(if I were the) King of the Forest

Beating a Dead Horse: Social Security Edition

apl — Wed, 13 May 2009 14:27:54 +0000

On 25 Feb 2009 the Boston Globe published a commentary by Alicia Munnell, a professor at Boston College, which explained why she thought that Social Security was not in trouble. As it happens, the same week Joe Conason’s column at Salon addressed pretty much the same topic and with the same general conclusion.

This week Salon published a pre-emptive strike by Michael Lind intended to minimize the impact of a dismal report by the Trustees of the Social Security Administration on the state of Social Security and Medicad by arguing that the Trustees got it wrong — that Social Security is fundamentally sound.

Once again I find myself amazed at the level of myopia the subject of Social Security elicits. And so once again I find myself trying to find a way to make people see what I see. I know, this is getting repetitive. But it’s important!

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Conservative in Context

apl — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 05:51:19 +0000

Last spring my friend Ira Goldman, inventor of the KneeDefender™ and other interesting gadgets (I wrote about the KneeDefender™ here) wrote me a note about a personal quandary, a momentary “crisis of conservatism” brought on by some particularly noxious behavior on the part of people exercising their “free market” right to gull the innocent:

I’ve been hearing radio ads by Quicken for mortgages “that let you cut your payments”, or some such. It seems that they are not even interest-only loans — they must be negative-amortization loans. “A normal $300,000 mortgage at 7% costs you [let’s say] $2,000 per month, but at Quicken Loan that same mortgage costs only $435 per month. That means you’ll have more than $1500 extra each month in cash to spend any way you want! …” I’ve not even heard the radio equivalent of the small-print disclaimer.

Should I feel political guilt for thinking this is wrong?

I think these loans should be illegal. OR, so regulated that in a 30 second ad it would take 25 seconds to provide required disclaimers.

The subtext was, of course, “As a conservative and a believer in the free market I should accept this as unfortunate but legitimate. It is the market being the market and the price we pay for freedom and prosperity. And yet my conscience tells me, against the judgment of my reason, that the government should intervene!”

This, in two parts, was my answer to him and to this type of problem generally.

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Some Numbers on Solar Power

apl — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 15:54:50 +0000

8 October 2008

I have a home construction project looming in my future, and I decided that would be a good opportunity to upgrade my environmental footprint (and reduce my energy bills) by adding a solar electrical generation system to the mix. So I did some research on what it would cost me and what I could expect to gain from it. My summary: we aren’t there yet. (more…)

Celebrity Campaign Contributions

apl — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 20:00:15 +0000

About a month before the election a small news story appeared about Bruce Springsteen performing a minor concert at a Barack Obama campaign rally. That brought to mind an earlier report of Barbara Streisand doing something similar and the big news from the primary season of Oprah Winfrey’s endorsement and appearance at an Obama event.

Those stories, and many less significant but similar instances of celebrities campaigning for various candidates, made me muse about the value of celebrity endorsements and how they should play into our paranoia about money and influence in political campaigns. It seemed (and seems) to me that celebrity endorsements are no less valuable when given for free to political campaigns than they would be if some company had to pay for them as part of their advertising strategy. The same is true of celebrities plying their trades on behalf of campaigns: they replace money a campaign would otherwise need to spend on publicity, yet they are not valued as money under the campaign finance rules.

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A Debate Question for the Candidates

apl — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 02:10:19 +0000

The question, then, for both Presidential candidates is: What do you think is a “fair” tax rate? What is a “fair share” for any individual citizen, whether or not they are “rich”? And, even more importantly, on what basis do you make that determination?

No, It’s NOT Obvious

apl — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 20:00:55 +0000

Back in August the editorial board of The Boston Globe published a diatribe about the stupidity of anyone who couldn’t see how wonderful the world would be if only we would reduce the speed limit back to 55 miles per hour.

OK, that wasn’t really what the editorial said. It was only implied. But their sanctimony annoyed me enough to prompt this response.

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Activistist or Compliant?

apl — Wed, 14 May 2008 20:00:14 +0000

In mid May Jeff Jacoby used his column in The Boston Globe (McCain’s Supreme Wrongheadedness) to criticize John McCain’s notion of the ideal Supreme Court justice as one who deferred to the legislative authority — and reminded us that enforcing the Enumerated Powers of the Constitution on both the Legislative and Executive branches of government is precisely what the Court was designed to do.

Alas, in making that legitimate (and essential) point he inadvertently gave succor to those who believe the court should go much further and in the opposite direction by nullifying the enumerated powers entirely, by supplanting legislative judgment with judical judgment whenever and wherever a court deems a legislature insufficiently enlightened and vigorous in pursuit of some social or political goal.

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Common Folk

apl — Sun, 04 May 2008 20:00:10 +0000

Those born to the lower class that are now living by upper class values and norms have made a conscious choice to do so. In a sense, they have repudiated their roots, declared by their actions that the way they live now is better than the way they lived then. And believe me, those on the other side of that divide are aware of the choice and feel it as a challenge. When you've actively chosen one way over another it's hard to make the argument, even to yourself, that the choice was merely between two equivalents rather than between a better and a worse.

Budgeting Based on Reality

apl — Fri, 02 May 2008 20:00:22 +0000

In May of 2008 Edward Glaeser, a professor of economics at Harvard University, wrote an op-ed for the Boston Globe (Budgeting based on results) in which he advocated some simple rules that would make budgeting in government more effective. The thrust of his article was that results of government programs should be measured to judge their effectiveness; that budgets should be cut from year to year rather than maintained (or increased) automatically unless the results are clearly positive; and that new spending proposals should be evaluated not on whether they seem worthwhile on their face but on whether they are more worthwhile than other uses of the resources they would consume.

I felt that he had missed something in his analysis.

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Barack Obama and the Reverend Wright

apl — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 21:43:11 +0000

Here is my take on Barack Obama and the Reverend Wright: most people and especially Obama partisans, have missed the point.

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