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Which has been cleverly compared to this famous Al Pacino bit:

I wonder when someone will have the guts to give Mr. Weiner the same treatment over his severely hawkish and – dare I say morally reprehensible – views on Israel?

At issue is the scope of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s power to obtain information from “electronic communications service providers” using national security letters (NLS), which compel private companies to allow government access to communication records without a court order. The administration wants to add four words — “electronic communication transactional records” — to Section 2709 of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which spells out the types of communications data that can be obtained with an NSL. Yet those four little words would make a huge difference, potentially allowing investigators to draw detailed road maps of the online activity of citizens not even suspected of any connection to terrorism.

This has serious implications for our privacy online, and represents a serious expansion of government into our personal lives – giving anyone concerned with government overreach yet another reason to have serious doubts about this administration’s commitment to civil liberties. Unfortunately, the vast majority of progressive activists don’t seem all that concerned with this or any other abuse of power the current administration has carried over from their predecessors or expanded upon.

Sanchez ends on a chilling note:

We increasingly live online. We flirt, shop, read, speak out, and organize in a virtual space where nearly every action leaves a digital trace — and where those breadcrumb bits often track us through the physical world as well. If the Obama administration gets its way, an agency that has already proved itself utterly unable to respect the limits of its authority will have discretion to map our digital lives in potentially astonishing detail, with no judge looking over their shoulders. That the administration and the FBI would seek such power under the guise of a “technical clarification” is proof enough that they cannot be trusted with it.

As I’m fond of saying, things will get worse before they get better.

First off, should bloggers face lawsuits for posting misleading information about political figures or anyone else for that matter?

In Britain, libel laws are so lax that bloggers and others in the media are effectively censored by the threat posed by potential lawsuits. Often just the threat of a lawsuit is enough to shut down a potentially controversial report. Whether or not Breitbart was right or wrong to post the video, should he face civil penalties for doing so? What repercussions might this have on the blogosphere and the American media writ large? What does this say about the state of free speech in America?

Second, Sherrod is very unlikely to win her suit in the first place. As a public figure making public remarks, suing for defamation becomes extremely difficult and with good reason. As Ed Morrissey notes:

Sherrod is a public official, which makes that kind of lawsuit darned near impossible.  Breitbart used the clip to criticize the NAACP, not Sherrod directly, although she certainly came into the line of fire.  People are allowed to criticize public officials in harsh and even unfair terms, especially when they make public remarks.

A court is not likely to look favorably on this for another reason — Sherrod’s public statements about Breitbart. She accused him of being pro-slavery, which is a ridiculous and demagogic attack.  Even if a court somehow found that Breitbart acted with malice specifically towards Sherrod to a level that overcomes the right to criticize public officials and that he lied about Sherrod specifically in doing so, under those same terms Breitbart would have a countercase against Sherrod.  Otherwise, Breitbart has become enough of a public figure that Sherrod’s statements about him would probably not be actionable, either.

Which leaves us with a whole lot of sound and fury. Breitbart will come out of the mess with more publicity and a stronger brand. Sherrod will have her extended fifteen minutes of fame. And the Obama administration will try to quietly navigate the sidelines, hoping desperately that the focus stays on Breitbart and not on the fact that it was the USDA that actually forced Sherrod out.

In the end, I doubt this will add up to anything more than some extra filler for the chattering class’s slow summer.

Last night the United States Senate voted to double the penalties for the nation’s newest existential threat: brownies made with marijuana!

The Senate unanimously passed Dianne Feinstein (D-CA)’s “Saving Kids from Dangerous Drugs Act of 2009″ (S. 258) that targets pot brownies and other marijuana edibles preferred by some medical marijuana patients. The bill next moves to the House; if it passes that chamber, anyone making pot brownies or similar products could be subject to double the fines and jail time for regular marijuana.

Marijuana prohibitionists often hide behind vague threats to children, and DiFi’s bill is no different. Her “Saving Kids from Dangerous Drugs Act” is framed to make politicians afraid to oppose. “How dare you voted against saving kids from dangerous drugs?” But DiFi doubled down on the “Reefer Madness”-style hysteria. In championing this bill, Feinstein raised the spectre of “candy flavored meth“ as the target of her bill.

Andrew writes:

Candy-flavored meth? 

Here’s the invaluable Snopes (admittedly from 2007, but that’s when Feinstein first started peddling this nonsense — in partnership, needless to say, with a Republican co-conspirator, Chuck Grassley) on this menace to the nation. Read it and ponder again the foolishness that is Washington, D.C.

The good news? I’m quoting the ultra-left-wing Firedoglaker and the right-wing National Review, both agreeing that this is absurd, stupid, nonsense. We have consensus, people!

The bad news is that the nonsense itself is also bipartisan, and the Senators have a bit more power than bloggers.

They’ve got the guns, as they say, but we’ve got the numbers.

Image via Wikipedia

It seems that Erik Kain and I have unofficially agreed to create the eleventh hour Bitter Enders Club of True/Slant.

Expect no weepy goodbye post from this corner of the Intertrons, at least for the next few hours. If there is decent political news on which to write over the course of the afternoon, then dammit — we’re going to write about it.

The minutia of political reporting stops for no man… or woman… or website… or dogs, we don’t stop for dogs, either.

The war on drugs has made not one iota of difference on the consumption of drugs in America. It has stripped Americans of our liberties, robbed us of our tax dollars, and sent countless young men and women, many of whom are non-violent offenders, into jails and prisons across the country. The countless other side effects of the drug wars are too many to list, but it’s a tragedy for this country and I hope we’ll elect brave enough politicians in the future to bring an end to this farce.

(Via the Dish)

My central disagreement with Bartlett is that I don’t think it’s very sensible to interpret political history as a series of psychodramas. One could present the same facts in a very different matter, e.g., noble congressional Republicans only passed the Medicare prescription drug benefit because they feared demagogic attacks from the left, which threatened a massive political defeat that would impair their ability to pursue pro-growth policies. This is a specious and self-serving narrative. But is it any less specious and self-serving than congressional Democrats who blame demagogic attacks from the right for their own failures on the fiscal policy front? For those who believe that we need to sharply increase taxes on middle income households, this view is a commonplace. Democrats would take precisely this step, the narrative goes, if only they didn’t have to fear ferocious attacks from the Republican spin machine.

Because Bartlett is a public intellectual who intends to persuade others, it’s worth asking about the effectiveness of his rhetorical strategy, e.g., referring to Tea Party activists as “dimwitted.” I’ve met a wide spectrum of people who identify with the Tea Party movement, and I can’t say I’ve met anyone I would describe as “dimwitted.” As I understand it, the basic goal of the Tea Party movement is to restrain the growth of government.

The only exchanges I’ve had with either Reihan or Bruce have been friendly ones, but I admit to coming down on Reihan’s side on this question. I understand that Bartlett is angry at the current crop of Republicans and feels betrayed by George W. Bush and dismayed by the Tea Parties, but at a certain point Bartlett’s rhetoric really begins to sound a lot like those he’s been critical of himself. Indeed, I would say that fiery rhetoric is a problem that Bartlett and many Republicans actually share.

When he writes:

I don’t think it’s very sensible to interpret political history as a series of psychodramas.

…I think Reihan stumbles on more than just Bartlett’s rhetorical problem. He’s stumbling on the central problem with conservative messaging in the age of Obama.

I think politics should be more like sports and less like psychodrama. Competitive, interesting, and – at the end of the day – not quite so terribly important that you lose sleep because your guy lost the election.

Of course, the only way to do this is to make government less important to our day-to-day lives in the first place. And maybe that’s how Republicans can salvage their messaging problem: government isn’t the answer, it’s the problem. And not only that: politics itself isn’t the answer, it’s just part of the answer and not a very big part of it in the first place. Your family, your job, your vacation time, your charitable works – these are all more important. And here’s how we can keep it that way…

Right now, for conservatives, politics are an all-consuming thing. The rise of the Tea Parties is partly a response to this fear that government is growing inextricably bigger. There’s nothing wrong with this. Politics may be super important to Tea Partiers, but if they do achieve some of their goals, maybe politics will be less important to Americans in the future, because the movers and shakers in Washington, D.C. won’t be able to move and shake quite so much.

But the rhetoric on the right is all too often angry, bitter, even conspiratorial at times. This is partly because there’s so much fear packaged into the idea that the actions of the political class will have such an enormous effect on the nation. The message is all too often that what happens in Washington will determine what happens everywhere else. The fate of ordinary Americans lies in the pockets of our politicians. Obama is making the country a socialist dystopia! Nancy Pelosi is going to brainwash our children!

The message is divisive, when it ought to be one that unites that broad cross-section of America that doesn’t really want to care about politics so much.I know plenty of people who are lifelong Republicans that hear some of the things diehard conservatives are saying and just don’t know what to make of it. They may not like the course of events in this country, but they like even less a sense that the proper response is perpetual anger.

If I had to craft a new message for the right, it would be that what happens in Washington should be of tertiary importance to our daily grind. It should sit right behind the sports page in our local newspaper. Congress should be a footnote in our daily meditations on life. Local affairs should be more important than the outcome of the day’s debate on Capital Hill.
Reagan is invoked too often in modern political discourse (I’m invoking him twice in one day!) and all too often as some exemplar of a pure conservative ideology. But we should invoke Reagan for his leadership regardless of his politics, and for his ability to unite rather than for the myth that he represented some Utopian brand of American conservatism. He was a great unifier of people – a man who knew how to present the country with a positive message and point the country in a positive direction.

There’s no simple answer to the right’s messaging problem, of course. This is partly because the ‘right’ as it now exists is in a state of political flux. Different factions within the broader coalition are vying for political and media influence. It’s only natural that this results in a few ideological cage matches. But to truly move forward and lead the country toward a fiscally sound, limited government where politics is no more important than the outcome of the Cowboys game, we need conservative leaders who can unite us rather than divide us.

And that remains no easy task.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) will force Republicans to vote next week on a $26.1 billion package of education funding and Medicaid assistance to states.

It will be a tough vote for centrist Republicans because the provisions are popular with Democratic and Republican governors and would not add to the deficit.

I have to say that this really is a brilliant little strategy if it is in fact what Democrats are doing (and that seems to be more and more likely to be the case). Fighting Republicans with their own fire is what a lot of Democrats and liberals have been wanting to do for some time. But the added bonus of this particular application is that it really does take the high road, even as it locks Republicans into a double bind.

I’m not 100% convinced it will save Democrats from big losses in November, but I’m not entirely sure what else they could be expected to do.  Regardless, it will be interesting to see how these series of showdowns play out.

“We are all very pleased to be playing in Arizona. I have read that some of the artists won’t come here. They are [censored] twits! Let’s face it: I still play in California, and as a gay man I have no legal rights whatsoever. So what’s the [censored] with these people?” ~ Elton John, at a concert in Tucson on July 22nd

As an advocate of very open-immigration and free movement of labor, I was dismayed when I first heard of the passage of SB 1070, Arizona’s controversial new immigration law.
As a resident of the great state of Arizona, I was further dismayed to learn that a number of bands, artists, city councils, and other organizations had decided to boycott our state because of the decisions of a few of our elected officials.

Boycotts, like economic sanctions, tend to hurt the people who are at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder far more than they hurt the people responsible for whatever the boycott was over in the first place.

Elton John fans are probably among the least likely of any Arizonans to be supporters of the immigration law. The most likely people to be hurt by the empty convention halls and vacant hotel rooms? Illegal immigrants who work as janitors, maids, and in other low-skilled positions whose services will no longer be required.

The fact of the matter is, boycotts are generally more about getting political activists and politicians attention than they are about helping people.

Now that certain key components of the Arizona immigration law have been put on hold by a federal judge, I wonder if the boycotts will start to drop off?

For me, the judge’s decision is undeniably good news – but I’m an open-borders libertarian on this issue.

The answer to our immigration problem is not to flood cash-strapped police departments with new non-violent offenders. Indeed, there are so many things wrong with the Arizona law, I won’t even begin to address them here. Suffice to say, I’m glad to see it placed on hold, and I hope the federal government can start working on a better program for the nation as a whole.

I like Ronald Reagan’s solution, myself: amnesty and a path to citizenship, something which Reagan granted nearly three million illegal immigrants back in 1986.

Free movement of labor, like free markets, is an economic boon no matter how you slice it. More immigration means more labor, more demand for goods and services, and more prosperity for everyone. It also puts pressure on foreign governments to compete for citizens, to create more open societies, and to move toward more liberalized economies.

Want regime change? Free markets and free movement of labor will get you there quicker than bombs will, and the change will be more sustainable.

Ironically, boycotts are the very antithesis of this concept. And equally ironic, the only thing that could have united supporters and opponents of Arizona’s immigration law here were the boycotts themselves. I know plenty of Arizonans who were against SB 1070 who were even angrier at the stupid boy-cotters and who felt solidarity with fellow Arizonans on this where solidarity was lacking over the law itself.

Now that the law is for all intents and purposes on hold, do you think the boy-cotters will stop? I doubt it – not until they’ve sucked the political marrow from the bones of this conflict. After all, the boycotts are more about the boy-cotters than they are about the immigration debate. But I could be wrong.

Image by AFP/Getty Images via @daylife

I didn’t have a chance to write about this yesterday, but didn’t the GOP just become the goose that laid the golden egg for Democrats? Apparently doubling down on outright obstructionism seems to have become the sole Republican strategy. And yesterday it seemed to play directly into the Democrats’ strategic plan, at least if my political calculus of the other day is correct.

Senate Republicans blocked progress on small-business legislation Thursday morning, handing Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) his second legislative defeat of the week.

A vote to cut off debate on a substitute amendment offered by Senate Small Business Committee Chairman Mary Landrieu (D-La.) and Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) failed by a vote of 58 to 42.

Blocking any movement on the DISCLOSE Act can’t be spun as being obstructionist on the jobs front, but I can’t conversely see how Democrats won’t have a field day trouncing Republicans over blocking this bill. That is particularly true when you take into consideration this hot-off-the-presses Gallup poll that shows Americans are, “three times as confident” in small businesses vs. big businesses.

With Republican’s on record as playing primarily a dampening role in financial/Wall Street reform and Sen. Joe Barton’s infamous apology to BP still relatively fresh in peoples’ memories (and trust that that will come up repeatedly when campaigning for the midterms kicks in), this just seems like a dumb move.

Ostensibly Republicans are trying to hand Harry Reid and the Democrats as many legislative losses as possible to make them look ineffective. But if Democrats’ calculus is that they’ve passed the major reforms of which they’re going to be able prior to November and from here on in they campaign on what accomplishments they’ve achieved (and health care reform keeps heading in the right direction), while highlighting Republicans’ unwillingness to deal with the issues facing the nation, then this block-block-block strategy seems destined only to help Reid and the Democrats.

One wonders if Greg Sargent is still as skeptical about this potential strategy as he was yesterday.

With True/Slant in its final days, I’ve decided to forego the sentimental (at least for now), and share a few more pieces with readers before the lights are turned off. Of the dozens of would-be posts in my publishing queue (and there are many), I’ve been wanting to post this short film, called Borderland, for weeks now.

With the drama coming to a head this week in Arizona over the attempted passage of SB1070 (careful, that’s a PDF), the bill that proposes a crackdown on illegal immigration, a film like this is more timely than ever. In Borderland, filmmakers Drea Cooper & Zackary Canepari (California is a Place) take a nuanced look at border security and illegal immigration from two very personal perspectives:

Dick is right. “Every American should see this.” It is real and it is striking. In some places it stands 18 feet tall and looks like the gates of Mordor. In other places, it is barely 10 feet tall and looks like it was put together with a stapler. It runs from the Colorado River directly into the Pacific. It is big, intense and intimidating. And it is unfinished. Gaping holes are everywhere. Physically it’s confusing. Politically it’s puzzling. Ideologically it’s complicated. But for Dick and Ron, who both live within a few miles of the border, defending it is simply a matter of protecting themselves and preserving their own beliefs. Drug smugglers don’t come to the United States to make an honest living. As the recent killing of Border Patrol Agent Robert Rosas shows, the border is more than a moral line in the sand. The fence is real. We recommend a visit. (via California is a Place)

Watching this film made me feel closer to the issue than any of the television coverage, or the endless ranting blog posts. Hope it helps lend some shred of insight on what’s become a severely divisive issue.

If you believe in your heart of hearts that an unborn child is nevertheless a child – a living, growing, human being – and yet the law of the land dictates that said living, growing human being is not in possession of even the most basic right – the right to life – then how different is this from slavery?

Indeed, an unborn child is even more helpless than a slave. They have no chance to escape should their mother decide to have an abortion. They have no faculty, no choice in the matter. Is it such a stretch to liken the plight of millions of the yet-to-be-born to the past plight of slaves?

Certainly if one didn’t actually believe that abortion was wrong or that a fetus was actually a baby, this would be an awfully cynical thing to say. But what about people whose faith and beliefs teach them that the unborn are people just like you and me?

What about Andrew Sullivan whose Catholic faith teaches him that abortion is murder and that the unborn are fully human, fully alive and deserving of their right to life?

Recall, the ranks of abolitionists were filled with the religious – sometimes the fanatically religious. On religious and particularly on Christian grounds they opposed the institution of slavery. Now on those same grounds they oppose abortion. The arguments are the same. Why is this such a troubling comparison? Even if you are a supporter of abortion, why is this such a troubling comparison?

And in his statement on Fox News (where else?), Graham resorted to some of the crudest dehumanizing language I’ve seen from any politician.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) announced Wednesday night that he is considering introducing a constitutional amendment that would change existing law to no longer grant citizenship to the children of immigrants born in the United States. …

“People come here to have babies,” he said. “They come here to drop a child. It’s called “drop and leave.” To have a child in America, they cross the border, they go to the emergency room, have a child, and that child’s automatically an American citizen. That shouldn’t be the case. That attracts people here for all the wrong reasons.”

Employing modern political terms such as “liberal” and “conservative” to someone who live 2,000 years ago is an absurd game to play because those terms as they are used today do not even apply to people who lived a scant few centuries ago. The original meaning of “liberal,” for example, was what we would today call a “classical liberal,” or someone who believes in laissez faire capitalism and small government. Followers of Adam Smith were liberals, but today are called classical liberals, or conservatives, because they want to conserve the political and economic principles of classical Enlightenment thought. Those who are vehemently opposed to these conservative principles are sometimes today called progressives, who want to progress beyond—instead of conserving—classical liberalism, and their type specimen is Franklin D. Roosevelt, who originally had the support of pro-laissez faire capitalists until he launched the New Deal. One of FDR’s ideological descendents was Bill Clinton, who turned out to be one of the strongest Democratic proponents of free markets in history, which makes him, what? A conservatively classical progressive liberal? You can see how odious such label making becomes even for modern figures.

Jesus was, for the most part, apolitical. There were a number of political factions in his time, yet there is no evidence that he joined or even endorsed any of them. He emphasized the “Kingdom of God” over the kingdom of man, and heaven over earth, and his central message was to love God and to love one another. When Jesus was asked, “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” he replied, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” (Matthew 22:34-40). In the next chapter in Matthew (23:9-12) Jesus punctuated the point by comparing earthly fathers to the heavenly father: “And call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven. Neither be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Christ. The greatest among you shall be your servant. Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.”

Lacking clear political leanings we have to examine the moral teachings of Jesus to see if they more closely fit the moral principles of liberals or conservatives. As I read the record, Jesus sounds like a liberal when he admonishes us to turn the other cheek and practice forgiveness, not to judge lest ye be judged, to show great compassion for the poor, and especially when he admonishes the money changers and tells his followers to give up their belongings, abandon their families, and follow his religious movement. Remember, it was Jesus who said, “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”

And let’s not forget the Beatitudes from the sermon on the mount (Matthew 5: 3-9), which do more closely echo the sentiments of liberals instead of conservatives:

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”

“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.”

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.”

“Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.”

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.”

Matthew 7: 1-5 is the classic statement of liberal tolerance:

Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.

Indeed, would any red-blooded, gun-totting, Hummer-driving, hard-drinking, Bible-totting conservative today saying anything like this? (Matthes 5:43-44): “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you….”

Even on the current hot-button issue driving the Tea Party train—taxes—when asked if it was proper to pay taxes, Jesus famously said (Matthew 22:21): “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.”

Of course, I’m cherry picking passages myself here, but I found the process much more conducive to fitting Jesus into left-leaning politics than into the right. I suppose the following passage from the Messiah (Matthew 5:27-30) might be construed as Jesus’s expression of conservative values, but I’m not sure anyone in their right mind would endorse such a moral principle:

You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and cast it from you; for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish, than for your whole body to be cast into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and cast it from you; for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish, than for your whole body to be cast into hell.

Speaking of the 7^th commandment, I found one web page dedicated to this matter of the Messiah’s politics in which the author wrote:

At times, Jesus blended His Liberal and Conservative sides in perfect balance. One example was when He asked the woman accused of adultery, “Where are your accusers? Has no one condemned you?”, and the woman answered, “No one, Lord.” Jesus told her, “Neither do I condemn you; from now on, sin no more.” The Liberal Jesus did not condemn the woman, but the Conservative Jesus called her behavior “sin”, which she needed to stop.

So…are we to infer from this interpretation that liberals would not call adultery a sin that should be avoided, and if committed need not be stopped? All married liberals reading this column raise your hands if you think an act of adultery on the part of your spouse is acceptable. That’s what I thought. In point of fact, adultery is a sin because it deeply injures a loved one, it breaks the bonds of trust so essential to the deepest of all human relations, and it leads to the breakdown of families. And you don’t need the Bible to understand this simple fact. Adultery as a sin is an evolved characteristic of our species.

We evolved as pair-bonded primates for whom monogamy, or at least serial monogamy (a sequence of monogamous marriages), is the norm. Adultery is a violation of a monogamous relationship and there is copious scientific data (and loads of anecdotal examples) showing how destructive adulterous behavior is to a monogamous relationship. In fact, one of the reasons that serial monogamy (and not just monogamy) best describes the mating behavior of our species is that adultery typically destroys a relationship, forcing couples to split up and start over with someone new. Thus, adultery is immoral because of its destructive consequences no matter what God or the patriarchs said about it. And evolutionary theory provides a deeper reason for adultery’s immoral nature that is transcendent because it belongs to the species. If there is a God, and if He does condemn adultery as an immoral act, it is because evolution made it immoral.

What would be the consequences of implementing a tax on carbon only in the United States, without coordinated global action? You’d see some carbon-intensive activities move offshore to lower-carbon-cost regimes; this would probably increase the global carbon load. You’d see some reduction in carbon-intensive activities; this should reduce the global carbon load, but some proportion of this reduction would be due to a simple drop in consumption and hence lower economic growth. And you’d see some increased private investment in making existing activities less carbon intensive, and in providing non-carbon energy sources to substitute; this should also reduce the global carbon load, and any associated economic cost should be temporary. It’s difficult to predict what the net effect on carbon emissions would be in the short term – but it doesn’t really matter, because the goal isn’t to directly reduce emissions but to encourage that investment in incremental innovation.

Of course, the tax on carbon will itself have a negative economic effect. But this could be offset by reducing other taxes, the payroll tax and the corporate income tax being two obvious targets.

This makes sense to me. Millman also advocates government investment in technology that can be used to remove carbon from the atmosphere. I’m less certain that public spending on this will really amount to any tangible advances in technology, but I could be wrong. I think the government should start looking at ways to reform utility services. In a green, sustainable energy economy, granting monopolies to utility companies will simply not work. It’s time for a real energy marketplace, and the government should play a role in setting up that marketplace and then do its best to stand out of the way and let the market do the rest.

A carbon tax is going to be a part of this, but I think revisiting how we subsidize energy and especially fossil fuels will be equally important. Yes, taxing something we want less of is a great way to get less of it, but we should also stop subsidizing it! And I also agree that we could offset productivity-killing taxes like the payroll tax if we were to implement a carbon tax, replacing a bad tax with a good one. How could you not like that sort of trade-off?

Image by Getty Images North America via @daylife

Since its inception, hip-hop has endured endless attacks – typically, but not always, wrongheaded – mostly because of references to violence and for celebrating a culture that devalues women. When a wealthy, white radio host used a derogatory term to describe members of the Rutgers women’s basketball team, other wealthy, white men rushed to his aid by inexplicably pinning blame on hip-hop.  Perhaps the fever pitch of misdirected blame on rap music was reached when Congress devoted time and resources into hearings probing the genre, another hilariously off-kilter spectacle in which a body of old, wealthy white men who authorize war wagged their fingers at the use of indelicate language.

But perhaps the most ignorant and insulting knock against hip-hop yet – and that’s saying something – is this suggestion from a writer at TheLoop21.com that it in spotlighting the gritty, ravaged neighborhoods from which many rappers emerged, the artists are actually glorifying poverty. It’s a ridiculous premise in virtually every imaginable way – the most obvious being that acknowledging poverty and desperation exist and treating them as if they’re worthy of aspiration are far, far different things.

The author confuses one of the most celebrated notions in hip-hop – pride in one’s roots – as a devastating concept that forces those who make it out of poverty to act as a sort-of one-man welfare agency for his deadbeat friends back home.

“This mentality of dependence is encouraged and glorified by rappers and then forced back upon the potential breadwinners of poor communities. Athletes, politicians and even members of are own family are thrust into positions of sharing with the hood.”

This is about as logical as knocking someone who sits at his mother’s bedside during chemo treatments of enabling cancer.

In other ways, the author simply seems laughably unaware of most popular hip-hop – he makes the bizarre assertion that hip-hop should embrace self-sufficiency, which is essentially the equivalent of suggesting country doesn’t talk enough about pick-ups trucks and American flags. The braggadocio and swagger that exemplifies hip-hop relies on artists reveling in having taken matters into their own hands. Take this Kanye West line from “Bring Me Down”:  “Made a mil myself, and I’m still myself, and I’ma look in the mirror if I need some help.” That type of back-patting is typical of an artist and a genre that rewards those who climb out “tha hood” but who don’t forget those who never made it.

Notably, the suggestion that rap glorifies poverty ignores what has been an enduring – and valid – critique of hip-hop’s materialism. Rappers have long touted their bling, be it cars, clothes, jewelry, houses, whatever, precisely because those things are big, glittering symbols that they have escaped poverty. There are certainly arguments to be made that an obsession with diamonds and Dom shows misplaced priorities, but it’s hard to ignore these rappers’ desire to distance themselves from having very little and what it represents.

Look, don’t get me wrong – much as I love hip-hop, it is ripe for critiques, and indeed, many brilliant ones have been made. It’s a complex community with characters ranging from Soulja Boy to Mos Def, and anything that big, crowded and noisy is bound to have its problems. But this assertion is patently ridiculous – and so blind to even the most obvious and celebrated hallmarks of the genre it purports to want to help that it deserves to get called out.

~ from Ishmael Reed’s poem, I Am a Cowboy in the Boat of Ra

Responding to my post on institutional self-preservation, Andrew writes:

But since government is also necessary, the task is to determine what institutions need to be done away with, how to sunset them so they do not strangle the whole, rather than to rail at all of them. My thoughts on this inevitably stray to special interest groups as well. At what point do, say, HRC and AIPAC and the NAACP end up simply perpetuating themselves and their own leaders (invariably factions of the large, amorphous groups they claim to represent) rather than remaining focused on the task in front of them?

Since I have to concede that anarchy is at best a pipe-dream and at worst something more akin to Lord of the Flies, I have to also concede that government is necessary. Indeed, I in no way intend to rail against government blindly. I think government fulfills a vital balancing role in society, whether through enforcing laws or providing essential safety nets.

What leapt out at me in Andrew’s response, however, was the notion of sun-setting institutions. I like the idea of writing sunset provisions into as many laws and spending proposals as possible. Milton Friedman famously wrote that nothing is quite so permanent as a temporary government program. Sunset provisions help us avoid this to some extent (though obviously, in politics the sun also rises…)

In any case, I like the idea of sunset provisions for government institutions themselves. I’m not sure if this has ever been tried. But wouldn’t it have been wonderful to write in not only a sunset provision for the Patriot Act, but for the entire Department of Homeland Security?

Too often our government is a self-serving, bloated mega-institution incapable of ever cutting off any of its outgrown limbs. Making more if it temporary – or at least writing in the possibility of temporariness when constructing it – would at the very least give these big government institutions a reason to try to remain relevant.

Of course, the downside would be an even more concerted effort to self-preserve, but at least there would be a conversation going on about whether survival was in the best interests of the nation at large.