digamma.net - notes

Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean today announced his full endorsement of the Bush Administration’s trade policies, rejecting what he called the “failures” of Bill Clinton and other Democrats.

Now I’ve got your attention, right? Well, it was a slight exaggeration, but not by much:

One multilateral institution that might not fare so well in a Dean administration, though, is the World Trade Organization. In what would be a radical departure, China and other countries could get trade deals with the United States only if they adopted “the same labor laws and labor standards and environmental standards” as the United States. Whether or not that demand was consistent with WTO rules? “That’s right.” With no concession to their relative level of development? “Why should there be? They have the right to have a middle class same as everyone else.”

Dean says, “We’ve tried it” – NAFTA, WTO – “for 10 years, and has it succeeded? No. . . . What’s the purpose of trade? If it’s to create jobs, we haven’t done that in America.”

In other words, he endorses Bush 43-style protectionism over Clinton-style freedom. Oy. Normally, I’m opposed to blind partisanship, but this is one case where it might actually do some good.

I guess Democratic primary season is never a good time for free trade. Which is a shame, because the Guardian now has an excellent blog on agricultural subsidies: KickAAS.

Reason’s Jacob Sullum likes to write about college professors like Yale’s Kelly Brownell, who prefers to blame a “toxic food environment” for obesity rather than anyone’s personal lifestyle choices: “"Instead of taking an individual point of view…we need to think of why the nation is overweight.”

With that in mind, today’s New York Times is worth my $4.50 (that’s what it costs out here in the sticks) for this gem alone:

On another level, fasting can be seen as an example of individualism gone haywire. “It’s not political, in the progressive sense of making connections to other people,” said Dr. Joan Jacobs Brumberg, a professor of history at Cornell and the author of “Fasting Girls: The History of Anorexia Nervosa.” It is “a very self-involved” solution to the problems of the world, she said, “a good example of what happens in a culture of privilege.”

Don’t you see what’s happening here?! Not only are you starving yourself, you’re becoming SELF-INVOLVED! Eat some government cheese and you’ll feel better.

In the last week, it seems like every libertarian-leaning blog has covered the story of the Edmonton “dry bar” for recovering alcoholics that needed a liquor license in order to allow smoking, but was denied a liquor license for not selling liquor. You’ve probably also read this line, which should be on the Bureaucracy’s Greatest Hits CD:

“They weren’t looking for a liquor licence, they were looking for a smoking licence,” said Alberta Gaming spokeswoman Marilyn Carlyle-Helms.

Well, I decided to investigate further. I won’t post it here, but the email address for Ms. Marilyn Carlyle-Helms wasn’t that hard to find using a certain search engine named after a big number. So I contacted this woman, and asked her, first of all, if the story were true, and, second of all, how she felt forcing a bar for recovering alcoholics to sell alcohol benefited anyone at all.

And I got a reply.

It appears to be a form letter, but I’m the only address in the To: header, and it’s cc’ed to two people who also appear to work for the Alberta Gaming License Commission, so maybe I really am the only person who thought to email her. I expected her to be deluged with angry email, like Nicholas “A Million Mogadishus” de Genova was.

Without further ado, the text:

Mark
Thanks for following-up. This is really an issue surrounding the City’s new smoking bylaw.

* Edmonton city council approved a smoking bylaw on March 25, 2003 that will ban smoking from all public places that allow minors.

* Restaurants and minors permitted establishments had until July 1, 2003 to comply with the bylaws and become 100 per cent smoke-free. Restaurants may decide to apply for a class A minors prohibited liquor license in order to maintain a smoking establishment.

* All areas that allow smoking will need a physical barrier between any area that allows public access.

* Class A minors prohibited establishments such as bars, casinos, and bingo halls will have until July 1, 2005 to comply with the bylaw and become 100 per cent smoke-free.

The Keep It Simple group has indicated they don’t want to sell or consume liquor because of the nature of their group. As indicated in their comments in the media they really only want to be able to continue to smoke in their club. It is the City that now requires a Class A Minors Prohibited Liquor License in order that this group may continue to smoke in their club in order to comply with their new smoking bylaws.

If they did proceed to apply for a liquor license they wouldn’t qualify. According to the Alberta Gaming and Liquor Commission, a Class A Minors Prohibited License may be issued for the sale and consumption of liquor on premises that are open to the public.

Hopefully this explains the situation and context for my comment.

Marilyn Carlyle-Helms
Communications Director
Alberta Gaming

It sounds like she’s trying to paint a conflict between smoking laws in the city of Edmonton and liquor laws in the province of Alberta. I understand that, to a certain extent, her hands are tied. However, there is still no sympathy here for Keep It Simple - and it’s that lack of sympathy, that “sucks to be you I guess” attitude only a government bureaucrat can master, that has people so upset over this story.

Agoraphilia has got two great posts on heathcare here and here. These articles constitute the best primer I’ve seen on the issue, an issue at which it can be extremely difficult to look from an objective point of view.

New Agitator Nick Weininger has an exploration of libertarian strategy on the healthcare issue. Weininger argues against the proposal for a “compromise” by which all Americans will be required to buy basic healthcare, much the way states (well, not MY state, but 48 of them) require us to have auto insurance. A massive clip that will get my ass sued for plagiarism:

The regulatory structure will probably be skewed to suit the interests of whichever large employers and HMO’s give the most money to the re-election campaigns of swing-vote congressmen. Pressure from a thousand interest groups will expand the scope of “basic” until it covers more than most low-income people, or middle-class people with pre-existing conditions, can afford. That will make the subsidies grow ever larger, or make the price controls on the insurers ever tighter, or both. So taxes will go up and insurance companies will go out of business.

Furthermore, if libertarians or semi-libertarians support this sort of plan, it will get pegged as a “free market” policy, and free-market advocates will get the blame when it fails. Think of what happened to other unfree pseudo-market schemes that got this false tag: energy in California, railroads in Britain. This will accelerate, not slow down, the march toward socialism. “We’ve tried free-market reform", the usual batch of demagogues will cry, “and what did it get us?”

I don’t know if I agree entirely. If libertarians never compromise, all they’ll ever get is blue skin and sitcom characters. OK, that’s an exaggeration. But it’s what I worry about.

It’s also entirely possible that a lot of free marketeers are much more pessimistic than we should be. Maybe the overall trend is really away from socialism. I don’t know. I’m going to bed.

From the front page of yesterday’s New York Times (free registration required): Great Haven for Families, but Don’t Bring Children. The town of Lopatcong, New Jersey, like certain towns up here in New England, is using zoning regulations to keep children out of town.

Here’s how it all works. New housing goes up. Families with kids move in. The property taxes they pay are less than the amount it costs to educate them. Hence, everybody’s taxes go up.

The town can’t directly ban kids from moving to town. They have to be backhanded about it.

The courts will decide whether the restriction, limiting new multifamily housing units to two bedrooms, crosses a fine line between zoning meant to slow galloping development and zoning meant to keep out families with children.

Here’s what drives me crazy: towns only want you if the property taxes you pay will be enough to cover the cost of your kids’ education. To further simplify this equation, you can only go to the public schools if you can pay for it.

Does this situation negate all the humanitarian arguments in favor of public schools? If there were no public education, some people wouldn’t be able to afford it - but if every town has a sign saying “you must be at least this rich to move in", people can’t afford it anyway.

At least then we’d get to CHOOSE the schools for which to overpay - and we wouldn’t have to turn our towns into fortresses, and pour boiling oil on the invading hordes.

Thanks to Tom Tomorrow (whose book I ordered yesterday) for pointing me to the greatest toy ever:

Tom notes: It doesn’t say if accessories include a 1/6 scale sock to stuff in his crotch.

I suggest we collectively refrain from turning presidential genitalia into action figures, lest we find Action Clinton with Dress-Staining Action in toy stores.