Thursday, August 21, 2003
THE GOVERNMENT REGULATES YOUR MASSAGE THERAPIST!
Well, at least it does in Iowa.
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Wednesday, August 20, 2003
WELL ALMOST…
Okay, there will be nothing posted on Thursday or Friday. I swear.
Anyway, at work one of my duties is to keep track of the letters to the editor for a couple of different newspapers. Given that most of them have left-leaning editorial pages, it can get pretty depressing. However, once it a while a letter appears that is an absolute delight. This one is from Gary Desomber in the Des Moines Register:
All the goals the founders had for the United States are not ideas contemporary so-called conservatives are interested in.
They're interested in achieving their own power, amassing their own wealth, protecting themselves - and their interests - against the interests of the majority.
He ends with this gem:
People who don't pay attention to what's going on shouldn't be allowed to vote.
Finally, a liberal who is honest!
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Tuesday, August 19, 2003
IS TOO CONSERVATIVE!
Howard Owens responded last Thursday to my response to his response to the recall. Here we go:
At least Hogberg is sane and rational.
Whew! That’s a relief! I had my doubts.
Ok, now the serious stuff:
One thing Hogberg does though is confuse outcomes with process when trying to paint the recall as conservative, or something conservatives should favor. I reply: I never said the recall might not lead to outcomes favorable to a conservative agenda (though I have my doubts), but the outcomes have nothing to do with the process. It is the process that is flawed, while the outcomes are undetermined.
I disagree that I confused process with outcome. That’s why I wrote the paragraph that began “Of course, just because a process yields some outcomes that we conservatives like, doesn’t mean that we think the process is sound practice.”
As I understand conservatism, at least the brand of conservatism that I try to espouse, is that our republic is not a direct democracy. Granted, our governor is not elected, as the president is, with an electoral college, but there is at least a process in place in a normal election that shields the outcome from mob movements. On the norm, the candidates pass through a primary process and a long campaign cycle that gives voters two opportunities to get it right. Even though I find faults with primaries as currently run, at least that allow the various political parties to stand up the candidate of choice.
I’m a bit confused by what Howard Owens means by “direct democracy.” If he means that there are layers between the vote and the actual selection of the legislator, like there is for the office of President or once was for Senator, then he’s wrong. We do have direct democracy in that we have always directly elected our Representatives. Even if he means that we don’t vote directly on the law, there’s the matter of town hall meetings in New England, and so forth. The fact is we have always lived in a sort of hybrid system: heavily republican with some direct democracy thrown in.
In the recall, we lose that process. It's winner take all, even if the winner gets only five percent of the vote (I'm predicting around 20 for the actual winner). That's direct democracy run amok. It's practically anarchy. It's hard to imagine anything good coming of it. If the opposition party complains that the sitting president (as in both Clinton and Bush during their first terms) is illegitimate because he got only slightly less than 50 percent of the total vote, how can a gubernatorial candidate hope to government effectively when he got less than 25 percent of the vote. What sort of legitimacy has been bestowed on him? If that winner is an outsider to the establishment, might he just be despised as illegitimate by both parties?
With the exception of a few offices like mayor and the Louisiana Senate race, most elections in this nation are winner-take-all. If falling below 50% is the standard, then there’s an awful lot of illegitimacy out there. Yes, both parties complain about this when the other side wins with less than 50%; that’s what parties do. Not too many people take them seriously when they do; they accept that candidates sometimes win with less than 50% of the vote. I doubt even the politicians who mouth it take it too seriously. Clinton, despite never getting 50%, was still able to get things though the Congress; so has the current President. As for winner being “an outsider to the establishment” who could “be despised as illegitimate by both parties,” that is also not likely. That didn’t happen to Jesse Ventura—and he received less than 40% of the vote.
Thus, I still don’t see the recall as unconservative. It is consistent with the type of democracy we have, and it is unlikely to result in a legitimacy problem for the eventual winner.
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Monday, August 18, 2003
BACK TOMORROW, AND THEN...
I will respond to Howard Owens tomorrow. After that, I'm taking this week off.
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DOES OUR INFRASTRUCTURE SUCK?
Reading over the Des Moines Register’s recent editorial on the blackout, I came upon this curious paragraph:
All of which serves as yet another reminder of the miserable job this nation is doing in maintaining its basic infrastructure, whether it be highways, sewers, water-treatment systems or, as we now see, power transmission networks. Unless this changes, Bill Richardson's Third World analogy will become literally true.
Wait a minute. Didn’t we spend something like $500 billion on a Highway Construction bill only about 5 years ago? How could our highways be in such bad shape then? As for sewers and water treatment plants, I don’t exactly see the streets over flowing with raw sewage or the hospitals over flowing with folks sick from dirt drinking water.
That seems like such an odd paragraph. I really can’t quite fathom it. What’s its motivation?
It just seems like all it would lead to is lots more government spending.
Hey…
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