Sick Transit

An interesting story from Alex Tabarrok about the dangers of overreacting to oursourcing:

A perfect example of the law that politicians seem to have the least respect for: the law of unintended consequences.

Meia and I saw the movie Divine Intervention last night. It’s a Palestinian comedy about Arab-Jew relations and everyday life in the West Bank.

Basically, it’s a series of absolutely hilarious sketches, separated by minutes of boredom and/or surrealism, and apparently cloaked in symbolism, much of which was utterly obscure to me.

It has a few moments of very clever cinematography. In my favorite, a son is helping his sick father sit up in bed. The camera shows only their hands, and at first it looks like two lovers’ hands caressing. Then it looks like two men arm-wrestling. Finally, the camera pans out, and you see what is actually taking place.

Over all, I can’t really recommend the movie; there was too much dead time that apparently tried to be portentous and meaningful but ended up simply being dull. There was also a laughably bad–but quite lengthy–scene in which a female Palestinian Ninja takes out a group of Israeli commandos. The symbolism is crudely obvious, and the ultra-low-budget faux-Matrix stunts become a drag after a while.

Despite those severe flaws, the movie had some excellent parts, and I’d like to see more from the director, Elia Suleiman… as long as he learns to make better use of the cutting-room floor.

NYT has a brief analysis on Social Security taxes. It explains the gimmick of borrowing from the Social Security trust fund, which basically means that the whole purpose of social security taxes, which was supposed to be to ensure the solvency of social security, is being defeated.

The article gets to the nub of the matter:

In other words, the social security gimmick is being used to shift the tax burden away from the rich, and on to those who are hardest hit by the social security tax: the poor (and often the middle class as well).

As the article explains:

There are two ways to keep the government honest about Social Security:

1. Take Social Security back out of the Federal budget. Make it a separate system, with its own accounting.

2. Make Social Security a pay-as-you-go system, financed out of the general treasury. Fold Social Security taxes into the general income taxes.

My initial inclination is to prefer #2, since it would eliminate the regressive social security tax. It would be highly unpopular, however, and would probably also be taking a serious risk with the future fiscal health of Social Security. So the best option is probably #1, the ‘lock-box’ that Gore talked about in the 2000 campaign.

One thing’s for sure, however: the current fiction is not only dishonest and unfair, but also a fiscal disaster just waiting to happen.

The NYT has an an article explaining how the recent Israeli wall construction has led to some non-violent protests. Among other reasons, it has mobilized people who were previously on the sidelines of the fight, but who have now been directly affected by the wall.

With so much global (and especially American) attention focused on terrorism now, I really think that non-violent protests would be the best thing that could happen for the Palestinian cause. It’s obvious that Israel does not intend to bow to violence; but international pressure might force them to make concessions to a peaceful movement, especially when the alternative of violence is still so vividly clear.

In related news, the Israeli Supreme Court has ordered a one-week pause in the construction of the wall, at the request of a liberal Israeli activist group. The pause is supposed to give the army time to reconsider the route of the wall.

Eric Raymond has a rant about trying to install a network printer on his Linux system; and he identifies exactly what is wrong (in my limited experience) with allegedly user-friendly Linux configuration tools:

For those who aren’t aware, Eric Raymond is a long-time Open Source advocate, who has written a couple of widely used system programs for Linux. If even he can’t figure out how to install a network printer on Linux, that’s a real problem.

Of course, Eric probably could have gotten it right the first time if he had read a HOWTO. But that’s the point of GUIs: they’re supposed to walk you through the process. You shouldn’t have to read a HOWTO to use them (at least not for routine tasks). As Eric put it:

(link via Secular Blasphemy)

Some more good thoughts from Legal Fiction, this time on the FMA.

One of his main themes recently has been the political importance of emotional, rather than rational, arguments. With that in mind, he says:

He gives a few examples, such as this one:

A very good question.

He also links to a GAO briefing that lists all the statutory effects or marriage, at least at the Federal level. They range from the life-altering, such as immigration rights, to the trivial, such as reimbursement of expenses for Federal employees. The table of relevant laws is 58 pages long, and that’s only Federal statute.

Major issues like adoption and hospital visitation get the most play, because they’re broadly applicable; but there are a lot of legal protections and duties at stake, which may be tremendously important for individual couples. And that’s another reason why limited civil unions, with specifically delimited protections, are a far inferior alternative.

There is a whole legal structure created to handle the intimate relationship of two people, and it’s called marriage. To create a parallel structure for same-sex couples is not only insulting, it’s also needlessly complex and extremely inefficient.

Legal Fiction has some good myth-busting on the budget.

When you add “mandatory” spending (Social Security, Medicare, and debt interest) and politically unassailable spending (defense and education), you get 83% of the budget. Then you still have to pay for essential government functions, such as the Treasury, the Deptartment of Homeland Security, the FBI, the Federal Court system, etc.

So basically, any arguments about the size of the budget are actually over a couple of percentage points, if even that much. As Publius sums it up:

The idea of “limited government” has pretty much taken over the debate for now, and it probably wouldn’t be wise for any politician to challenge it. But this is definitely a good point to bring up in private debate.

Stephen Prothero, a Professor of Religion at Boston University, has a top-notch article in this week’s NYT Magazine, pondering on the oddity of the strong support of Evangelicals for Mel Gibson’s Passion, which is essentially a Catholic movie.

A few choice quotes:

Highly recommended read.

The gay marriage debate moves from San Francisco to New Paltz, a college town in upstate New York, where the Mayor has decided to solemnize gay marriages, even though the town clerk refused to issue licenses to the couples.

The state’s Governor, a Republican, asked the Attorney General to sue for an injunction to stop the marriages; but the AG, a Democrat, refused.

The validity of the marriages is in question, not only because they are same-sex, but also because they were unlicensed. Interestingly, however, the NYC bar claims that same-sex marriages may not be illegal under NYS law.

Cross-coast culture note: the SF couples were mostly wearing jeans, and all in relaxed postures. The NY couples are wearing suits, and holding flowers. Still no tuxes, though.

Meia and I saw The Triplets of Belleville tonight. It’s a beautiful little movie: the Andrews sisters meet Stomp meets a sleuthing grandma, all done with highly original animation, a couple of great old-fashioned jazz numbers, and almost no dialog.

Everything in the movie is grotesquely out of proportion, from the gigantic wives who carry their husbands around like purses, to the climactic car chase in which a pedal-powered contraption outruns the entire French mafia. Basically, the movie is one long caricature, and it is an expert one.

YOU ARE RULE 8(a)!

You are Rule 8, the most laid back of all theFederal Rules of Civil Procedure. While your forefather in the Federal Rules may have been a stickler for details and particularity, you have clearly rebelled by being pleasant and easy-going. Rule 8 only requires that a plaintiff provide a short and plain statement of a claim on which a court can grant relief. While there is much to be lauded in yourapproach, your good nature sometimes gets you in trouble, and you often have to rely on your good friend, Rule 56, to bail you out.

Which Federal Rule of Civil Procedure Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

(link via Volokh)

PoliPundit suggests that Bush has dropped his immigration reform proposal.

I haven’t heard anything about the space proposal since the State of the Union, either.

It looks like Bush was just floating a few big proposals to get media attention at the beginning of the Democratic primary, and then quietly letting them die.

Few campaign promises are ever fully fulfilled, of course; but most have a shelf-life a bit longer than two weeks. I’m waiting for someone to call Bush on this.

Great quote from a Slate article about the Federal Marriage Amendment:

Some defenders!

Meia and I went to the Democratic Caucus tonight. In Idaho, the caucuses are held by county, so basically all the Democratic caucus voters in Ada County (that’s the entire city of Boise, plus a few suburbs) had to cram into two university ballrooms (separated by Congressional district). Our district had a turnout of well over a thousand.

The process was horribly inefficient; everyone signed a pledge card, and then a roll call vote was held based on the pledges. From a practical standpoint, that’s no way to run an election. The interaction with other voters, however, was very interesting, especially in the long period of time while the initial votes were being counted, and the various camps (especially the Deanies) were trying to convince the obviously non-viable Kucinich people to realign with them.

Meia voted for Kucinich and I voted for Edwards; after the roll call, however, I went to sit with her in the Kucinich section, and several Deanies came over trying to convince us to switch to Dean. Meia switched; I promised I would switch also if they were close to the viability line, but it turned out not to be necessary.

In the initial count, Dean and Kucinich got a little over nine and eight percent respectively; almost all the Kucinich people went over to Dean, and the realigned count was 17 percent for Dean. Unofficially, the united group renamed themselves the ‘Progressive Caucus’, and they chose Kucinich as well as Dean supporters as delegates.

In the Edwards and Progressive caucuses, everyone who ran for delegate (to the state convention) was selected as either a primary or an alternate. The Edwards delegation included a couple of High School seniors and a paranoid conspiracy theorist (whom I voted for because he advocated one of my pet peeves, verified voting).

All in all, it was a messy but very enjoyable experience in participatory democracy. I still believe that caucuses are inefficient and should be elimintated; but they’re also one of the closest things we’ve got to the old tradition of the town hall meeting, and it was a pleasure to participate in one.

Meia and I attended a lecture at BSU by Tamara Lange, a staff counsel for the ACLU’s Lesbian & Gay Rights projects.

She gave a good overview of the legal status of Idaho’s proposed anti-gay relationship amendment (which bans not only marriage but also ‘its legal equivalents’) and of a similar amendment (actually on the books) that she’s challenging in Nebraska. Basically, they’re arguing that it’s unconstitutional on analogy to Romer v. Evans (the Colorado anti-gay-rights amendment case).

She also gave a powerful argument about the importance of actual marriage rights, as opposed to just civil unions. She told the story of a couple traveling in Maryland, who had a domestic partnership in another state. The couple were in an accident; one of the partners was injured, and the uninjured partner was denied hospital visitation because he wasn’t family, even though they had a domestic partnership.

I’m sure that as civil unions become widespread, hospitals and other institutions will develop rules to accommodate them. But it’s an uncertain and unnecessary process. As Ms. Lange put it, “People know what marriage is.” It has a clear set of legal rights and social conventions that go along with it. Civil unions put gays in an amorphous situation where their rights are not clearly defined; and even if they are legally clear, many average people probably still won’t know what they are.

The most embarrassing moment of the night was watching Ms. Lange trying to answer the question of why marriage rights shouldn’t also be extended to polygamists and to incestuous couples. I certainly hope that she rehearses her answer better before she has to argue in court. She ended up falling back on claims of ‘public policy’ and ‘universal standards’; which, of course, are some of the same arguments that have been used against gay marriage.

Legally, the difference is clear; family relationships and the number of people involved in a contractual relationship are rational classifications that the government takes into account all the time. (Although the latter is probably more tenuous than the former.) But morally, Ms. Lange’s argument that the government should ‘recognize existing family relationships’ applies just as much to polygamists as to gays.

There was a heckler at the speech; he didn’t actually cause a disturbance (when asked to defer his questions until the question period, he did; and when asked to stop monopolizing the question period, he left), but he sure as hell made an asshole out of himself. The funniest moment of the night cam when he asked the speaker “So do you support all sodomizing?” and a rather muscular gay man a few seats down from him said: “Well I do, so you better shut up.” I don’t approve of threats of violence, of course, but it was damn funny.

Electablog on Arnold’s opposition to the San Francisco gay marriages:

Josh Marshall has been posting reader replies to his entry on gay marriage. One of the readers (a married straight man) wrote the following:

So here’s my question… what will be the etiquette on the gender of attendants at gay weddings?

At straight weddings, each one of the couple has attendants of their own gender. So does that mean that at a gay wedding, all the attendants will be male, and at a lesbian one, they’ll all be female?

Somehow, it seems more likely to me that it will become mixed; gays and lesbians getting married will be able to have attendants of either gender.

The interesting thing then will be if the protocols for mixed-gender attendance that develop at gay weddings will eventually pass over into straight weddings. Personally, my best friend when I was married was a woman; but wedding etiquette simply doesn’t allow for the possibility of a best woman instead of a best man. Given the social trend towards gender-neutrality, however, I think that will eventually have to change.

An interesting article in the Boston Globe on the alleged power shift between liberals and conservatives:

I think that’s true when it comes to social policy, but not economic conservatism. After all, in the early 70’s, the U.S. actually had price controls! Every major industry was regulated, and the highest marginal tax rate was 70%.

The time of biggest change was the Reagan administration. The 15 years since then have been mostly a time of stalemate. Public healthcare and free trade have expanded a little bit; welfare and telecom regulation have contracted a little bit. You could say that the government’s being run on a conservative agenda; not in the sense of far-right, but in the literal sense of keeping things the way they are.

…of what you might find in this blog:

(In case anyone’s reading this who doesn’t know me from a BB, I should explain that ‘Euphemism’ is a BB nick I use.)

Thanks to Blondie for the link.

From Off the Mark