New Zealand’s Sign on the Door
ChrisB on May 01 2009 | Filed under: Around the Web
Tag Archive 'immigration'
A Line in the Sand
Lee on Aug 06 2008 | Filed under: Around the Web
*Gasp* Is that a border? A real, defined, fenced, national border? For our country?? Trick photography surely.
Sphere: Related ContentBoundary Issues
Lance on Jul 25 2008 | Filed under: Domestic Politics, Health Care, Lance's Page, Libertarianism, Society
Peg pointed me this way, and I really enjoyed nodding in agreement. Of course, I have long nodded in agreement with Megan. Especially on these:
Sphere: Related Content2) Gay marriage. I’m basically pro, but I take the Burkean arguments seriously.
3) Immigration. Again, I’m pro–but while I think the anti-immigration side makes often ridiculously ahistorical arguments about how current immigration differs from past waves, I think that more-open-borders folks like me don’t give enough respect to the real cultural frictions that immigration causes.
[…}
5) Taxes. I don’t have any very well thought out position on the optimal level of taxation in society. I take seriously both the justice arguments of the libertarian absolutists, and the notion that anyone living in a wealthy society owes their prosperity at least as much to the wealthy society as they do to their own skill and hard work–and if you doubt this is true, I suggest you go try to deploy your rugged individualist talents in Zimbabwe. I think society has a duty to care for those who genuinely can’t care for themselves, but I am against an ever-expanding notion of what constitutes “can’t”.
6) Intergenerational equity. I don’t mean social security, which I think is largely a stupid program. I mean questions about how we should privilege the interests of people who exist now over those who will exist in the future. The environment is the most obvious, but not the only, area where these questions come up. To me, health care is another one; the core issue is that we can probably help some people by moving to a single payer system today, but only by destroying the innovation machine that will help many many more people down the road.
7) Humanitarian intervention. I am often tempted by the isolationist stance, the cool purity of its single-rule decision making. Then another Darfur rends my heart. I don’t mean to address the prudential, utilitarian calculus, but rather the question: if there’s a good chance that we could make things better, should we? And under what circumstances?
The Politics of Condescension
Lance on Apr 12 2008 | Filed under: Domestic Politics, Economics, Election 2008, Firearms, Lance's Page
Given the discussion at this post about Obama’s condescension, I suggest Tom Maguire’s roundup of the coverage of Obama making the mistake of speaking his mind about the rubes who he needs to vote for him:
I can’t believe that in all those Harvard classes they never emphasize that you can’t tell the rubes what you really think of them. Surely they aren’t relying on the common sense of the elitist snobs passing through to figure that out themselves? Didn’t work!
For those not in the know, here is what he thinks, or at least wanted this audience to :
At issue are comments he made privately at a fundraiser in San Francisco last Sunday. He was trying to explain his troubles winning over some working class voters, saying they have become frustrated with economic conditions:
“It’s not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”
I really don’t have a problem with the guy, or, as McQ points out, that Obama’s claims of being some kind of “new” politician are a load of horse hockey. Marketing is the stuff of campaigning. I do have a problem with supporters who actually believe that load of BS.
Hmm, I do like this quote from Tom as well:
Bayh skips past the odd tension between Obama’s own opposition to free trade and his apparent belief that free trade opponents are embittered economic losers; maybe Barack opposes free trade on behalf of Michelle, who is struggling to get by on only $400,000 per year.
Heh, well so much for talking straight and holding a position from principle. Given his employment of Austan Goolsbee I think Obama is a free trader, he just doesn’t want us to know. Whether that should make one more likely to vote for him or not I have no idea. What is better? Wrong or insincere?
Update: McQ picks this theme up and goes a little deeper.
Sphere: Related ContentThe Best Result Possible
Peg on Feb 10 2008 | Filed under: Domestic Politics, Election 2008, Peg's Page
Do you want the best possible result? Sure; don’t we all?
When I play bridge, we frequently say: “I didn’t get the best possible result. But – I got the best result possible.” Sometimes, the best possible result is impossible to get. And –
These very important lessons are highlighted in this spot-on essay from the Weekly Standard: The Inconvenient Truths of 2008.
Each party’s base has two inconvenient truths it doesn’t want to hear. For Republicans, those truths concern immigration and the culture war. Most of today’s illegal immigrant population is here to stay (along with their descendants) and will pay no significant price for getting here outside the legal channels. No presidential candidate can change those facts. On the issue that matters most to conservative Christians–abortion–the political phase of the culture war is over. The right lost –a pro-life initiative failed in South Dakota in 2006: If it can’t win there, it can’t win anywhere. Well, maybe Utah.
For Democrats, the relevant subjects are Iraq and federal spending. Discussions of the Iraq war in Democratic primaries have a bizarre quality: Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama speak as though the war is a lost cause. It isn’t–unless one of them wins the election and pulls the plug, a scenario that Iran’s proxies no doubt await eagerly. As for spending, the federal budget (and federal tax revenues) will leave no room for large, expensive, New Deal-style health and education programs. For the foreseeable future, domestic policymaking will have more to do with arranging incentives than with dispensing largesse: Think welfare reform, not Aid to Families with Dependent Children.
If Republicans fail to understand their unpleasant truths, they will lose in November, and lose badly. Democrats might win even if their heads remain in the sand: It’s a Democratic year, as a comparison between the two parties’ fundraising, turnout, and vote totals in the primaries to date suggests. But they will lose the chance to have the kind of public debate that shapes government policy–meaning, the kind that is based on truth, convenient and otherwise.
Will we elect a leader who tells us the truth – even if those truths are not what we want, and not what we want to hear?
Sad to say, the candidate who most often tells unhappy truths may not turn out to be the candidate who wins the most votes. Elections are not always won by truth-tellers; deception sometimes carries the day. John F. Kennedy, whose presidency is often invoked these days, won a close national election by describing an imaginary gap between the Soviet Union’s arsenal of missiles and our own. If something similar happens this year, if the next president wins by promising limitless spending with limited taxes or a costless retreat in Iraq, voters should not blame the winning candidate. In politics as in markets, customers rule; we usually get the leaders we want. The trick is to want the right leaders. We might start by asking who tells us the truth–even, or especially, when it hurts.
You get what you pay for. What will we be purchasing come November?
Sphere: Related ContentHearing Things
Lee on Jan 15 2008 | Filed under: Around the Web
I was watching the booing of John McCain at the Prosperity Summit in Livonia, Michigan (video clip at Ian Schwartz). Now I can’t be entirely certain, but it sure sounds like a woman in the audience exclaims: “Happy Birthday Warsaw!” at the climax of the jeers. Don’t ask me what it means, but give it a listen.
Sphere: Related ContentCanada and Immigration
Lance on Jan 12 2008 | Filed under: Around the Web
McQ finds the Canadians have been struggling with their own immigration mess. Uh, well some of us wish they had been.
Sphere: Related Content
The View From the Bluff: Lance’s Economic and Finance Blog
