Category Archives: culture

It Doesn’t Wash

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The Department of Homeland Security wants a private company to provide a national license-plate tracking system that would give the agency access to vast amounts of information from commercial and law enforcement tag readers, according to a government proposal that does not specify what privacy safeguards would be put in place.

Such a national license-plate recognition database, ostensibly, would “help catch fugitive illegal immigrants.”  But once in existence, to what use would (not might) government put that database later?  Can you say NSA, boys and girls?  The danger is illustrated clearly, if unintentionally, by David Roberts, International Association of Chiefs of Police’s Technology Center Senior Program Manager:

We’d like to be able to keep the data as long as possible, because it does provide a rich and enduring data set for investigations down the line.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation understands (see the first link) the danger of Roberts’ goal:

Ultimately, you’re creating a national database of location information.  When all that data is compiled and aggregated, you can track somebody as they’re going through their life.

Such an open-ended dragnet of no one in particular, but simply of all of us, for vague, undefined future purposes in not consistent with individual liberty—or responsibility.

Even though the courts have ruled on “presumption of privacy,” they’ve gotten it wrong, basing their “assumption” on a measure of mindreading that simply doesn’t exist in our species.  The fact that the loud, vociferous, even zealous, hue and cry over evasions of privacy—real or perceived—even exists demonstrates that there is a very strong presumption of privacy held by each of us, even as we move about in public.

Indeed, the logic is flawed, also.  The fact that what we do is readily apparent to our fellow citizens as we wander the mall, walk the sidewalks, talk on our phones, drive on our streets, etc, is in no way an agreement the government can track our movements, much less create dossiers on each of us as we engage in these activities in the view of, or in concert with, our fellow citizens.

The government is not our fellow citizen; it is our political employee.  Even so, it has far too much power to be trusted with watching the things we let our fellow citizens see us do without a court’s oversight, without, for instance, a specific warrant for which a specific probable cause concerning a specific individual among us must first be demonstrated and sworn to by the government official desiring to investigate one of us.

The relationship between us—or any one of us—and government is not at all symmetrical, and there is very little reciprocity involved.  Arguments supporting such government activities as tracking of our out-of-home movements assume, erroneously, exactly that symmetry.

There’s no doubt that such a…tool…could achieve much good.  However, the good achieved is through convenience to government, not through a fundamental change in capabilities for hunting down specific bad guys.  The dangers such a tool represents to individual liberty and responsibility—to what it means to be an American—far outweigh the benefits of that convenience.

Update: Now HHS Undersecretary Jeh Johnson is saying the idea of having a private company develop a national database of our license plates has been canceled.  So, where are we?  Is the idea done?  Or is it being brought inside HHS, to be pursued sub rosa?

And why is the Undersecretary making this statement?  Where are the HHS Secretary, Kathleen Sebelius and her boss, President Barack Obama?

Good for the Skins

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On the all-important Question of the Universe concerning what Washington should name their professional football team, Senator Maria Cantwell (D, WA) and Congressman Tom Cole (R, OK) wrote a letter to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell in which they decried the Washington Redskins’ name as “an insult to Native Americans” and demanding that the Skins change their name to something more politically correct, more acceptable to these two Speech Police Officers.

In response to this foolishness, the Washington Redskins have issued a statement outlining their position on this matter.

STATEMENT BY THE WASHINGTON REDSKINS

ON SENATOR MARIA CANTWELL’S (D-Wash.) LETTER TO THE NFL:

As the former Chair of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, Senator Cantwell should be aware that there are many challenges facing Native Americans, including an extremely cold winter with high energy bills, high unemployment, life threatening health problems, inadequate education and many other issues more pressing than the name of a football team which has received strong support from Native Americans.

If the Senator wants us to change our team name, has she already told that to the team named “Redskins” in Wellpinit, Wash., where the school’s population is more than 90 percent Native American?  We hope Senator Cantwell has visited with those students in order to hear their thoughts.  We hope Senator Cantwell is aware how upset the students in Port Townsend were when they were forced to change their name.

In an ESPN report on Sept. 18, 2013, Tim Ames, the superintendent of Wellpinit schools stated, “I’ve talked to our students, our parents and our community about this and nobody finds any offense at all in it.  Redskins is not an insult to our kids.  “Wagon burners” is an insult.  “Prairie n—–s” is an insult.  Those are very upsetting to our kids.  But “Redskins” is an honorable name we wear with pride….  In fact, I’d like to see somebody come up here and try to change it.”

Finally, why did Senator Cantwell send her letter to the New York Times before she had the courtesy of sending it to the NFL?  No one other than a politician does that.

Surely, with all the issues Congress is supposed to work on such as the economy, jobs, war and health care, the Senator must have more important things to do.

“Redskin” is an insult?  How that dastardly slur, “Yankee,” or “Yankee doodle” that those Evil Redcoats used to call us?  Oh, wait….

Moral Hazard and Obamacare Welfare

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The recent CBO report on the mid- and long-term effect on willingness to be employed of Obamacare hinted at the moral hazard of Obamacare and of welfare, generally [emphasis added].

In 2014, for example, a single person or a family whose income is 150 percent of the FPL [Federal Poverty Level] and is eligible for subsidies will pay 4 percent of their income for a certain “silver” health care plan purchased through an exchange; if their income is 200 percent of the FPL, they will pay 6.3 percent of their income for that plan.  An increase in income thus raises the enrollee premium (and reduces the subsidy) both because the percentage-of-income formula applies to a larger dollar amount and because that percentage itself increases.  People whose income exceeds 400 percent of the FPL are ineligible for premium subsidies, and for some people those subsidies will drop abruptly to zero when income crosses that threshold.

That’s the mechanism through which this particular iteration of moral hazard works.  It’s a tradeoff of a short-term gain of minor security in return for giving up the opportunity for better lives in the longer term and permanently through working more hours, including to the point of working full-time, thereby increasing their earned income.

This mechanism is, in fact, an enormous marginal tax on the next dollar of earned income, and it hits our poor and marginal citizens the hardest.  This tax reduces the net value of the income increase from taking a better job or working more hours.  It’s a cynical poverty trap.

It’s not that these folks are lazy—that’s a question only in the minds of Progressives trying to distract from their failure by demonizing Republicans and Conservatives.  It’s that this iteration of moral hazard has honest men making entirely rational economic decisions—to stay on the welfare program(s).

Beyond the damage inflicted directly on these subsidized people’s true welfare and their morality, the moral hazard inflicts a broader failure, too:

Apart from harm to individuals, ObamaCare is also wasting human potential because fewer workers mean a less prosperous, less dynamic economy.  Contrary to liberal patronizing, many near-seniors, moms, and the rest like their jobs and contribute to productivity.  The 2.5 million worker ObamaCare job exodus, CBO estimates, translates into a 1.5% to 2% reduction in the total number of hours worked, which means less growth.

That failure, that slowed growth rate, reduces the ability of those who do wish to work more, who do wish to make things concretely better for their families, to do so.  It hits hardest, again, our poor, but this effect extends to the lower- and mid-middle class man who is working and looking to work more and earn more.

Here’s a concrete example, courtesy of Keith Hennessy, via AEIdeas:

  • A family of four with one wage-earner has $35,300 of income this year and no health insurance through work. Because of the significant Affordable Care Act subsidies, this family can buy health insurance for only $1,410/year.
  • The other spouse wants to take a part-time job to supplement their family income. This part-time job would earn them an additional $12,000 per year (gross).
  • But this additional income would reduce their ACA premium subsidy, so they would now have to pay $2,970/year for the same health plan.
  • This reduced subsidy, a direct result of the spouse’s part time work and higher family income, reduces the value of the $12,000 of added income by $1,560 (=$2,970 – $1,410). That subsidy reduction is 13 percent of the gross income increase.
  • So maybe this spouse chooses not to take the new part time job because the net financial benefit of additional paid work just isn’t worth it.”

When all the welfare payments (means-tested, also) for which a family in this income stratum is eligible are included in this sort of calculation, the subsidy reduction becomes a much larger per centage of the income increase—and even can be larger than that increase: a net income reduction from earning more through working.

This is illustrated in the graph below from Pennsylvania State Secretary of Public Welfare that shows how public benefits interact with each other to create welfare cliffs—income cliffs—that “phase” out as income smoothly increases.

What this means is that as people in these low-end earner brackets make more money, they face massive effective marginal tax rates—sometimes the equivalent of 100%.  Every dollar they earn would lose them more than a dollar in public assistance.

Hennessey extended his example [emphasis his]:

My back-of-the-envelope calculation, using H&R Block’s tax calculator, is that the ACA increases this moderate income family’s marginal effective [federal] tax rate by 13 percentage points, from about 37% to about 50%. The 37% includes very little income taxes, but a lot of reduced EITC and reduced refundable child credit, as well as higher employer and employee-side payroll taxes.

Then, the moral hazard question Hennessy asked, but which the Progressives avoid:

Finally, the hard one: do the benefits of the premium subsidy to this family outweigh the costs of trapping this family at this income level by killing the financial benefit they receive from more work, education, training, or other professional advancement?

This is moral hazard.  It’s economically more efficient, at least in the near term—that paycheck to paycheck, welfare payment to welfare payment time frame in which our poor and working poor exist—to not work more, to not earn more, but rather to continue the welfare payments.  This is not a matter of laziness; this is that cynically created poverty trap.

Again, it reaches beyond the welfare recipient, too.  Those who do make the choice to work more are forced by that choice to pay for those who choose to work less: the former are the ones who must pay the taxes that partially cover the welfare payments, with government borrowing covering the rest (a future tax on those working men and their children).

Are Liberals Embarrassed by Patriotism?

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Or are they just afraid of it?

Fort Collins High School won’t allow its students to celebrate America and Americanism.  Full Stop.

Administrators’ pseudo-rationale is this:

  • they didn’t want to offend anyone from other countries or immigrants
  • they didn’t want to be exclusive to any other country
  • they just really did not want to make anyone feel uncomfortable

Yet the students are required to participate in Cinco de Mayo celebrations.  The students, though, aren’t as dumb as the high school’s…management team…thinks they are.  One student, all of 16 years old:

There are men and women fighting for our country and we should be able to celebrate that and be proud that we live in a country where we are allowed to vote—the right to free speech. They won’t even let us celebrate it.

Never mind that “anyone from other countries or immigrants” are here to be in American, to reap the benefits of American culture.

Never mind that there isn’t any other country here, so that exclusivity is a cynical red herring.

Never mind that these administrators make the rest of us Americans, including their own students, uncomfortable with their…attitude…or that their attitude is offensive to the rest of us Americans.

Americans don’t count in Liberal minds.

As Todd Starnes put it

shame on the administrators at Fort Collins High School for treating American school children like second-class citizens.

Update: Fort Collins High School Principal Mark Eversole may have seen the light, or at least he’s reversed course and is allowing the students to put on their ‘Merica Monday–renamed America day.  Here’s the letter he wrote to parents:

We apologize for our recent decision regarding My Country Monday and that it was seen as not patriotic. This could not be further from the truth. The original intent of Spread the Love week at Fort Collins High School was to unify the student body. When students first proposed “Merica Monday,” we felt that it was against this unifying theme and disrespectful to our country. Merica is a slang term that is often used in a negative stereotypical way to describe life in the United States. This is what led us to discuss alternatives with students. We were surprised that our community interpreted our actions as anti-American. We are a proud public school in America and support many activities to celebrate our great nation. Due to this outpouring of sentiment and misinterpretation of our intentions, we have decided to rename the first day of Spread the Love week to “America Day” as opposed to “Merica Day.” We look forward to enjoying the creativity and energy of our students as they celebrate their patriotism next week.

This doesn’t entirely settle the matter, but it’s a step–however grudgingly taken–in the right direction.  Todd Starnes has more.

As do I: Merica is a slang term that is often used in a negative stereotypical way….  Maybe I’ve lived a sheltered life, but I’ve not heard it in any way other than neutrally.  Be that as it may, there’s also a so what factor, and another one: so were Yankee and Yankee doodle slang terms used in negative stereotypical ways.  Eversole would do well to review some American history the next time he thinks about deprecating American patriotism.

Anti-Religion Mendacity

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Pinellas Park, FL, has a bible that sits on a dais in its city council chambers.  This bothers Randy Heine a very great deal.

The Bible must go.  It doesn’t belong in a government meeting.  Every time I speak, it makes me feel awkward.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation has taken up the cause.

Not only is the city council sending a message of endorsement for Christianity over other religions and nonreligion [a letter of theirs to the city council asserts], but display of this King James Bible sends a message of endorsement of one particular Christian sect over all others.

Of course it does no such thing, no more than the ubiquitous references to God in our government documents and on our currency and…does any such thing, nor does our Congress and our Supreme Court opening sessions with prayer does any such thing.

FFRF attorney Andrew Seidel complained that he has written four letters to Pinellas Park, and

They’ve just refused to even deign to answer our issues, so I think that says something about their mindset.

A mindset with which I heartily agree: gangs like FFRF aren’t worth the trouble of answering, except in court to swat down their plaints.

Also, Americans Atheists Inc is bellyaching because there’s a Ten Commandments monument outside the capitol building in Oklahoma City.  In part, their complaint asserts

While at the state Capitol, ([individual plaintiff Aimee] Breeze) is confronted by the Ten Commandments display, which she views as hurtful and exclusive and therefore avoids the area of the display while at the Capitol[.]

Nah.  There’s no push to require Breeze to believe or to think or to behave in a particular way.  There’s no endorsement of any religion.  The only exclusion going on here is Breeze’s exclusion of others’ beliefs.

In fact, the Constitution is not silent on government’s role in matters of religion:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof….

Both of those clauses apply, not just one convenient to anti-religionists.  And they mean that, in a political arena, anti-religionists don’t get to infringe free exercise, either, morally, if not strictly legally.

Of course there’s also no pressure emanating from a Bible or a Ten Commandments monument pushing members of other religious faiths, or atheists, to believe—or not—in a particular way.  Unless there’s something emanating from the Bible or the monument because they’re real.

These anti-religionists know this full well.