Jesse:
... I wrote this post on alcoholism before I read this interesting piece on how culture affects drunkenness.
Monday, December 29
In My Defence
Tweaking the Gas Tax
A modest (and maybe impossible) proposal: gas taxes should be higher when gas is cheap.
As Thomas "Nobel" Friedman suggests that Obama impose a (possibly revenue-neutral) gas tax (which I'd like highlight will hilariously make those of you here that were too daft to understand the Dion plan look like chumps), that's my simple plan.
When gas prices were ridiculously high, the feds should have been collecting less, because prices that high (at least as a short-term spike) hurt the coveted "working family". When they're ridiculously low, they hurt the environment and our future, because everyone's going to go back to buying SUVs and driving everywhere.
I'm sure this is when Cam, TV, and JA (if either of the last two still read) are going to jump in the comments and explain why this is impossible. But it sounds about right to me. As an added bonus, I imagine this would make it easier (read; less transparent) for governments to fidget with the tax (preferably upward overall).
Update: Yglesias (who I read, probably way too much) supports it all, and reminds us that taxing bad things = good, taxing good things = bad. Why couldn't Dion have just said that?
Tuesday, December 23
To Alcohol, The Cause Of, And Solution To, All Of Life's Problems
Jesse:
A quick comment (for real this time) on alcohol.
I'm just reading a great novel, The Emperor of Ocean Park (which I got from the public library, an institution I highly commend to those of you who may have forgotten that it exists; they have books, DVDs, comic book compendia... and you can just take the books!), in which *spoiler alert* (just kidding, it's not important or anything) there's an alcoholic. I'm also re-watching the West Wing, both because A Friend hasn't seen them yet, and because Whiskers and I have agreed to try to put together a post in which we debate the top WW episodes of all time. I've just passed the episode in which we learn Leo is an alcoholic (which, spoiler alert, comes up again, and even more poignantly, later on in the series). And now I see a WashPost article on D.C. which quotes a now-addiction counsellor, former addict:
The jobless and homeless gather in a park, panhandling and clutching flimsy black plastic sacks fresh from the nearby liquor store. "That's the liquor store that feeds the disease," he says.
And, finally, based on the advice of doctors, Nova Scotia (bless their lobstery souls) is insisting on a minimum price for beer.
So, my thought of the day is, that while a lot of us tend to rail on about how marijuana should be legalized (even me, and I won't touch the demon weed), because it's "softer" than alcohol or cigarettes... we don't necessarily give a lot of thought to whether our controls on alcohol are enough. We do alright on cancer sticks, in my opinion, but mostly I think that's been a product of turning culture against cigarettes, combined with bans. But when one reads, sees, or, heaven forfend, lives through alcohol... are we doing enough? Where are we on establishing a system which will help people not to drink? Sure, you're supposedly unable to get booze if you're already loaded (which my guess means if you look homeless and reek of alcohol). But what are we doing to discourage over consumption of our society's drug of choice? Should we be doing anything? All I can think of is the big time sin tax we slap on those bad boys. Is it enough? Are there measures which would be less big brother-y, but still help out?
Monday, December 22
Bad Advice
I'll try to follow up on this later, but, if you have time, this article, which discusses war crimes committed by lawyers who gave illegal advice to the Nazis is a good, and important, read. In a nut shell, it argues that lawyers cannot "play games" when it comes to jus cogens norms like torture and genocide. Hard to argue with, and yet... if we expand this argument to include other crucial norms, does it raise any questions about the advice the PM is getting with regards to the Khadr situation? Or the Afghani prisoners? These don't rise to the same level. But where are we going to draw the line?
Friday, December 19
Terror Trials
Jesse:
I've just (finally) finished reading Slate's discussion on what the Obama Administration should do about closing Gitmo, dealing with the internal horrors of the Bush DOJ, and so forth.
The point I'd like to make right now is on the idea kicking around America (n academia) that there should be special tribunals for terrorists. We've seen the same thing here, as, and this may only outrage my legal eagle readers, CSIS agrees to stop listening in on conversations between terror suspects and their lawyers, and as complaints build up over the "special advocate" plan (whereby your lawyer doesn't get to see the evidence, but another lawyer does, only they can never talk to you about what they've seen).
I don't see why the norm is to have these special tribunals take over. In regular courts judges deal with sensitive information all the time. And governments get stuff declared as privileged. If these were a good faith effort to set up specialist (but still fair) judges to handle these things, whatever, fine, though I worry they'll slant towards the government. But they're not. The idea seems to be that we need special rules to handle this things. Everyone who thinks these rules will favour defendants, to whom the government is refusing to disclose the case against them, stand up. Bueller?
The rules we have might need tweaking, and judges will need to be sensitive. But wholesale changes to help government prosecute people some of whom might be innocent? Not cool.
A General Comment
I know how annoying it is to try to keep up with reading a blog that isn't updated very regularly, but do want to thank the handful of you who do. There isn't a lot I can do with respect to promising to update more often; my time is a lot more crunched than it used to be. My only suggestion? Grow up (technologically) and get a feed reader. Then, this blog can sit on the last for weeks if necessary, and you'll know right away when I do get 'round to posting again! I highly, highly recommend Google Reader (hint: you can find it by Googling "google reader").
Thursday, December 18
Iggernaut I
Jesse:
But not the post you probably wanted!
Just a quickie. There's lots of people who claim Ignatieff was supportive of torture (see this Globe piece in which some pollster says the NDP and BQ can paint him as pro-torture) Now, I actually read Ignatieff's book on Torture (The Lesser Evil). In it, he does not support torture. For example, when I was looking for that Chapters link (Buy Canadian!) to the book, I accidentally stumbled upon the first chapter which includes this:
First, a democratic war on terror needs to subject all coercive measures to the dignity test--do they violate individual dignity? Foundational commitments to human rights should always preclude cruel and unusual punishment, torture, penal servitude, and extrajudicial execution, as well as rendition of suspects to rights-abusing countries.
So, to recap, not only did I not have to read the book, I accidentally found that he opposes torture. Yes, he writes a complicated (but seriously, not that complicated) book in which he weighs some issues, in a complex (but, seriously, not that complex) fashion. But how is it that responsible people can say this? How can the Globe run a story in which some shmuck says the NDP and BQ should lie about his record? How is it that the shmuck can do it? I'm so confused...
On Iraq, Ignatieff has since apologized. Harper hasn't. Are we going to say people can never be "wrong" (I put wrong in quotes intentionally, because of my continued support for freeing people from tyranny, which I still combine with a healthy dose of the Bush adminstration ruined if for all of us. Which was, y'know, more tragic for the Iraqis than I) (and, oh, I guess we did sort of say that to Rae). I'm going to comment on that apology, which I just finally found, in a later post.
But, on torture, can we agree that it's not a good idea to encourage parties to lie?
Education Invasion
Jesse:
I know this will be a disappointment to those of you who a) still track this blog and b) were hoping that if I did come back that I'd comment on politics. Which I'll try to, but... this is becoming more and more of a chore.
But, anyway.
As Sam Seabourne once said, "Education is the silver bullet". It's the most important thing that we can do together as a society. Politicians do put some importance on it, (George W. Bush the "education President" [bust], Dalton McGuinty the "education Premier" [jury's out]), but not enough. Never enough. Canada should be deciding that turning out the best educated kids we can is our number one priority, because it has to be our number one priority. We can mortgage the future as much as we want (pst... we shouldn't), but this is one thing we can't skimp on. We need the kiddies smart, because they're going to have to find ways to deal with our profligacy, either through the ideas of future leaders or, more likely, through doing the grunt work, across society, of making money so we can tax it to pay off the mistakes we're making now.
To that end, I'm going to recommend this piece, on Michelle Rhee (the superintendent of schools in D.C. who's been granted phenomenal cosmic power). I've read other stuff on her too, but that one's the most recent. Here's The Atlantic's similar piece. Pick your poison.
It's an important read, that raises important questions. Is teacher tenure something we can afford to have? Something we can afford not to have? One of the undertones in teachers' associations resisting the deal Rhee's offering ($$$ in exchange for power to fire), I would imagine, is that they don't know how they can trust the person who gets the power to can them. Given the provincial government we had in Ontario previous to this one, that's definitely a salient point.
But right now, we're failing, in that our kids aren't getting the platinum standard. Sending your kids to private schools should be a punishment, not a huge leg up on everyone else. And, as part of this? Poverty has to be beaten. More later, if I'm back!
Saturday, December 6
Distraction
Jesse:
Please take a (long) moment to check out this article discussing how hard it is to find indepth news on public affairs. The culprits? Information overload, media competition (so that major media outlets can no longer give us what we need, instead of want to know, and, implicitly I say, a certain apathy and lack of civic understanding (see, for example, people who are willing to bite when the PM claims a coalition government would be undemocratic or unconstitutional).
As an interesting example... let's say you want to understand a political issue. What are you going to do? Just read what the Globe says? That's often too brief... and there's no way you're likely to read the Globe, Star, and Post (yeesh) on the same issue; the stories will be virtually identical. You could look at opinion, but then, how many opinion pieces do you need to sort throug to get a well-rounded picture, about which you can think for yourself? If you read just one opinion, who's to say they won't be completely out to lunch?
Update; it's actually not that good an article. But the thesis is interesting, as are some of the facts.
Friday, December 5
Principle
Jesse:
Since I'm still hazy on how posting via email works, I'm going to be brief (ish).
One thing I've noticed a couple of times (here's one example; also, please feel free to vote at the bottom of the link) is the idea that this stuff is so comically unprincipled. Dion cuts a deal with the separatists (even though he's obviously the most qualified person in the country save Chrétien to argue he'll hew to principle) and the Conservatives freak out. But, Harper's been working with them all along to get things through Parliament? No big deal. Maybe the Liberals complain a little. Now, of course, if Harper cuts this deal with the Bloc, the Liberals (more rightly, but bear with me) would have lost it.
Harper goes to the Governor General and gets her to prorogue the House so he can avoid being defeated? It's hunky dory for democracy in the Conservative camp. Liberals are... probably somewhat philosophical, maybe concerned about the precedent. And why is that? Because they can remember that if the Martin government had gotten one, they might not have been so upset. But Harper would have absolutely had a democracy-fearing heart-attack (fake, not real).
So, the Prime Minister (current) is the best example of what I want to illustrate; we need to work on figuring out what our principles are. He can write letters asking to be allowed to govern if Martin is defeated (and, let's check the numbers... that was only going to be with the Bloc), and then scream and yell about the Liberals dealing with the Bloc (see here for a similar point, though note that I think, and think Potter knows, it's an oversimplification; there's way more inconsistent crap here).
It's something that makes me wonder a bit about Plato's statement that only the old should be allowed to undertake philosophy. Is it only experience that teaches us "principles"? If Martin hadn't almost needed a prorogation, would Liberals be really angry? If Harper (and Dinosaur Day) hadn't tried to govern with the Bloc, would we be wondering if what they said actually made sense? Do things have to happen before, to us or our opponents, for us to make decisions of principle on them? Is this just "experience", and not a big deal? Was the first party to propose governing with the Bloc going to wear it from the other party (obviously not, because that was Harper...)
Just some thoughts.
Thursday, December 4
Economy Now!
Just a quick hit for my economist-hater readers out there who support the Conservative plan.
Monday, December 1
The Long View
Jesse:
First, you should all feel free to track my increasingly heated argument with HU on the issue of the coalition in these comments. Second, I'm going to start trying to think about the long term effects of this "deal". For y'all!
(Contrary to what you may read in the comments I linked to above) this makes me nervous. Really, really nervous. The long term goal for all right-thinking (as in correct) Canadians has to be how we're going to put Prime Minister Stephen Harper out to pasture, permanent-like. So I think one question we need to consider, beyond the short-term point that I maintain this is good for the economy, whether that will happen. And I don't think this is partisan; I think this is about making sure our country at least vaguely resembles the fantastic shape Chrétien left it in. Which is probably partisan, since I, y'know, care about people.
So, what's the out come here? If this legitimizes the NDP (which other people have, more-than-fairly, voiced as a concern), does this mean perpetual darkness for the centre-to-left? The reason I'm nervous is that I say, "maybe". Liberals have won majority governments because a) the NDP is marginalized or b) the NDP is still sort of marginalized and the right is divided. You'll find (at least for now) that (b) is out of the question. In considering this, please bear in mind that Lightnin' Jack (good Lord, about to be the Honourable Lightnin' Jack) has been trying to eliminate the Liberal party for a while now, with the idea that with the Libs out of the way, from time to time we'll have to elect the NDP. (I'll concede there's probably some ideological stuff wrapped up in there too, whereby Jack, like Harper, thinks if we're just shown the light we'll throw off our shackles and all vote for his extremist policies).
Maybe that won't happen. Maybe everyone will accept that everything good this coalition (if it happens) does is the Liberals's call, and everything bad is Jack's. If so, perfect. We'll be right where we were, needing to find a leader who can shove Jack and Stephen out of the way to occupy the sweet nougat centre of the political spectrum. And we'll have a leg up, since Harper has looked like the colossal asshole that he is.
There's another option (other than the utter destruction of the Liberal party which, I emphasize again, I'm worried about). That option? We find a good way of dividing the country up between the Liberals and the NDP, by agreeing not to compete against each other in a series of ridings. To start, I presume this would include the ridings each party holds now, and then dividing the remaining ridings up by some formula (seat count, popular vote, whatnot). This would allow for some mobility going forward, because if one or the other party excelled against the Cons, they'd get to compete in more seats the next time.
The big, big risk here is that it means neither party is national. So whether you're a Liberal, or a Dipper who is just waiting for everyone to see the socialist light, you're giving up your chance for The Big One. In the last election, the Liberals won 77 seats, and the NDP 37. So that's 114 seats out of play. If we divide the remaining 194 up proportionally by seat, that means the Liberals compete in a total of 208, and the NDP in 100. So... although it looks like the Liberals could conceivably win 154 seats and tell their coalition partners to sod off... it's very unlikely... Someone (not me, I work) would need to sit down and sort out which ridings would likely be where, to see if it's at all feasible.
I'm not sure if I'm endorsing this yet... but we've seen how long it took a fractured right to get its act together. So I dunno. Just thinking aloud (a-type? I don't know what to call it).
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