The Atlantic

The Atlantic is one of my favorite magazines. Although it is liberal, its focus is on publishing interesting articles about culture and current affairs from a mix of writers.  There is a good example from the June issue.  William Deresiewicz reviews two books on American literary novels.  In the article, there is such a fantastic quote that I had to share it:

Buell is a person, one should say, who uses terms like cracker, redneck, and white trash without self-consciousness or irony, which makes his moral teleology all the more repulsive—his assumption (and it’s hardly his alone) that all of history has been leading up to the exalted ethical state of the contemporary liberal class.

If you are curious what Deresiewicz means, you need look no further than Paul Krugman.

(Maybe you are curious why I, of all people, should be against derisive comments about politicians, but of all the critical adjectives you can apply to the creeps, stupid is not one of them.)

White House Whoppers

Our presidents are not known for their honesty.  They are politicians, and they lie.  Habitually.  George H.W. Bush gave us his phony tax pledge.  Clinton's name is almost synonymous with deception.  The younger Bush factually misrepresented the state of WMDs in Iraq and played subterfuge about indefinite detention and Guantanamo.

Obama misled us about the consequences of his healthcare law. It was such a stupendous lie that he won an award for it. He deserved it.  Full disclosure: I lost my health insurance due to ObamaCare, and I was happy with my plan, and I am upset about losing it.  Even before this happened, however, I was dismayed at how often and how audaciously Obama lied to us.  Here are several other instances, in no particular order:

1. There is no disagreement that we need action by our government
This is something he said during the debate about stimulus in 2009.  He may not have been aware of the intense controversy unfolding at the time, in academia, by pundits, on the street, about the wisdom of fiscal stimulus, in which case he must have been completely out of touch with people across the country.  I consider it more likely that this was purely rhetorical.

2. We will close Guantanamo Bay and restore the write of habeas corpus
In his defense, he did make a weak attempt at closing Guantanamo Bay, but it is still open, prisoners are still water-boarded there, and his administration have fought even harder for indefinite detention than the Bush administration did.

3. This is the most transparent administration ever
There is no evidence for this whatsoever.  Pure bluster.

4. FISA is transparent
There is no way to dress up this one as other than a pure, blatant, old-fashioned deceit.  (What if he didn't lie?)

The Most Important Supreme Court Case in 50 Years

This week, the Supreme Court is hearing arguments about the constitionality of ObamaCare.  Tim Sandefur calls it the most important case in 50 years.  I agree with Sandefur that the case is extremely important.  The issue of whether the insurance mandate is a good thing or not aside, this will be a landmark case that determines the scope of what congress can and cannot regulate.  It seems with the Raich and Wickard cases, this is already settled, but ObamaCare goes quite a bit further by regulating not just participation in a market, but even non-participation. 

The case has been heard at several lower courts, with mixed results.  Judge Vinson of the District Court in Northern Florida ruled against ObamaCare.  If you are interested in the case at all, and the legal arguments and precedents bearing on it, Vinson's ruling is a great read, regardless what you think of his conclusion.  He goes over the entire background and the legal arguments from both sides.  The text as linked is heavy with quotes, footnotes and parenthesis, which makes it a little hard to read, but it is worth it.  Here is a quote:

It would be a radical departure from existing case law to hold that Congresscan regulate inactivity under the Commerce Clause. If it has the power to compel an otherwise passive individual into a commercial transaction with a third partymerely by asserting --- as was done in the Act --- that compelling the actual transaction is itself “commercial and economic in nature, and substantially affects interstate commerce”, it is not hyperbolizing to suggest that Congress could do almost anything it wanted. It is difficult to imagine that a nation which began, at least in part, as the result of opposition to a British mandate giving the East India Company a monopoly and imposing a nominal tax on all tea sold in America would have set out to create a government with the power to force people to buy tea in the first place. If Congress can penalize a passive individual for failing to engage in commerce, the enumeration of powers in the Constitution would have been in vain for it would be “difficult to perceive any limitation on federal power”[Lopez, supra, 514 U.S. at 564], and we would have a Constitution in name only.Surely this is not what the Founding Fathers could have intended.

He Could Not Even Cut Taxes Right

When Elizabeth Warren's video went viral, it produced some furore.  It surprised me a little, partly because it did not sound like she said much we have not heard before, and partly because I mostly agree with the first part of her speech.  I was strongly against the Iraq war and the Medicare Prescription Drug benefit that Bush pushed through.  I was initially on the fence about Afghanistan, but do think the US should have left long ago.  I also was not a big fan of the tax cuts, and in response to the debate following her video and some recent comments from friends, I started thinking about why.

I think taxes should be low, simple and even.  The Bush cuts realized the first of these with lower rates, but at the expense of the other two.  In particular, by lowering the rates so much for dividends, we now have a skewed tax system where investors pay a lot less than wage earners. 

There is a fairness issue here, but I want to focus on the economics of this.  Many free-market economists are against the mortgage-deduction (as am I), because there is nothing that tells us, a priori, that home ownership is better than renting.  By giving a big tax break to home owners, the ownership part of the equation gets a lot heavier, instead of letting people decide on more natural factors. 

The same is true of the Bush cuts.  By taxing dividends at lower rates, the government is moving the incentives around to favor investors -- but there is nothing that tells us income earned through dividends is somehow better than income earned through wages.  From an economics perspective, I cannot see how this makes sense.  We should not assume one is better than the other, and therefore, we should tax the two at the same rate.  (Which rate that should be is a different discussion).

As an added defect, the sunset provision is bizarre.  It was almost as if he tried to saddle his successor with a political hot potato, as he must have known it would not go quietly.  Sunset provisions on almost any other Bush-era initiatives would have made more sense: Sarbanes-Oxley, the wars, the Patriot act (actually part of the Patriot act does expire, and some portion got renewed quietly by congress). 

I have not even gotten into the whole issue of cutting taxes while increasing spending.  It's dreadful when they cannot even cut taxes in a way that benefit the economy -- or us, which is the same thing.

Denali Pictures

I finally got my pictures from the Denali trip organized and you can see them on the Picasa album:

On the way back I spent a couple of weeks in the Portland, Seattle and Bellingham area. Below is a shot from the pictureque Chuckanaut drive.

Happy Fourth

I am back from Alaska. Below is a picture from my Denali trip, the only one for now. It was our first view of the mountain itself, after three or four miles of climbing up the Kahiltna.



To honor America's Independence Day, here is a brief quote from the Declaration of Independence:

Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

Best of Both Worlds

I am home after a trip to the Pacific Northwest and Denmark. Above is a picture of Mt Hood, taken from near the place where I was staying with friends in Portland. Though Mt Hood is much smaller than Rainier, it is much closer to the city, so Portland gets similar images of it as Seattle does of Rainier.

Mt Hamilton Ride

My dad is back in Denmark. We did some fun things while he was here, and I will post as media becomes available.

Here is a video of a ride down from Mt Hamilton. You can watch it on the Youtube clips in two parts, or download the full .wmv file. The download is much better quality in both picture and sound, but may not work if you run some of that alt-ware from Apple.

Red Rocks, 2009

In October, Bill and I rock-climbed a few days at Red Rocks as an alternative after heavy snow-fall discouraged us from doing the Rae Lakes loop.

Climbing Johnny Vegas. The balanced rock on the left is pretty cool. If you look closely, you can see the V of a rappel anchor.

We had views all the way to Las Vegas city every day. Behind Bill snacking, I could see the Vegas skyline, though it is not visible in the picture.

Henri Rappelling off "Head Case," and Bill enjoying the wind tunnel in Panamint Valley. There were a couple of jet pilots playing around in their tin cans, but it was hard to get a picture.