The Incredible Shrinking Government

Javier Milei has been sworn in as the new president of Argentina.  His first act?  Reduce the 20 government ministries to 8!  No, he hasn't done away with Education, but rather transferred its functions to the new Ministry of Human Capital.  Human Capital also took on the portfolios of Labor, Culture, Social Development, and Women, Gender, & Diversity.  Look at that!  5 ministries consolidated into 1.  Imagine the streamlining!  Can he come to the United States next?  If we got rid of many of these pointless departments, we could balance the budget in a snap.

Though I like Milei's ideas, it remains to be seen if they will work.  I cannot recall a government that rapidly reduced its size and cost.  How will that work?  A president who attacks the government might find himself targeted by the government in return.  Sounds like Donald Trump.  Unlike Trump, Milei has the benefit of attacking an entirely discredited government that had a 100% inflation rate.  That is why he was elected and he has a mandate for dramatic change.  I'm eager to see the results.

You Want It, YOU Pay for It

Seen on Facebook:

Wanting everyone to have healthcare, education and food does not make you a communist, socialist or unpatriotic.  It just makes you a good person.

Interestingly, I agree.  I want everyone to have all those things.  Heck, I want everyone to have a nice house, a loving family, and a meaningful life.  These are great things to want for other people.  Left unsaid is how to achieve these desires.  That communism and socialism are even mentioned implies that the government should be involved.  And that would require a different formulation:

Wanting the government to use its coercive power to take the earnings of one person and give it to another person makes you a thief, and a socialist.  Being generous with other people's money does not make you a good person.

 

If you want these things for others, take steps on your own to achieve them.  Start a charity, convince friends to help pay for a student to go to college, or pay the medical bills of the injured.  Using the force of government to compel others to provide your wants is immoral.

Political Orientation

Here is a link to an interesting and, in my case, accurate political orientation test:

The Definitive Political Orientation Test

Though it offers to post the results on Facebook (which is where I found it), I generally try to avoid politics on Facebook.  Here is where I landed on the graph:

One might take issue with the design of the graph.  Why is 'Liberalism' in the center?  That certainly gives the impression that the most balanced person is a liberal and everyone else is an extremist in one way or another.  I rather doubt that is by accident.  In any case, this was the description for the Right Libertarian:

That describes my positions quite nicely.  A recent comment observed a similarity in my positions to those of Ayn Rand.  I do like Rand though she goes overboard with the self-interest angle; charity is a good thing.

 

Take the test and then you will know why my blog irritates the heck out of you or is just a place to go for confirmation bias.

Juggling the Third Party Votes

What if all the Green voters had chosen Hillary instead?  What if the Never Trumpers hadn't supported the spoiler candidacy of Evan McMullin?  What would that look like?

Let's start with the Greens.  If all the Green votes had gone to Hillary, she would have won both Michigan and Wisconsin, getting her an additional 26 electoral votes.  However, that still leaves her short of 270 needed for the win.  In that case, a recount would surely have been called in the closet other state; Bush-Gore redux!

On the other hand, if all the Evan McMullin votes had gone to Trump, he would have picked up Minnesota and increased his electoral victory to 316 to 222.

 

Combining the two scenarios, it is mostly a wash though Hillary comes out better with 248 electoral votes to Trump's 290.  Of course, Jill Stein received 1.36 million votes while Evan McMullin only garnered 545K.

 

The Libertarian Party took votes from each candidate and it is hard to decide where they might have gone.  If they had gone to Hillary, she would have had a smashing victory, giving her Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Arizona, Wisconsin, and the 2nd District of Nebraska.  In that scenario, she has 319 electoral votes to Trump's 219.  However, if they went to Trump, he would have picked up Maine, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Nevada, Colorado, and Minnesota for a total of 36 more electoral votes, providing an electoral win of 342 to 196.

 

It is a certainty that both parties are looking at these scenarios to see if they can absorb these voters.  As the Republicans will have the benefit of incumbency, the Democrats should vigorously seek to reach these voters.

Third Parties

Both the Libertarians and the Greens had a good year thanks to the unlikeable candidates presented by the two major parties.  The Libertarians (I am a registered Libertarian) had their best showing ever.  Established in 1971, it saw its best showing ever by far this year.  It broke a million voters in 2012 but received more than 4 million this year, attracting 3.3% of the voters.  The Greens had their best showing since 2000 when Ralph Nader sank Al Gore.  Jill Stein received 1.25 million votes, less than half of what Nader pulled in 2000 but vastly better than it has done in the intervening years.  One wonders how the party would have done if Bernie had accepted Dr. Stein's offer to lead the ticket.

 

Despite what seemed like an ideal year for third parties, this was only a slightly more active year for them.  Ross Perot's 1992 run was the largest third party run in the last 50 years.  Though 18.9% of the voters supported him, he acquired not a single electoral vote.  George Wallace's American Party, which championed segregation, received 13.5% of all votes cast and 46 electoral votes!  Perot's 1996 run for the newly-formed Reform Party was a shade of his 1992 run but still attracted 8.4% of the voters.  John Anderson's 1980 run was favored by 6.6% of the voters.  Thus, 2016 comes in 5th place for Third Party voting when looking at elections in my lifetime.

 

 

Knowing the Republicans penchant for betraying their voters, it is possible the Libertarian Party will continue this growth spurt come 2020.

 

 

Given how the Democrats have demonstrated that they will rig the primaries for their chosen candidate, the Greens might see improved performance as well.

 

Some say that a third party vote is a wasted vote.  After all, one of the two main parties is going to win.  Yes, I'm sure the Whigs thought the Republican upstarts would never amount to anything.  The important thing to note is that the two main parties will pay more attention to the concerns of third parties as they lose votes to them.  If all the Green voters had gone for Hillary in Wisconsin, she would have taken the state.  The next Democrat will make note of that and the Green agenda may find its way into the Democratic platform.  On the other side, if Trump had taken half of the Libertarians in Minnesota, he could have won the state with a comfortable margin.

 

Third party voters lose every election but influence parties to address their issues and perhaps acquire their votes next time.  It is often said that independent voters decide the race and who is more independent than a third party voter?

Marriage Matters

As mentioned before, I have no qualms about people living in committed relationships, whatever form that may take.  But the Gay Marriage debate is about gaining a change in law with which to bludgeon those who disagree.  Will it become bigotry for the Catholic Church to refuse to perform marriage ceremonies for same sex couples?  Probably.  Will there be lawsuits?  Certainly.  We have already seen religious hospitals stripped of conscience exemptions with regard to abortion thanks to Obamacare.  We’ve seen Catholic adoption centers close up shop rather than be required to place children with same sex couples.  It is pretty obvious how this will play out if the Supreme Court declares gay marriage to be a Constitutional right based on the Equal Protection clause (I suspect the men who wrote that amendment in the 1860s would be surprised that they had enshrined gay marriage into the Constitution).  This is all the more interesting since the federal government required the Mormons to outlaw polygamy in order to gain statehood.  If we say that any two people can marry – doing away with the state interest of procreation – then why not 3 people?  The basis for two in a marriage is because there are two sexes.  If both need not be represented, then why limit marriage to two people?  If love is the only prerequisite, then marriage becomes whatever any combination of loving people want to call it.  Again, that’s fine with me as long as these same people tolerate those who disagree.  But that’s not going to happen.  Failure to embrace gay marriage is already being painted as bigotry.

So, what should happen with the two cases: California’s Prop and the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA)?  On Prop 8, the court should let the vote of the people stand.  The country is clearly moving in the direction of allowing same sex marriage (i.e. those who oppose it are old and those in favor are young, wait a few years and it will be approved by voters).  If the court allows it to be struck down, it is negating the voting rights of the people and taking us further down the path of juristocracy (why bother voting if the courts will just overturn it to their preferences?).  In any case, marriage is a state issue and the Feds have no place in it.  As for DOMA, the Feds have no say in marriage and it should be struck down.  The federal government needs to respect the Tenth Amendment, which says all rights not DELEGATED to the federal government are reserved for the state or the people.  Nowhere does the Constitution provide the feds with marriage law authority (I looked!).

Perhaps the best thing that state governments could do would be to repeal laws regarding marriage.  The purpose of marriage laws was to 1) encourage procreation to keep the population growing and 2) force men to support their wives and children.  Neither of these applies to same sex couples.  The laws are antiquated and often contradicted by other laws (e.g. the marriage penalty in tax law – you get more money back if you are just living together).  Women are more likely to be college educated than men, so they can take care of themselves a heck of a lot better than when these laws were first passed (this is doubtless part of the reason why we see an increase in single mothers).  If the states get out of the marriage business, everyone is free to do as they please.  Everyone can sign contracts and powers of attorney and such to deal with what marriage law did, thus making the law entirely disinterested in family composition but still providing law to enforce the ‘marriage’ contract.  That’s liberty!

Dope and Change

Penn Gillette, he of Penn and Teller fame, is an outspoken Libertarian and atheist.  He recently ranted on the fact that President Obama openly admitted to smoking marijuana and even doing cocaine.  Gillette wonders where Obama would be today if he had been arrested during that time and suffered the penalties for drug use that he supports as President.  Basically, if President Obama had caught teenage Obama smoking weed, that teenager would have been screwed.  Young Barack would probably not have gone to Columbia or Harvard.  It is very unlikely he would have been elected Senator or President with a criminal record.  Luckily, teenage Obama got away with his 'crime.'  Here is a clear case of It's only wrong if you get caught.

Remember back during the 2000 campaign when, the weekend before the election, it was revealed that George W. Bush had spent a night in jail for drunk driving?  That was presented as a reason why he should not be president.  Interestingly, Obama admits to driving drunk in one of his two autobiographies and yet there was nothing about that in 2008.  Remember how much effort was put into the story that Bush did cocaine and that was a big deal?  There was no proof but there were rumors.  The implication was that a man who did cocaine shouldn't be president.  And yet, Obama admitted to cocaine use in his autobiography.  No big deal.

I am not saying that Obama's drug use should be used against him at this late date.  He's been in the job so the issue should now be performance rather than youthful indiscretions.  Clearly, he managed to pull himself together and accomplish a great deal.  Everyone does stupid things when they are young but most of us eventually mature.  Eight years ago, Obama called for decriminalization of marijuana.  Today, silence.  It is one thing to call for decriminalization when you are a state senator and another thing to call for it as President.  It takes leadership and courage to do it as President.

Libertarians are too often painted as potheads on this issue which is why they would be better off avoiding it in most cases.  But with a president who was a self-identified member of the Choom Gang, it bares discussion.  If the state of Kansas or Vermont wants to make weed illegal, I have no qualms.  States have broad authority.  The federal government has a very limited scope and the legality of dope is outside of it.  As I said in a previous post, in order to outlaw alcohol, it required an amendment to the constitution.  Where is the amendment for marijuana?