choose. Indeed. But this bill does not seek to prohibit religious circumcision. Adult males may still choose circumcision for themselves if they believe their God demands it. This bill focuses on minors, where civil law must take precedent over religious texts. It codifies that the human rights of every individual exist first, and no amount of parental preference can supersede that in the pursuit of subjective, unprovable spiritual or cultural benefits. Unless we’re opening the law books to strike any law that violates a religious dictate governing what one person may do to another, there is nothing objectionable on this front. Are we opening the law books in this manner for a purge of religiously objectionable civil laws?

The bill has not yet been assigned to committee. It would be best to see this ridiculous waste of government time sniped from the legislative agenda and left discarded on the Senate clerk’s floor. Parents and doctors, not legislators, should decide the merits of whether a male child should or should not have a circumcision.

Parents and doctors, not legislators, should decide the merits of whether a female child should or should not have genital cutting? Again, if we’re saying that parents have a plenary ‘right’ to alter their sons for subjective reasons, the same plenary ‘right’ must exist for their daughters. Or we could consider the importance of the omitted word, a healthy child, and recognize that the answer is irrefutable because it is illegal (and immoral) to discriminate based on gender alone. Either all children have the same right to bodily integrity or no children have that right. The former breaks our current ignorance, while the latter turns children into property.

And here’s a tip for the angry anti-circumcision group — you would do a lot better with an informative public education campaign and debate rather than going state-to-state trying to shove your will on everyone and toss parents who don’t agree with you into jail for up to 14 years — a tact that so far has not seen even one state go along with this nonsense.

I agree, an informative public education campaign and debate is the best way to go. We shouldn’t need to legislate against something unjust. But we do, because the rights
of boys in America (and Massachusetts, in this case) are violated every day. I can explain how male circumcision is egregious because it violates human rights. I can explain how male circumcision is egregious because it is not the least invasive solution for every perceived benefit. But the Wicked Local editors haven’t even bothered to understand the text of the bill. I can overcome ignorance. I cannot overcome willful ignorance.

Schumer and Hatch Almost Discover Incentives

Senators Charles Schumer and Orrin Hatch have a plan to help employment. As expected, the usual caveat about bi-partisan action applies.

Here’s the idea: Starting immediately after enactment, any private-sector employer that hires a worker who had been unemployed for at least 60 days will not have to pay its 6.2 percent Social Security payroll tax on that employee for the duration of 2010. The Social Security trust fund will then be made whole with spending cuts elsewhere in the budget between now and 2015. That’s it. Simple to understand, and easy to explain.

I’m going to leave the issue of economics, of whether or not this could work, to those more qualified to answer. For me, the issue is incentives. They’re trying to create an incentive for employers to expand employment. It’s fine if you like that sort of meddling, but I don’t. I’d rather they get the government out of the way than try to find the ‘correct’ plan to lead. They’ve already stated in the article that the Congress of the 1970s created ineffective, burdensome incentives. Our default assumption should be that today’s Congress will do the same whenever it tries.

To this plan, though, what about the worker who hasn’t been unemployed at least 60 days? Why is it fair to disadvantage her, however marginally? What’s magical about day 60 that isn’t burdensome about day 59? Day 58? I can think of many complicated individual circumstances – some ridiculous, some not – complicated by this arbitrary incentive.

More:

In addition, because the benefit starts on the date of hiring and does not have an arbitrary cap, more businesses will want to use it. And since it is an elimination of the employer’s share of the Social Security tax for these workers — rather than a fixed or capped dollar amount — the complexities of making the incentive work with a firm’s payroll software are greatly reduced because employers will know simply to zero out the tax for these workers.

I work with financial software systems. Contrary to what the good senators believe, software design often excludes “simply zero out the tax” for individual workers. Incorporating such changes is often supported in a company’s license with the software provider, but those changes must be implemented in some capacity. That takes time. Maybe it is “simply zero out the tax,” but it’s more likely to require a new field to turn this feature on and off. That requires testing to verify that it doesn’t create other problems. These changes may require new code to apply the proposed 60 day minimum requirement for unemployment history. There may also be new levels of approval, since you wouldn’t want everyone to have the authority to “simply zero out the tax.” All of this must be maintained.

In the current environment, no business wants to wait until 2011 to receive a tax credit for someone it hires today. Another obvious benefit of this proposal to forgive payroll taxes is that it keeps money in a business’s pockets, since the tax is simply not collected in the first place.

If these software changes can’t be implemented immediately, the tax will be collected in the first place, creating further paperwork to receive a refund.

There are some additional rules that would have to be put in place. For example, eligible workers would have to be hired for a minimum of 30 hours per week, and workers who are family members of the employer would not be eligible. The payroll tax reduction would be for private-sector jobs only; new jobs that are created by tax dollars in the first place would not be eligible. And any employer with a lower total payroll in 2010 than it had in 2009 would have to forfeit the benefit — businesses shouldn’t be allowed to shed jobs and still receive a tax benefit.

Isn’t this plan supposed to be simple?

Like all politics, this is about appearances hiding the desire for control. There’s no concern for productivity. Much can happen in the next eleven months that could cause a company to shed jobs, despite a good faith effort to expand. But it shouldn’t be allowed, because we need full employment, not full productivity. To a politician, digging unneeded holes is no less valuable than any other job. This is no more true than when the politician can claim credit for creating the hole-digging job.

Ezra Klein’s Fundamental Pact

It’s tempting to point and snicker at the schadenfreude in this Ezra Klein entry, Demoralized Democrats, but that’s rather pointless. Anyway, there’s a useful insight to be drawn from his partisan naivety. Consider:

The fundamental pact between a political party and its supporters is that the two groups believe the same thing and pledge to work on it together. And the Democratic base feels that it has held to its side of the bargain. It elected a Democratic majority and a Democratic president. It swallowed tough compromises on the issues it cared about most. It swallowed concessions to politicians it didn’t like and industry groups it loathed. But it persisted. Because these things are important. That’s why those voters believe in them. That’s why they’re Democrats.

The problem with Klein’s fundamental pact is that disaster must result from believing one can be all things to all people, even when “all people” is a subset of all people. He seems to believe the Democratic base consists of everyone who voted Democrat in November 2008. But the proof against his theory is within his paragraph. Where do concessions to politicians come from? Where do concessions to industry groups come from? Our corrupt two-party system requires compromises like this because the complexities of life must be divided into either-or options. But there are many people who possess ideas and preferences other than either-or. It’s a stupid way to run a government, but it’s obviously our current system. Klein’s fundamental pact doesn’t exist the way he thinks it does. I suspect his belief is widespread among all partisans, which is why this stomach-churning political pendulum continues.

The silliness of this supposed pact is why libertarians prefer a government of limited, enumerated powers. Everything else is left to individuals to decide for themselves. Concessions are voluntary or there is no agreement. Life isn’t viewed as a zero-sum game, as it must be in politics. The partisans continue playing this game, bloating our government more as each party’s minority-of-the-population base wins its next “decisive” victory to dictate public policy, believing that somehow its newest win is the final, lasting proof of its divine correctness. The rest of us must take solace in the predictable schadenfreude, which is expensive and unrewarding.

Why I Skim The Daily Dish

I still have Andrew Sullivan’s blog in my RSS reader, but only as a way to stay informed on what’s happening. Most days I only skim it, not carefully. Where he used to be open to questions, however scattered he may have bounced around on his emotional responses, now he usually exhibits a single with-me-or-against-me attitude. In anticipation of Brown’s victory in yesterday’s special election for the Massachusetts Senate seat previously held by Ted Kennedy, Sullivan wrote (emphasis in original):

The second explanation is the Brooks/Noonan theory that somehow everything feels wrong to the Independent or conservative-leaning voters. They have an instinctual fear of more government and, even though the Senate bill couldn’t be more minimalist within the confines of expanding access and controlling costs, this gnaws at them. I think this is a legitimate feeling (I have it too) – but an illegitimate argument.

Look: the markets conservatives have believed in have failed.

As the more honest conservatives (Greenspan, Posner, Bartlett) have noted, the financial crisis was a clear indicator that we need a more active and vigilant government in regulating the financial sector. And when you look at the results of America’s hybrid and dysfunctional healthcare system, it is more than clear that the status quo is unsustainable. Yes, this system has pioneered amazing breakthroughs and a pharmaceutical revolution that has transformed lives. But the cost and inefficiency of this is simply staggering. Look at the graph above. If you think it’s great, support the GOP. They don’t want to change anything, but a few tweaks.

Which part of America’s hybrid and dysfunctional health care system proves that the market has failed? It’s an interesting claim, but it’s not an argument. It’s a silly analysis of what the market should provide and how much it should cost. There’s nothing objective here. There’s only the expectation that we all agree that the government is the only way to fix the market failure of our hybrid health care system. As he writes later in his post:

At least Obama seems interested in government. The GOP seems interested only in politics and rhetoric that can sustain the bubble of deep denial they live in.

Obama and the rest of the Democrats are interested in government as the solution, which is the wrong approach. It’s easy to suggest that government will be reformed in the process, but that’s a rather nonsensical assurance when the problem is systemic in our interest-driven political system. Wishful thinking will not stop the flow of special handouts and exemptions that result with government involvement.

There’s a complex case to be debated, which hasn’t happened because it’s easier to spew anecdotes as universal fact. It’s easier to write “…Tea Partiers are just opposing the working poor having a chance to buy health insurance,” as Sullivan wrote in November, than it is to confront a group’s objections. In fairness, Sullivan has questioned what Republicans would do instead. But assuming indifference and malice in the face of silence is unhelpful speculation.

This is not to endorse the Republican approach. I find the party to be devoid of any value, which is to say I hold Democrats and Republicans in equal esteem. Nor am I endorsing Senator-elect Brown as a beacon of principled leadership newly arrived in Washington. From the little I’ve read, he’s more of the same, defending torture by the American government, for example. But him not having a coherent or satisfactory answer on the current Senate and House health care bills does not equate with there being no coherent or satisfactory rebuttals to the current bills. As Mark at The League of Ordinary Gentlemen wrote:

It is increasingly frustrating to me that, for many supporters of Obama, any belief that the existing health care reform bills will do more harm than good is automatically written off as being in bad faith or, as it were, “nihilistic.”

I believe I’ve advocated here that any health care reform aimed at reducing costs must start with untangling health care from employment. An individual’s employer is no more responsible for her health than it is for insuring her automobile or home. It’s a holdover from the ridiculous tax rates of the World War II-era, where offering health insurance as an employment benefit was economically wise. Rather than fix the rates, government enshrined the concept in tax law. That was stupid, but it worked when people worked at a single company for life. Today it’s uncommon to have had only a single employer by age 30. If we don’t fix that broken government-provided incentive, we’ll continue to have people lose their health insurance when they lose their jobs.

The current legislation keeps that tie, but punishes indiscriminately for receiving “too much” of a benefit. That’s just doubling down on the madness of the past, thinking that government can fix what government broke by adding more government. It’s the nonsensical thinking of the central planner, the kind who believes that anything that isn’t what it should be in a hybrid market is clear proof that the market has failed, requiring more of the planner’s expertise.

To show that other ideas exist, Megan McArdle offers her suggestion:

Raise the Medicare tax by half a percentage point, and eliminate the tax-deductibiity of health insurance benefits for people making more than $150K a year in household income, $100K for singles. Then make the federal government the insurer of last resort. Any medical expenses more than 15% or 20% of household income, get picked up by Uncle Sam.

I’m not a fan of this because it still messes with the tax code, encouraging employers and employees to tinker with non-cash compensation for borderline salaries. Other people may want that approach, but I’d rather have cash and make my own decisions. Social engineering is not good. For example, a $100k threshold means different realities in D.C. versus Omaha. It’s a lot of money either way, but that punishes people unfairly in areas with a higher cost of living. The tax code would need to be more complicated to rectify this problem, which proves the need to simplify away from government trying to influence “correct” decisions.

That said, I’m willing to consider it as an opening to ridding the tax code of the health insurance exemption.

So, alternative ideas clearly exist. But it’s easier for Sullivan to vent, lumping everyone who disagrees with him into a tidy, immature opposition. In a later post yesterday, he wrote in a post titled “A Libertarian Revolt?” (emphasis in original):

Since so much of the energy behind the Brown candidacy seems to be driven by anti-government sentiment, why is someone like me – who actually criticized Bush for being big government long before these late-comers – so dismayed?

Here’s why. The rage is adolescent. It did not exist when the Republicans were in power and exploded government during years of economic growth. Fox News backed Bush to the hilt through it all, as he added mounds of unfunded entitlements to the next generation’s debt, and then brought Beck in as soon as Obama inherited the mess. Scott Brown, moreover, has no plans to cut the debt or control government: none. He is running in d
efense of every cent in Medicare. He wants to increase the deficit by more tax cuts. He favors an all-powerful executive branch that can suspend habeas corpus and torture people. He has no intention of cutting defense. His position on the uninsured is: get your own states to help. His position on soaring healthcare costs is: stop the first attempt to control them.

We hear Karl Rove lamenting big government! We hear Dick Cheney worrying about deficits! The cynicism here is gob-smacking. And the libertarian right is just happy to go along.

Like I said, I don’t endorse Brown for these reasons. If I lived in Massachusetts, I wouldn’t have voted for him or Coakley in yesterday’s election. So why am I lumped into the nihilist group because I’m a libertarian who thinks the current health care bills would cause harm to the nation? Sullivan is aware enough to understand that Libertarians ≠ Republicans, yet he pretends they’re synonymous without looking at what libertarians offer because both groups oppose the solution he wants. It’s unfair to rant incomprehensibly against something that is clearly untrue. One might say it’s adolescent, which is why The Daily Dish is no longer must reading for me.