Goviness and Busiment: 5 of the Scariest Venn Diagrams You'll Ever Lay Eyes On

I wanted to share this single diagram and write a post about it:

http://www.geke.us/VennDiagrams.html


But in the process of looking it up I found others . . .

Gingrich Success Means Tea Party Surrender

Article here

Almost nothing about this campaign season has puzzled me more than the Tea Party's refusal to endorse Ron Paul. Tea Partiers say their top priority is cutting spending, and yet when a candidate comes along who has laid out a line-by-line plan to cut spending dramatically, they reject him and choose instead an unethical cheat who speaks well. It's puzzling.

The rise of the Tea Party was fronted by men like Jim DeMint and Rand Paul—men who endorse the idea of cutting overseas military spending—but now something has changed. I don't see why that is.

I'm hoping for a third wave, after the Tea Party and OWS, that will finally get it right and focus solely on eliminating crony capitalism in all areas. That idea should be winning. Why isn't it?

The golden rule + 0% income tax

I didn't watch the GOP debate on Monday night (happy birthday, Becca!), but I've read from people who scoff at Ron Paul for saying that the US should consider the golden rule in foreign policy. Strange they'd scoff, isn't it? Even the nation-building neoconservatives should believe that the golden rule deserves center stage in our national ethics, shouldn't they? Isn't the golden rule the reason they believe we should pursue nation building?

Also, Paul said the income tax should return to its pre-1913 level, the level it was for most of American history: 0%. Stephen Moore comments on Paul's idea.

Europe Envy

I think most American liberals have some level of Europe envy. Is that fair to say? There's nothing wrong with it; I've lived in Europe twice and think Europeans get many things right—healthier communal support for the arts and museums, for one.

But I wonder if a certain aspect of the European Union fits better with libertarian thought than with liberal thought. That is, the modern European Union—a union of separate governments joined by common ideals—is more like the state-empowered libertarian vision of America than the fed-empowered liberal vision of America. At the very least, no single government in the EU governs anywhere close to 312 million people.

Libertarians typically argue that most current federal powers should be transferred to the states because the tenth amendment declares as much. Opponents to this idea argue that such a shift would lead to a race to the bottom, meaning that if the distinctions between states were more dramatic, governors would become hellbent on stealing jobs from other states.

There's merit to that argument, as outlined in an interview Jon Stewart had with Jennifer Granholm, governor of Michigan. She's rightly worried that Michigan is hurting because other states are sucking jobs from her state. This competition isn't good for the nation as a whole, she argues. It means that some governors are placing the desires of their state above the needs of the nation.

In my mind, that's a valid tradeoff to the libertarian position, but it doesn't negate the libertarian position. Who's to say, after all, that the governor of Michigan can't out-innovate other governors and figure out a way to draw employers to come back or stay? And if she does, and this innovative idea catches on and other governors implement it, then who's to say that it wouldn't eventually help the whole nation?

Drones, Bombs, and Desecration: How Do Middle Easterners See This?

How do you think the media in the Middle East is covering these recent events?

1. US drone captured in Iran
2. Iranian nuclear scientist killed in a car bomb (they're calling it a US/Israel attack)
3. US troops urinating on Taliban corpses

I would guess the coverage isn't pro-US. I can also imagine seeing these reports as a Middle Easterner—and feeling some resentment about US intervention.

Here is one reason the world would be better served by a smaller US government: If we weren't intervening in their lands, their media would have a lot less to rile their audience with. In fact, if we were to cut back our military presence, end our sanctions, and trade more openly, then people in the Middle East may eventually have reason to believe that our way of life really is admirable. They might emulate us.

Yet, for wanting to end the wars in the Middle East and return the US military budget to the size it was in 2006, Ron Paul is being labeled as dangerous by his Republican contenders.

I don't see it. Here's what he says,

"Americans have the right to defend themselves against attack; that is not at issue. But that is very different from launching a preemptive war against a country that had not attacked us and could not attack us, that lacked a navy and an air force, and whose military budget was a fraction of a percent of our own." - The Revolution: A Manifesto

Paul is mostly asking Americans to see the issue from the perspective of those we attack. He's asking us to put ourselves in the position of a Middle Easterner watching reports about a lost US drone, a car bomb, and US troops being soulless. From that perspective, it's harder to defend current foreign policy.

Proof (did you need any?) Investigative Journalism is Dead

A YouTube user named NHLiberty4Paul created an account on January 4th and loaded a single video that mocked Jon Huntsman for adopting a Chinese daughter. The next day, Jon Huntsman's daughters tweeted about the video, and two days later Jon Huntsman denounced Paul for the video, saying Paul should disavow it.

Then nearly every newspaper and TV station ran with the story.

The trouble is that no one seems to have mentioned that this video is the only thing uploaded by NHLiberty4Paul (doing so would render the story pointless). Nor did they research that one of the first referrals to the video came from Jon2012.com.

BuzzFeed.com was the first place to embed the video, but yesterday the Editor-in-Chief spoke against the idea that NHLiberty4Paul is a Paul supporter. He tweeted that Paul's camp: "thinks (not unreasonably) that offensive video was a set-up."

The lesson? If you want to manipulate the press, go ahead and create a racially charged video under an anonymous name. They won't investigate the source; they'll just be happy to cover something sensational.

Update: This sums up the situation well. I'm not too heated about the particulars, but the fact that the media gets away with such sloppy work upsets me. It does collective damage to our national discourse.

Update #2: Rachel Maddow also floats the idea that Huntsman is behind the video, saying, among other things, that Huntsman brought up the video at every place he spoke this past week in New Hampshire. 

Brainstorming about US Education

When I write about politics, it's always an exercise in learning. I draft something, read what I drafted, discuss it, change my mind about sections of it months later, refine it, etc. Here's what I'm thinking about education, which is in some pretty dire straights.

Federal
1. End the Department of Education
2. Transfer the annual $70 billion currently given to the Department of Education to states (for a 5-year transitionary period, no strings attached)

States
1. Use the received portion of the $70 billion to continue Pell Grants and raise the base level of teacher income
2. Raise sales and gas taxes to get teacher income to a competitive level ($70,000-$90,000?)
3. Change to (or keep) a year-round schedule and make the year 200 days
4. End teacher's unions, making it easier to fire the worst of the lot
5. Give hiring preference to those who have a master's degree, and give a stipend to those with a master's degree

After reading Outliers, I'd say that changing to a year-round schedule and making the school year 200 days would be the best and simplest move a state could make. The rest would be nice, but more difficult.

The Rick Santorum that America Doesn't Know

If only this article could spread through New Hampshire fast enough.

Public Unions and Private Unions

USA Today Op-Ed on the Wisconsin Public Union Debate

For the reasons listed in this article (and from hearing firsthand about how teacher's unions bully teachers), I'm currently thinking that while private unions are useful, public unions aren't.

Why is this?

More people in America claim to be conservative than liberal (42% to 20%), but there are 42 million registered Democrats and only 30 million registered Republicans.