Tag: issues

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National politics

The Old Testament Approach to Immigration


photo credit: melanzane1013

Lately I have been studying the Old Testament more closely than I ever have before and finding some hidden gems there. I am currently in Leviticus which I had remembered as nothing but heave offerings, wave offerings, burnt offerings, sin offerings, and instructions on where to burn “the fat that is above the caul.”

In Leviticus 19 I was surprised to find the answer to the one area of immigration policy over which my mind was not already completely settled – namely the issue of what approach we should take with regard to illegal immigrants who, aside from their immigration status, are decent members of society (which is almost certainly the majority of them). It is an issue that did not seem particularly important to me until some people began to try using immigration as a stumbling block for the LDS church by suggesting that local church leaders should be turning in members who they knew were living in the United States illegally.

Anyone reading the title of this post might have first assumed that the old testament approach to illegal immigration would be stoning – they would be wrong.

The Israelites are told directly in Leviticus 19:33-34 that “if a stranger sojourn with thee in your land, ye shall not vex (or oppress) him. But the stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself.”

Continue reading “The Old Testament Approach to Immigration”
Categories
National politics

Willing Suspension of Disbelief

Reports from the CBO that a Universal Health Coverage Bill would be budget neutral are obviously based on the third kind of lie (namely statistics). Commonhealth sums up the effects of the bill like so:

The legislation:

  1. gets rid of employer based insurance (employers that contribute to coverage would give employees that money at first, and eventually shift to a federal health coverage tax)
  2. requires all Americans to have health insurance
  3. offers subsidized coverage up to 400% FPL (Mass is up to 300%)
  4. sets up purchasing pools (like the Connector)

Could someone please point out to me where this plan gives health care providers an incentive to provide efficient, high-quality care? It seems to me that insuring all our uninsured citizens will never pay for itself in a system that thrives on inefficiency – as the current system does. Adding inefficiency couldn’t possibly pay for itself.

Ending employer based insurance is potentially a good thing. Requiring everyone to buy insurance looks like an incentive for more inefficiency and even price gouging. And one of my senators is sponsoring this. I think he should have his head examined.

Categories
culture politics

Government is a Tool

LaVarr Webb asks Utah Policy readers if they think government is always a necessary evil or if it can be a force for good. Since my answer to that question goes directly to the heart of what my blog is about I thought I’d share my answer here.

Government is not always necessary (an isolated group of people who were respectful of each other would not need any government – if it were possible to be really isolated anymore), and it is certainly not always evil. Can it be a force for good? The answer depends on what you mean by “force.” It is not possible to force people to be good so when government is being used to force people to act a certain way then you can be sure that it is not good.

Government, like any tool, is good so long as it is being used for its proper purpose. The purpose of government is to protect individual rights. Once people start using government as a force to mandate the will of the majority on the minority, or even the will of the minority on the majority, then government is not good. Unfortunately that is how too many people view government today, as a force to promote their own view on society as a whole.

No matter how well intentioned (and most of them are well intentioned) an activist is in their efforts to make the world better through some government action, they are using the tool of government incorrectly and there will be undesirable consequences.

Take the example of racism. Government cannot be used as a force to make people be not racist. It can be used to force students of different skin colors to attend the same school building, but that is not the underlying problem. The underlying problem can only be solved by using a different tool.

Racism is not right or good, but it is the right of each individual to be racially fair-minded or racially biased. Where racism is concerned, the proper place of government is to ensure that appropriate action is taken when one person tramples the rights of another. In fact, the government need not even consider whether racism was the cause of that infringement of rights, only that the rights were infringed and what the appropriate response is towards the person or persons who did the infringing.

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politics

Free Marketer’s Dilemma

I’m a proponent of the value of free markets and their ability to enrich people. The problem is that the free market only works in a closed system, in other words a free market is not favored when intersecting with markets which are being manipulated. The issue of how to compensate for intersecting our supposedly free market with other markets which impose duties and protective tariffs on imported good led me to think of the Prisoner’s dilemma from game theory.

Briefly, the prisoner’s dilemma is a situation where the results of your actions will vary depending on the actions of others over whom you have no control. If one market imposes tariffs and the other does not the market with tariffs benefits at the expense of the other market. If both markets impose tariffs then the playing field is level, but both are worse off than if neither of them impose tariffs.

Thankfully there may be a solution to the problem by studying the prisoners dilemma. Our economic interactions specifically resemble a specific form of the prisoner’s dilemma called The iterated prisoner’s dilemma. Under this specific variation the interactions are repeated so that the participants have a history of interactions. In a competition of computerized players the winning algorithm was one called “tit for tat” (later improved versions have been classed as “tit for tat with forgiveness”). This kind of a strategy encourages others to play nice without simply being a doormat for those who wish to use tariffs.

Does this sound like it would work in international economics?

Categories
National politics

Rhetoric Overshadows Facts

The well titled post, The World Is Not Going To End This Weekend, illustrates how easily an issue can be skewed simply by blurring the facts. Quoting from a post at the Politico which contains the rhetoric surrounding the debate about extending the Protect America Act Timothy Lee goes on to show the truth:

. . .” a measure to extend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act as the deadline approaches. The measure, which failed 191 to 229, would have extended the bill an additional three weeks”. . .

FISA is not expiring this weekend. FISA was passed in 1978 and isn’t slated to expire ever. What’s going to expire this weekend is the Protect America Act, which gave the president some additional spying powers beyond those he enjoyed under FISA. And in fact, even that is misleading, because all that’s really going to expire is the ability to authorize new surveillance activities. The PAA allowed the government to authorize surveillance programs for a year, which means that any surveillance programs that have already been approved will continue to be authorized until August at the earliest.

What this means is that the only real effect of the PAA’s expiration is that if a new terrorist suspect comes to the government’s attention, and he makes a phone call or sends an email that passes through the United States, then the government would need to fill out the extra paperwork required to get a FISA warrant in order to surveil that call. This paperwork can be filled out after the interception begins, so we’re not talking about the NSA missing any important phone calls, we’re just talking about [a bit more paperwork].

This same kind of fudging happens from activists on both sides of most issues. It’s no wonder that the average voter who only knows what they see in the media has such a hard time seeing any debate completely clearly. Their views are almost always being skewed based on the news they receive.

In the midst of all our government social engineering maybe we could make a law to outlaw such abstraction in our news – but I guess that would be counterproductive every time a politician wants to make an emotional appeal to the country.

Categories
National politics

Feeling Bloated

As if the Republican party (thanks largely to the current administration) had not long ago lost any credibility to apply the “tax and spend” label to the Democrats, the American Enterprise Institute has now published a report on just how fat our favorite Elephant is. (hat tip Cato @ Liberty)

Allowing for our military expenditures, making the Bush tax cuts permanent, adding prescription drug coverage to Medicare, removing the alternative minimum tax, and this years stimulus package we would still be spending hundreds of billions less this year than we are and we would have a balanced budget through 2017 if Bush had otherwise maintained the discretionary spending levels that Bill Clinton left to him.

Before the Democrats and our current Clinton get too puffed up over this fact we should all be reminded that the budgets left by President Clinton were the result of 6 years of struggle between a Republican Congress and a Democratic President. The excesses of President Bush are the result of 6 years of cooperation between a Congress and a President from the same party. One year of a Democratic Congress and our spendthrift Republican administration does not seem to have brought us noticeably toward the relative fiscal restraint we had achieved by the end of the Clinton presidency.

That struggle between the different ideals of the two parties looks like a good thing in practice, not just in campaigning. It almost makes me hope that we never again have a President and a Congress who essentially agree on most issues.

Categories
National politics

Nobody Seems Impressed

I chuckled as I returned to an article from early December by Paul Krugman about how:

In past financial crises — the stock market crash of 1987, the aftermath of Russia’s default in 1998 — the Fed has been able to wave its magic wand and make market turmoil disappear. But this time the magic isn’t working.

I thought he was right about that in December and I thought that the same could be said of our new stimulus package. It’s funny how this urgent bipartisan action has not made anyone very happy. The liberal Paul Krugman asks Who gets stimulated? while conservative Frank Staheli says:

A $150 billion “stimulus package” is to America’s economy nothing but a light snack. It will stomp this “stimulus package” dead in a couple of weeks and then move on, undaunted, toward oblivion, its $53 trillion of unfunded expenditures gallantly in tow.

I have heard arguments that the money is less important than the boost in consumer confidence – from the sound of things it’s not likely to be much of a boost.

Categories
National politics

Let It Die

The temporary law allowing warrant-less wiretapping is set to expire on February 1st. Congress is hurriedly trying to devise an appropriate update. If you want to know how government grows, it’s by passing temporary laws and then reauthorizing them forever. Eventually we forget that they were temporary and then we end up with a cabinet position which controls a department that is based on a law that would expire in five years or less. (That’s the real life story of the Secretary of Education and the law that grew into NCLB).

I don’t think that we will have a Secretary of Eavesdropping, but I do believe that congress should set a precedent and let this expire. If we really need a bill like this it should not be rushed through to meet a deadline. It should be approached carefully so that it is not full of holes like the current law.

Categories
politics

Downsize D.C.

KVNU had a post today about a movement to let the Protect America Act (PAA) expire. That caught my attention and led me to DownsizeDC.org. This is the kind of site that would attract any self-proclaimed Constitutionalist, Ron Paul supporter, or advocate for limited government. Among the various things they advocate for is a bill to require that members of congress have a chance to read any bill before they cast votes on it. That just makes sense. Anytime one of our senators or representatives votes on a bill they have not read it is like signing  a contract (for their constituents no less) without reading the fine print. Worse yet, it’s like my one-year-old raising his hand to sustain someone in sacrament meeting when he has no concept of what is happening – he just raises his hand because the people he knows are raising their hands which is a lot like a game we play at home called “Isaac Says.”

Categories
culture National politics

Politics and Marriage

I was invited to share my views on political issues relating to marriage and was pointed to DefendMarriage.org as a reference point. I think the issues relating to marriage and the politics surrounding marriage (gay rights and abortion rights are listed in the invitation and states rights are a part of the political discussion as well) really illustrate that there is more to this issue than simply answering the question of what defines “marriage” in our society. The following statement on traditional marriage from defendmarriage.org really outlines the socially conservative position on the surface issue of defining marriage:

Marriage between man and woman is the time-honored foundation of the institution of the family. This legally recognized and protected union is intended to be life-long, preceded by sexual abstinence and followed by absolute fidelity and loyalty. Such marriage offers security, benefits, and joys that no other relationship can, including children born and nurtured in a home of love and total commitment. Marriage is the institution universally sanctioned by civilization to ensure that children receive a full measure of parental love, resources and attention.

I fully agree with that definition of what marriage is. The question that I keep asking myself in order to define the parameters of the deeper issues is why, and in what ways should the law “recognize and protect” marriage. If we return to a proper protection of individual rights many of the reasons used to justify stretching that legal definition of marriage evaporate. If two people engage in a homosexual lifestyle and establish a loving and committed relationship then the government has no business interfering with hospital visitation rights etc. Our society gains nothing by infringing upon those individual rights.

On other questions, such as tax breaks and insurance benefits there should be no issue. Individuals can will their property to anyone regardless of family connection and the government should never have a primary right of ownership that is functionally implied through inheritance taxes. The same holds true with tax breaks for married couples – there should be no need for tax breaks because we should not have an income tax (which again implies that the government owns the money and simply allows individuals to a portion of what they contribute to the GNP). If we had no income tax there would be no tax benefit for being married.

As for health care benefits for families, family insurance policies would essentially be a type of small-group policy. Insurance companies could offer policies to match any kind of group whose business they want.

With regard to adoption, that is a social service that should not be run by the state. Instead, adoption should be a matter that is resolved between willing biological parents and individuals that are willing and to whom the natural parents chose to transfer the rights and responsibilities of parenthood. No need to worry about biological children because homosexual couples have voluntarily chosen a lifestyle that does not produce biological children. (Even those who argue that homosexuality is an inborn identity must recognize that those individuals may choose not to engage in the lifestyle.)

By removing those issues from the arsenal of those who agitate for recognition of gay marriage, the discussion would be reduced to the core issue of what constitutes marriage. That issue is not primarily a political issue, it is a cultural/theological issue. The government is only responsible to ensure that individuals on both sides of the issue do not have their rights trampled by others.