Category: Politics

— If you don’t read anything else today, at least take a look at James Lileks’ treatment of His Rotundity, Michael Moore. It’s stuff like this that makes me glad to be able to read, or something.

— See Matt Welch for the ultimate take-down of hypocrite Michael Moore.

— No sooner does Mitt Romney enter the Governor’s race in Massachusetts than acting Gov. Jane Swift withdraws. Boston.com | Latest News | Region. Swift’s poll numbers were a big problem:

The most recent poll showed Romney leading Swift 75 percent to 12 percent if he entered the race.

I wonder how much of this is driven by Swift’s unjust treatment of falsely-convicted Gerald Amirault? At least he now stands some slim chance of getting justice. Bye, Jane – don’t slam down your crown on the way out. Link courtesy of Josh Marshall.

— This links to the complete text of Owen Harries’ article The Anglosphere Illusion from The National Interest cited below. Here’s a teaser:

Today, a few thoughtful and eloquent individuals–among them Robert Conquest, writing in the pages of this magazine, and John O’Sullivan in various journals–have been making the case for an English-speaking political union. The argument is that the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and a few other smaller entities have so much in common in terms of political culture, values and institutions that they should draw together and enter into some sort of formal arrangement to act in concert–to create, that is, what some are now referring to as a political “Anglosphere.”

Now this line of argument almost exactly replicates one advanced by a group of highly intelligent, well-educated and well-connected young men at the beginning of the last century.

So this old saw has been circulated before, but without the trendy dressing-up with “memes” and “networks.” See “Toward an English-Speaking Union” by Robert Conquest and “The Anglosphere Project” by John Lloyd.

— A Georgia court finds that state’s child support guidelines unconstitutional:

NOW, THEREFORE, this Court hereby declares the child support guidelines codifed in section 19-6-15, O.C.G.A. (hereinafter, the “Guidelines”) to be null and void as the Guidelines violate numerous provisions of the Constitutions of both the United States and the State of Georgia for the reasons set forth below.

A Tennessee court made a similar finding:

This is an appeal by the State of Tennessee from a determination of the Juvenile Court of Knox County which held Tenn. Comp. R & Regs. 1240-2-4-.03(4), issued pursuant to T.C.A. 36-5-101, unconstitutional as violative of Section 1 of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. Dee Ann Curtis Gallaher also appeals, contending that the Trial Court was in error in setting child support. We affirm the Trial Court in its finding the Regulation in question unconstitutional and vacate the judgment as to child support.

Under this reasoning, all child support formulae in the US have to be re-written. This is marvelous.

— Glenn Sacks wrote in the L. A. Daily News:

When Larry Nicholson went to court after receiving a child support order, he knew something wasn’t right.

“I looked at the child,” he says. “The child is white. I’m black. Now I’m not an expert in genetics, but I knew something had to be wrong.”

It sounds like an easy problem which any reasonable judge would remedy with one pound of the gavel, right?

Of course, the answer is “wrong.” California, and most other states, presumes that all children born to a married couple are the husband’s issue, even when they clearly aren’t; it also presumes that women’s declarations of paternity are correct if they aren’t challenged promptly. So Rod Wright has written a bill making it a crime for a woman to sign a declaration of paternity against a certain gentlemen unless he’s the only possible father. I worked with Rod the last time he tried to get some DNA testing into the law, and Sheila Kuehl, the man-hater who guides the Democratic Caucus on family law, shot us down. I do believe this approach will fare better.

Pat Buchanan likes the steel tariffs, but you expected that.

— “Thus, recent skirmishes in the nation’s capital — sophisticated word games that have raised “spin” to a new level — give Americans yet a new reason to reach for the anti-nausea tonic. As politicians debate whether Congress and the president are co-equals in government and compete for “most patriotic” in the superlative sweepstakes, we are reminded once again that politics knows no shame.” — Kathleen Parker

— Mickey Kantor, Clinton’s trade rep, approves of the president’s tariffs on steel, for the reasons I gave below. (Tariffs May Temper a Glut of Steel)

Thirty-one American steel companies have gone bankrupt since 1997, and the steel industry in many nations is in jeopardy.

It’s interesting that none of those bashing the president on this issue have estimated its dollar impact on, say, a Ford Taurus. The only estimates I’ve heard put it around zero dollars to the consumer, on the theory that foreign steel producers will lower their prices and eat it.

— Everybody and his uncle are talking about the steel tariffs, so I have to jump on the bandwagon. Steel is good, tariffs are bad; a nation without a steel industry is also bad, as is dumping aimed at wrecking an industry. Milton Friedman used to say that as long as a foreign country is willing to sell us steel at less than cost, we should buy a whole shitload of it and whistle as we did it. There’s a certain logic in that, but the practice of market manipulation isn’t all that cool.

So the only way to resolve this standoff that makes any sense to me is to demand something from our domestic steel producers in return for the price protection, like a tax credit for infrastructure upgrades or basic research paid for with the tariff. If the credits aren’t claimed, we drop the tariff, but as long as our boys are doing the right thing we help them along. Americans don’t get the fact that public/private strategic partnerships are commonplace in the rest of the world, and we can’t compete in vital industries without them. Where this really makes a difference is in industries like electronics with a high R & D component.

There was a time when AT&T’s telephone monopoly paid dividends to the country through the basic research at Bell Labs, which produced hundreds of patents a year. We’ve lost that national resource, and a similar one at IBM when they lost their effective monopoly on computers. The truly galling thing about Microsoft, by the way, is that they don’t innovate as Bell Labs and IBM Research did in their heydays; the boys at Redmond simply ape the competition and drive them under with dirty tricks, but that’s another story.

Consumers aren’t going to feel the effects of the steel tariff anyay, since there’s only a couple hundred dollars worth of steel in a car, and miniscule amounts in most consumer goods since plastic and aluminum are so much more widespread. Most of the screaming is from libertarian principles which are fine in the abstract but don’t offer much guidance when somebody is punching you in the face, economically speaking.