Clipmarks | Rustee's 'politics' clips

Reason in Politics

Wed, 10 Sep 2008 03:06:23 GMT

clipped by: Rustee
clipper's remarks: Written in 1940.

What is wrong with Western civilization is the accepted habit of judging political parties merely by asking whether they seem new and radical enough, not by analyzing whether they are wise or unwise, or whether they are apt to achieve their aims.

The usual terminology of political language is stupid. What is “left” and what is “right”?

Reaction against an unwise policy is not to be condemned. And progress towards chaos is not to be commended.

People hasten to exchange their “old” ideas for “new” ones, because they fear to appear old-fashioned and reactionary. They join the chorus decrying the shortcomings of the capitalistic civilization and speak in elated enthusiasm of the achievements of the autocrats. Nothing is today more fashionable than slandering Western civilization.

“Orthodoxy” is not an evil if the doctrine on which the “orthodox” stand is sound.

What mankind needs today is liberation from the rule of nonsensical slogans and a return to sound reasoning.

Tags: politics, ideology, reason

New Record Deficit, Same Old Politics

Sat, 02 Aug 2008 06:28:39 GMT

clipped by: Rustee

Clip Source: www.cnsnews.com

Earlier this week the White House announced that the projected Fiscal Year 2009 deficit will be $490 billion, an amount much higher than originally anticipated and also a record for the national deficit. The deficit for the current fiscal year is expected to reach $410 billion.

As usual, politicians and many of the major media outlets explicitly or implicitly have blamed President George W. Bush’s tax cuts for much of the problem.

The problem is not his tax cuts, though. Bush’s tax cuts stimulated tremendous economic growth. History and most economists inform us that a reduction in the tax burden almost always stimulates growth.

The problem is that our elected officials lack the fortitude and wisdom to make the necessary cuts in spending that budget realities demand.

Congress must make some difficult decisions and cut the Federal Government’s expenditures.

Tags: taxes, economics, government, politics

Coercive Federalism

Wed, 12 Mar 2008 02:31:22 GMT

clipped by: Rustee

Clip Source: www.governing.com

To an extent we've not seen in decades, Washington is trying to dictate what states, counties and cities must do and to disallow them from promoting policies of their own.

Don Borut, who runs the National League of Cities, calls the trend a move to "coercive federalism" or, when he's being more blunt, "shift-and-shaft federalism," with Washington using regulations, mandates and pre-emptions to get its way.

What's more, the feds want a greater say while picking up a declining portion of the bill. "On sheer revenues alone, the federal government isn't as relevant as it once was to the daily operations of cities," in Borut's view. At same time, in the half-century after World War II, mandates on local governments increased more than tenfold.

What's new is that the states are pushing back, and on many key issues federal officials have been backing down, largely because the political imperative rests with the states.

Tags: government, politics, federalism

Identity Politics - Funny Poster

Sat, 08 Mar 2008 06:25:26 GMT

clipped by: Rustee

Clip Source: www.ktrh.com

Tags: politics, obama, funny

Obama's Meteoric Rise

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 01:25:43 GMT

clipped by: Rustee
clipper's remarks:

So how has Obama repaid Jones?

Last June, to prove his commitment to government transparency, Obama released a comprehensive list of his earmark requests for fiscal year 2008. It comprised more than $300 million in pet projects for Illinois, including tens of millions for Jones's Senate district.

Shortly after Jones became Senate president, I remember asking his view on pork-barrel spending.

I'll never forget what he said:

"Some call it pork; I call it steak."

Fascinating article...but far too lengthy for this clip to suffice.

Clip Source: www.houstonpress.com

When asked about his legislative record, Obama rattles off several bills he sponsored as an Illinois lawmaker.

It's a lengthy record filled with core liberal issues. But what's interesting, and almost never discussed, is that he built his entire legislative record in Illinois in a single year.

Republican Illinois Senate Majority Leader James "Pate" Philip was replaced by Emil Jones Jr.

Jones had served in the Illinois Legislature for three decades.

Jones appointed Obama sponsor of virtually every high-profile piece of legislation, angering many rank-and-file state legislators who had more seniority than Obama and had spent years championing the bills.

During his seventh and final year in the state Senate, Obama's stats soared. He sponsored a whopping 26 bills passed into law — including many he now cites in his presidential campaign when attacked as inexperienced.

It was a stunning achievement that started him on the path of national politics — and he couldn't have done it without Jones.

Tags: election, barack obama, politics

World Health Org's Problematic Ranking

Sat, 01 Mar 2008 18:56:20 GMT

clipped by: Rustee

Clip Source: www.cato.org

Those who cite the WHO rankings typically present them as an objective measure of the relative performance of national health care systems. They are not. The WHO rankings depend crucially on a number of underlying assumptions— some of them logically incoherent, some characterized by substantial uncertainty, and some rooted in ideological beliefs and values that not everyone shares.

WHO rankings themselves have a strong ideological component. They include factors that are arguably unrelated to actual health performance, some of which could even improve in response to worse health performance. Even setting those concerns aside, the rankings are still highly sensitive to both measurement error and assumptions about the relative importance of the components. And finally, the WHO rankings reflect implicit value judgments and lifestyle preferences that differ among individuals and across countries.

Full Text of Briefing Paper no. 101

(PDF, 216 KB | HTML)

Tags: politics, policy, healthcare

Good Things Happen, Get Over It

Fri, 04 Jan 2008 04:34:33 GMT

clipped by: Rustee

Clip Source: www.opinionjournal.com

On New Year's Eve, Gallup's poll delivered unto us the good news that 84% of Americans say they are satisfied with how things are going for them personally.

One then has to account for the darker data Gallup released two weeks earlier: Some 70% of those responding believe the nation is headed in the wrong direction.

It is to suggest that the never-off eye of modern political media leaves the impression that nothing good is possible. If progress happens, as with the surge in Iraq or a new therapy for cancer, it must be diminished by "analysis," listing four things that could "go wrong." As a way to absorb the way the world works, this is depressing. Good things happen. Get over it.

The New Year demands an admission that some good has been achieved, not by the wave of a politician's magic wand but through many daily hands at work in the nation.

Tags: media, politics

Income Mobility

Sun, 16 Dec 2007 07:19:28 GMT

clipped by: Rustee
clipper's remarks: "Unfortunately, because so many Americans buy into the politics of envy, politicians have a leg up in enacting measures that cripple economic growth."

Clip Source: www.gmu.edu

Listening to people like Lou Dobbs, John Edwards and Mike Huckabee lamenting the plight of America's middle class and poor, you'd have to conclude that things are going to hell in a handbasket. According to them, there's wage stagnation, while the rich are getting richer and the poor becoming poorer. There are a couple of updates that tell quite a different story.

The Nov. 13 Wall Street Journal editorial "Movin' On Up" reports on a recent U.S. Treasury study of income tax returns from 1996 and 2005. The study tracks what happened to tax filers 25 years of age and up during this 10-year period. Controlling for inflation, nearly 58 percent of the poorest income group in 1996 moved to a higher income group by 2005. Twenty-six percent of them achieved middle or upper-middle class income, and over 5 percent made it into the highest income group.

Over the decade, the inflation-adjusted median income of all tax filers rose by 24 percent. As such, it refutes Dobbs-Edwards-Huckabee claims

Tags: economics, politics, income

Belief in Global Warming

Fri, 07 Dec 2007 03:52:43 GMT

clipped by: Rustee
clipper's remarks: What if everyone believes in global warmism only because everyone believes in global warmism?

Clip Source: www.opinionjournal.com

What if the heads being counted to certify an alleged "consensus" arrived at their positions by counting heads?

"Availability cascade" has been coined for the way a proposition can become irresistible simply by the media repeating it; "informational cascade" for the tendency to replace our beliefs with the crowd's beliefs; and "reputational cascade" for the rational incentive to do so.

Public opinion cascades are powerful but also fragile--liable to be overturned in an instant when new information comes along. The current age of global warming politics will certainly end with a whimper once a few consecutive years of cooling are recorded

No, this wouldn't prove or disprove a human role in warming, only that climate is variable and subject to complicated influences. But it would also eliminate the large incentive for politicians to traffic in doom-laden predictions--because such predictions would no longer command media assent and would cease to function as levers to redistribute resources

Tags: global warming, climate change

Liberals Are Now Progressives (Again)

Sat, 22 Sep 2007 08:20:29 GMT

clipped by: Rustee

Clip Source: townhall.com

Nonetheless, it is important to know what a progressive is since that is now the preferred term of the left. It comes from the Progressive Era. One of its intellectual and political leaders was President Woodrow Wilson. The Progressive Movement's chief aim was to centralize power by eliminating those pesky little concepts of separation of powers and checks and balances and escape the confines of a fixed constitution so that America could progress (not that it hadn't up to that point as evidenced by the abolishment of slavery and its rise as a world power).

The aim of the Progressive Movement succeeded as it gave birth to the rise of the administrative state and the consolidation of power in Washington during the New Deal and Great Society periods where many new rights and federal powers were suddenly found into the Constitution.

When politicians are unconstrained by a fixed constitution and checks and balances, we better hope their idea of progress is the right one.

Tags: liberals, progressive, politics, constitution