Registering Welfare Recipients

Inside baseball, taxpayer funded, boondoggle, reported at Legal Insurrection.

Mentioned as exposing who was involved in this was Rob Eno.  Didn't he used to be a member of the LRCC?

I would like to be straight here.  I would rather lose an election than see legitimate voters not registered.  On the other hand, legitimate voters should show some interest in being registered.  Same on voting itself.  To paraphrase H L Mencken,

Progressivism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy just the way they are.♠

But, then, he also said:

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.

He was such a cynic.

It is not that a crime has been committed, but that the limits to which the campaign is willing to go may not exist.  I find that to usually be dangerous.

Hat tip to the Instapundit.

Regards  —  Cliff

♠  I am not as cynical as H L Mencken, quoted above, or John Steele Gordon, quoted at InstaPundit, who wrote recently:  "Implicit in all of these revelations, of course, is the firmest, if never directly expressed, belief of the Left:  That the average person is too stupid to run his own life, let alone make public policy decisions.  Those few, those happy few, that band of liberal intellectuals, must do that for them."  I give you What's The Matter With Kansas?

Release of Tax Returns—Mass Senate Race Version

On Monday Law Professor Elizabeth Warren asked that Senator Scott Brown release 20 years of tax returns (he has already released six years).  Ms Warren has released four.

Here is the Boston Globe version of the story, which isn't much different from the one at Hot Air.

Regards  —  Cliff

Separation of Powers

I thought this was interesting.  If the Executive Branch marks a document "For Official Use Only" (FOUO), that applies to folks in the Executive Branch.  Once the document is passed over to the Congress, that marking no longer applies—separation of powers.  As someone noted:

...Congress can decide how to release it and to whom. The exec branch cannot bind the way that Congress uses it.

This was stirred up by an item in Wired Magazine's "Danger Room", which talked about NCIS (Naval Criminal Investigative Service) going after a leak of an FOUO document, discussed here.  One thing that puzzles me is that FOUO didn't use to be "classified" under the espionage laws.  Something changed.  So much for transparency.

This is all another sign of it being silly season in our Nation's Capitol.

Regards  —  Cliff

Don't Blame Bush, Blame Bernanke

Don't blame Bush, blame the Fed, or so says Dr Robert Hetzel, a senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, in his book, The Great Recession:  Market Failure or Policy Failure?.  This from a review at the AEI on-line publication AEI Ideas.  It is macroeconomics, so not many will be reading the book, except maybe Blogger Greg Page.

You can guess the flow of Dr Hetzel's views—he received his PhD from University of Chicago, in 1975.  Anyway, here is his bio from the Fed website:

Bob Hetzel is a senior economist and research advisor in the Research Department and has been with the Richmond Fed since 1975.  His research has been in academic publications such as the Cato Journal, and the Journal of Money, Credit and Banking.  Most recently, Hetzel published a book that chronicles the history of the Federal Reserve's monetary policy.

These are real people, with real ideas, out there in the Fed.  Some may be right and some may be wrong, but they are working the problem.  I wish them luck, since my economic future depends upon them.

Regards  —  Cliff

DUI a Minor Offense?

Did I just hear a person on Democracy Now say that a person who was Driving Under the Influence (DUI) had committed only a minor offense?♠ 

It reminds me of City Life Host George Anthes railing against judges who allow those so arrested to be released time after time.  In my time in the Air Force it grew to be a career ending event to be arrested for DUI.  I wonder if it was that way when when Professor Anthes was on active duty.

Regards  —  Cliff

♠  This was with regard to illegal immigrants (undocumented immigrants) pulled over for DWI.

One Wonders

When I hear Professor Elizabeth Warren talk about "you didn't build that", I wonder if what we are hearing is echoes of stories from her Aunts and Uncles who left Oklahoma and went to California in the 1930s and 1940s, the people who helped make Southern California the thriving place it was in those and following decades?  From my time in LA and Orange Counties, it the 1940s, 50s and 60s, and into the 70s, the State of California was staying ahead of the curve in terms of infrastructure and education.  For example, I recall my Father complaining about the cost of education at what is now Cal State University, Long Beach.  He was complaining about $100 for my two Brothers.  Even allowing for inflation from the 1970s that is pretty cheap.  California, and especially Southern California, built highways—freeways—to stay ahead of the traffic, based on the idea that people should be enabled to move around and conduct their business.  And then it ended.

Part of the reason it ended was taxes and the move to cap property tax (sort of like our "two and a half" limit here in Massachusetts).  The other was the idea that urban sprawl and all that was bad; bad for the environment, morally bad, a blight upon a "living" nature.  This attitude was best captured for me by a letter to The Boston Globe, where the writer said, of fixing the interchange at I-93 and I-95 at Woburn, that if we fixed it it would just encourage more drivers to use it.  OK.  That is a "I've got mine, Jack" attitude.  I will skip my tirade against "Limo Liberals" at this point.

So, perhaps Professor Warren remembers older relative, back in Oklahoma for a visit from their homes in Long Beach and Compton and Pasadena, bragging about the infrastructure that made 1960s Southern California what it was.  A sort of "you build it and they will come."  I support that view.  It is something that one can see in Northern Virginia today.  It is not something I see much of here in our corner of the nation.

But, it is the way she puts it.  One thing that existed in Southern California in the day was the celebration of individuals and what they accomplished.  Gene Autry, born in Oklahoma, was an example.  He took his talents and made movies and TV shows and records.  He learned to fly and became an Army Air Force Flight Officer and flew the Hump during World War II.  He gave LA a baseball team during one of the expansions.  His success was celebrated by five stars on the Hollywood Walk.  His individual contributions were celebrated in other ways.  An individual.  Yes, the Nation works because the system allows the actions of individuals to be integrated into a dynamic whole.  But, we celebrate the individual and his or her role because we know we need that performance and we know we need to celebrate it.  It is the American way.

Regards  —  Cliff

Moral Deserts

Wikipedia gives us a discussion of Desert, here, and then this little bit:

One of the most controversial rejections of the concept of desert was made by the political philosopher John Rawls.  Rawls, writing in the mid to late twentieth century, claimed that a person cannot claim credit for being born with greater natural endowments (such as superior intelligence or athletic abilities), as it is purely the result of the 'natural lottery'.  Therefore, that person does not morally deserve the fruits of his or her talents and/or efforts, such as a good job or a high salary.  However, Rawls was careful to explain that, even though he dismissed the concept of moral Desert, people can still legitimately expect to receive the benefits of their efforts and/or talents.  The distinction here lies between Desert and, in Rawls' own words, 'Legitimate Expectations'.

Part of this sounds oddly familiar.

At any rate, over at The Right Coast Law Professor Tom Smith looks at the Roanoke Speech and gives us "Nirvana fallacy and you didn't build that".

Regards  —  Cliff