We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
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Interesting story out of Oregon on their state health insurance scheme. Much to the relief of Oregon taxpayers, no doubt, some 40,000 people have dropped out of the Oregon Health Plan program, which provides state-subsidized health insurance.
The reason they dropped out? I don’t know, really, but it is interesting that the newspaper casts the story entirely in terms of the poor folk being dropped from the program. I say the participants dropped out because they apparently chose not to pay the premiums, which are as low as $6.00 per month. The response of “advocates” for the poor is just priceless.
Advocates for the poor say the premiums are too expensive for some people and the government may have overestimated the ability of people to mail a check.
“It’s an enormous barrier,” said Ellen Pinney, director of the Oregon Health Action Committee. “Let alone the $6, there is the whole issue of writing a check or getting a money order, putting it in an envelope with a stamp and putting it in the mail to this place in Portland that must receive it by the due date.”
$6.00 a month too expensive? Give me a break. This sounds to me like a classic example of “I can’t afford it” as code for “I have other things I would rather spend the money on.” If you forego a single trip per month to McDonald’s, you will save enough to pay a $6.00 monthly premium.
Really, though, the notion that poor people are incapable of mailing a check has got to be the last word in condescension and infantilization. Believe me, anyone who can fill out the paperwork to qualify for Medicaid or other state-paid health insurance (or find someone to do it for them) is capable of writing a check or getting a money order and putting it in the mail.
I’m not sure what larger point this story illustrates, to tell you the truth. Perhaps the corrosive effect of the welfare state on its recipients. Perhaps that, if you support the welfare state, sooner or later you will start to sound like a total ninny.
Thanks to OpinionJournal for the link.
Herewith inaugurating a look at the “Annals of Bureaucracy”, a sad tale, via our friends at Hit & Run, of the government school bureaucracy in action.
Applications and letters of interest from idealistic teachers continue to pour into inner-city school systems across the country, and many candidates, like Cochran, are being ignored or contacted much too late to do any good, according to an unusually detailed study by the nonprofit New Teacher Project.
A new report on the study, “Missed Opportunities: How We Keep High-Quality Teachers Out of Urban Schools,” concludes that those school systems alienate many talented applicants because of rules that protect teachers already on staff and because of slow-moving bureaucracies and budgeting delays.
“As a result, urban districts lose the very candidates they need in their classrooms . . . and millions of disadvantaged students in America’s cities pay the price with lower-quality teachers than their suburban peers,” wrote researchers Jessica Levin and Meredith Quinn, who were given rare access to the inner workings of school districts in four U.S. cities.
It was standard procedure to let impressive applications sit in file drawers for months, the researchers found, while the candidates, needing to get their lives in order, secured work elsewhere. One district, for example, received 4,000 applications for 200 slots but was slow to offer jobs and lost out on top candidates.
It goes on and on, enumerating the ways unions, administrators, and legislators all contribute to a system that seems designed to insure that the best teachers do not get anywhere near the neediest kids.
President Bush just nominated a judge for elevation to the District of Columbia Court of Appeals that I think I can really get behind. The DC Court is arguably the “first among equals” of the federal appellate courts that function one level below the US Supreme Court. Judge Janice Brown has had some very interesting things to say that I think many of a libertarian bent will find appealing:
In Santa Monica Beach, Ltd. v. Superior Court (1999), for instance, she dissented from a decision upholding a rent control ordinance, declaring that “[a]rbitrary government actions which infringe property interests cannot be saved from constitutional infirmity by the beneficial purposes of the regulators.”
In a dissent in San Remo Hotel v. City and County of San Francisco (2002), which upheld the city’s sweeping property restrictions, Justice Brown expanded on that theme. “Theft is still theft even when the government approves of the thievery,” she declared. “The right to express one’s individuality and essential human dignity through the free use of property is just as important as the right to do so through speech, the press, or the free exercise of religion.”
She is, of course, rabidly opposed by the Democrats and by some “social” conservatives. Unless Bush is willing to go to the mattresses for her, she will likely be filibustered by the Senate Democrats and denied a seat on the DC Court. Still, the nomination is good news.
Today on Fox News Channel, I caught a brief interview with retired general Alexander Haig where he was deriding the Congressional naysayers and media pundits who chatter on about the ‘terrible cost’ of this war, as if were some high-tech peacetime procurement program. I certainly do not idolize Haig, we have had plenty of differences in the past. But, in this case, he was ‘right on the money.’
Rather than spending too much, our penny-pinching approach to the prosecution of this war to date has gone beyond simply detracting from its swift completion; it has actually served to give aid and comfort to the enemy by indicating that we lack resolve to persevere. Just look at the numbers (as percentage of US GDP):
Cost of Iraqi campaign – 0.5 (his figure)
Total defense spending – 3 (my figure)
Reagan era defense spending – 8 (mine)
Korean conflict – 15 (his)
WWII – 135 (both)
The fact is, the US can pay the estimated $100bn over the next five years ourselves without breaking a sweat. And it would be worth it to avoid getting the likes of the UN and the EU involved. At the same time, we should be staging invasion forces in Iraq ready to march into Iran and Syria, as well as a couple of carrier battle groups off the Korean peninsula.
This is war… it is time we started treating it as such.
A mere coincidence? Not when election results go wrong:
A fire burning out of control in southern California has grown four times bigger in less than 24 hours.
Several thousand people have been evacuated, as the flames move towards built-up areas.
By Tuesday at the latest, there will be op-ed in the Guardian blaming this on Arnold Schwarzenneger.
It is a little late in the week for all the dust to have settled, but surely by the following Sunday’s talking head shows, a big winner will be Donald Rumsfeld, and the big losers John Kerry and the sensationalist liberal media, over Rumsfeld’s recently leaked memo concerning the War on Terror.
The reason for this is simple: these are precisely the sort of questions the effective senior executive must ask of his/her subordinates. This war calls for outside the box thinking. If you want that, than it is necessary to shake the box from time to time.
I wonder if Rumsfeld is a fan of Denis Waitley?
Ivelina Konstantinova has made the transition from native of a small city in Bulgaria to US citizen and USAF Airman serving in the Middle East:
“I wanted to serve my country, continue my education, and travel,” said Senior Airman Konstantinova, a recreation services specialist assigned to the 379th Expeditionary Services Squadron here. “The military opened doors. And even though I may not be a natural citizen, I feel proud to serve America.”
With people like her out there, keep those “…huddled masses yearning to breathe free” coming!
The Bush administration recently has been pummeled by a quasi-scandal involving the leak of the name of a purported CIA “covert operative.” I won’t go into any details here, as I don’t think there is any “there” there. One of the responses of the Bushies was to crack down on leakers in the administration.
This new anti-leaking policy was, of course, promptly, well, leaked.
From the Philadelphia Inquirer: “Bush told his senior aides Tuesday that he ‘didn’t want to see any stories’ quoting unnamed administration officials in the media anymore, and that if he did, there would be consequences, said a senior administration official who asked that his name not be used.”
The ambitions of the political classes are danger enough but let no-one underestimate the threat posed by the therapy culture:
New York City taxpayers are probably going to be liable not only for the physical injuries inflicted in Wednesday’s Staten Island Ferry crash — which include ten deaths and about 60 injuries resulting in hospitalization, some of them horrific — but also for damages potentially payable to all of the unhurt passengers, widely estimated to number 1,500. A “federal maritime doctrine allows all those who were in the face of danger and who suffered emotional distress to file for compensation, even if they were not physically injured”. Among likely claims, according to Columbia law dean David Leebron, are those from “passengers who claim to now have a fear of ferries that affects their ability to commute and earn a living”.
Damn, I’m thinking of making a claim myself. So what if I actually live in London? So what if I was 3000 miles away when the tragedy occured? I saw it on the news, didn’t I? As a result I have been emotionally scarred, my life has been ruined, I can’t sleep at nights, I keep getting flashbacks and…yadda, yadda, yadda.
Of course, the therapy culture wouldn’t exist at all if it wasn’t so well incentivised with rewards.
This particular article on the oral argument before the US Supreme Court concerning search and siezure doctrine doesn’t really have any looming significance for the future of planetary liberty. I mostly thought it was well-written and funny, and gives some insight into the “sausage factory” of the common law.
First, the set-up:
The Fourth Amendment bars the state from unreasonable searches and seizures. One of the things that makes a search constitutionally “reasonable” is the presence of a warrant. Another is an old common-law requirement: the so-called knock-and-announce rule. The rule is codified in 18 USC § 3109, which provides that in executing a search warrant, “an officer may break open any outer or inner door or window of a house, or any part of a house … if, after notice of his authority and purpose, he is refused admittance.” In cases of likely destruction of the evidence, or danger to life, the cops are free to bash first and knock later.
An insight into the fundamental problem with the appellate courts in the US:
Stevens is still hung up on the statute. The statute requires “refusal” to admit the cops. Silence is not refusal, he says. Salmons replies, “That is the way the statute is worded. But this court has never construed the statute to be read literally.”
Hold the phone.
This is a court that is rabid about construing statutes literally. This is a court that would read Dada poetry literally. They are strangely satisfied with this answer.
Actually, the Supreme Court, like almost any court, only reads statutes literally when that will get them where they want to go. When the words on the page of the governing authority, whether a statute or the Constitution, are inconvenient, well, then we get a lot of blather about “living documents” or “legislative intent” or whatever, until the courts feel we have been lulled into not noticing they are about to say that the governing authority says something which it clearly does not say.
Anyhow, read the article mostly for the wit and the bathroom humor. What’s that, you say? Bathroom humor at the Supreme Court of the United States?
You bet. Read the whole thing, and find out.
Despite the presence of many excellent Canadians in the blogosphere (such as this splendid chap) I don’t know all that much about Canada. My first and only visit to that country was some fifteen years ago and rarely does Canada merit any coverage in the UK media.
However, from what little I have learned I get the impression that it is a country where the left-of-centre political culture is pretty much set in stone and the ruling (and misnamed) ‘Liberal Party’ is a perennial electoral shoe-in.
Could that be about to change?
The leaders of Canada’s two rival right-wing parties said on Wednesday they were very close to agreeing on a merger to form a united conservative movement to challenge the ruling Liberal Party.
Canadian Alliance leader Stephen Harper pulled out of a town hall meeting in his hometown of Calgary, Alberta, to fly back to Ottawa for talks with Peter MacKay, leader of the Progressive Conservatives.
“We haven’t (yet) come to an arrangement but we’ve had some very positive talks and I expect to have some more very shortly, and I am very optimistic about things developing,” Harper told reporters at Calgary airport.
“It’s not often that the political landscape is altered in a big way so quickly but I think we’re very close to doing that,” he said. The tentative name for the united party would be the Conservative Party of Canada.
Interesting as far as it goes but it does beg quite a few questions, such as:
1. Is this ‘merger’ likely to happen or is this all aimless flapping?
2. If it does succeed then is the Conservative Party of Canada going to commit to rolling back the Canadian state?
And….
Polls give the Liberals the same support as all four opposition parties combined, but also show that a single right-wing party could mount a serious challenge.
3. What are their chances of climbing that electoral mountain any time soon or at all?
The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS, for the acronym-addicted) began laying out its agenda for its upcoming session by announcing the cases that it has accepted for review, and those that it has not. Among the cases that it has refused to review is the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals (federal circuit courts are the appellate courts for the federal system in the US; the 9th Circuit has jurisdiction over the West Coast) decision barring the federal government from prosecuting (or persecuting, take your pick) doctors for recommending marijuana to their patients.
The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said that physicians should be able to speak candidly with patients without fear of government sanctions, but they can be punished if they actually help patients obtain the drug.
So, this has been pitched relatively narrowly as a free speech issue, rather than as a broader liberty/self-ownership issue. That is probably a wise strategic decision on the part of marijuana advocates. I personally don’t see where the federal government has the Constitutional power to outlaw drug use in the first place, but I am old-fashioned and believe the Constitution means what it says. SCOTUS hasn’t subscribed to that view since FDR intimidated the Court into submission in the 1930s.
Nine states have laws legalizing marijuana for people with physician recommendations or prescriptions: Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Nevada, Oregon and Washington. And 35 states have passed legislation recognizing marijuana’s medicinal value.
But federal law bans the use of pot under any circumstances.
The case gave the court an opportunity to review its second medical marijuana case in two years. The last one involved cannabis clubs.
As I recall, in that case SCOTUS said that cannabis clubs could prosecuted even if they were supplying only medical marijuana users.
The optimism expressed by various advocates about the import of SCOTUS refusing to take this case is badly misplaced, in my opinion. A refusal to take a case is far short of a SCOTUS opinion upholding the ruling of the 9th Circuit, and the annals of the Court are replete with examples of cases declined, only to have the same issue come up in a different posture later on to be reversed by SCOTUS.
Still, this is qualified win for the forces of good, feel free to celebrate with your substance of choice.
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We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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