Politics

Sotomayor attacked from the abortion left

President Obama has chosen his Supreme Court nominee, Sonia Sotomayor, to replace David Souter. As expected she’s very liberal and she’s not a pro-lifer by any means. But then we couldn’t have expected anything else from the most pro-abortion president ever, and anyway she’s replacing another liberal member of the court and so the conservative-liberal balance remains.

So, it’s interesting to see the abortion-related criticism against Sotomayor coming from’pro-abortion groups. It’s not that she’s too pro-life, there’s certainly no evidence of that. No, it’s that she’s not quite rabidly pro-abortion enough.

In a 2002 case, she wrote an opinion upholding the Bush administration policy of withholding aid from international groups that provide or promote abortion services overseas.

“The Supreme Court has made clear that the government is free to favor the anti-abortion position over the pro-choice position,” she wrote, “and can do so with public funds.”

In a 2004 case, she largely sided with some anti-abortion protesters who wanted to sue some police officers for allegedly violating their constitutional rights by using excessive force to break up demonstrations at an abortion clinic. Judge Sotomayor said the protesters deserved a day in court.

Judge Sotomayor has also ruled on several immigration cases involving people fighting deportation orders to China on the grounds that its population-control policy of forcible abortions and birth control constituted persecution.

In a 2007 case, she strongly criticized colleagues on the court who said that only women, and not their husbands, could seek asylum based on China’s abortion policy. “The termination of a wanted pregnancy under a coercive population control program can only be devastating to any couple, akin, no doubt, to the killing of a child,” she wrote, also taking note of “the unique biological nature of pregnancy and special reverence every civilization has accorded to child-rearing and parenthood in marriage.”

And in a 2008 case, she wrote an opinion vacating a deportation order for a woman who had worked in an abortion clinic in China. Although Judge Sotomayor’s decision turned on a technicality, her opinion described in detail the woman’s account of how she would be persecuted in China because she had once permitted the escape of a woman who was seven months pregnant and scheduled for a forced abortion. In China, to allow such an escape was a crime, the woman said.

In my quick read of these summaries I see only a judge abiding by the law, who doesn’t undermine it just because she might not like the pro-lifers’ position. Did these radical abortion groups want her to rule against the pro-lifers who thought police used excessive force, to deny them their day in court simply because she doesn’t like their politics? I suppose it’s some small— very small—measure of comfort that she’s not one of those judges who rules on a whim. (What does it say for our society that we have such low expectations for our jurists?) Was she supposed to deport the Chinese woman to a country that would subject her to a forced abortion?

I say this reveals a lot about those who support so-called abortion rights in this country, that these groups don’t really care about women having a choice, but that they view pregnancy and childbirth as evil by default.

Meanwhile, the White House, instead of telling the bloodthirsty mob of Moloch-worshippers to back off, has tried to placate them with assurances of Sotomayor’s reliable vote on any abortion-related case that would come before the Court.

But White House officials appeared eager to send a message that abortion rights groups do not need to worry about how she might rule in a challenge to Roe v. Wade.

“He did not specifically ask, as we’ve stated for the past several days,” Gibbs said. “But as I just said, I think he feels — I know he feels — comfortable, generally, with her interpretation of the Constitution being similar to that of his.”

Win one for the blood-red horde.

Photo credit: Official White House photo.

Imagine the Potential 2

Catholic Vote is back with another great pro-life TV commercial, “Imagine the Potential 2”, a follow on to their earlier ad that showed a child who had everything going against him before he was born but grew up to be our current president.

[Thanks to Amy Welborn.]

Catholic congressmen take on Clinton over Sanger

This is what a real Catholic congressmen sounds like. US Reps. Chris Smith and Jeff Fortenberry take Hilary Clinton to task for her admiration of the racist Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood. Here’s what Fortenberry had to say:

Your remarks last month, when you called Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, a person whom you enormously admire, were stunning to me. Margaret Sanger clearly embraced bigotry and racism. She advocated for the elimination of the disabled, the downtrodden and the black child. In one of her writings, she said, “Today eugenics is suggested by the most diverse minds as the most adequate and thorough avenue to the solution of racial, political and social problems.” I don’t believe these ideologies have a place in our pluralistic society. And you went on to say that you will use American foreign policy in your position to further reproductive rights, which includes abortion, across the globe.

Madame Secretary, I don’t believe we should use American foreign policy to export abortion. This will undermine, in my view, our foreign relations in many areas throughout the world, including Latin America and Africa and among Muslim peoples. Promoting the international abortion industry is an imposition of our own woundedness upon others. Abortion has caused tremendous grief in this society, and its export I believe will be seen as a form of neocolonialism that is paternalistic and elitist and an assault on the dignity especially of the poor and vulnerable. I believe women deserve better, women throughout the world deserve better.

Awesome!

Clinton’s response?

Well, Congressman, let me say with respect to your comments about Margaret Sanger, you know, I admire Thomas Jefferson. I admire his words and his leadership and I deplore his unrepentant slaveholding. I admire Margaret Sanger being a pioneer in trying to empower women to have some control over their bodies and I deplore statements that you have referenced. That is the way we often are when we look at flawed human beings. There are things that we admire and things we deplore.

Apart from that, how did you like the play Mrs. Lincoln? In other words, Clinton says that if we ignore the racist, classist, genocidal stuff, Sanger was pretty cool. Unbelievable.

Of course, she might already have practice overlooking such things: “I admire Bill Clinton. I admire his words and his leadership and I deplore his unrepentant philandering.” Sounds like something she might have said.

[Link via Amy Welborn.]

 

Even in a depression, the Massachusetts solon wants to tax & spend

If there’s a silver lining to the current economic crisis, it’s that there’s no money in the budget for the usual pork-barrel spending and apparently little interest in new taxes to pay for them. At least the liberal leadership in Massachusetts’ Legislature doesn’t have the appetite for it, although the rank-and-file are still seem hungry for it.

DeLeo’s bare-bones budget has had one predictable outcome, whetting the appetites of rank-and-file lawmakers for a broad-based tax hike. State Rep. Brian Wallace (D-South Boston) said there is a growing acceptance of some kind of tax increase in the Legislature, because it’s the only way to restore their pet projects.

Said Wallace: “We’re going to have to do something with taxes, I think. It’s not a question of if, it’s a question of when.”

Or you could, you know, do without. When times are tough and there’s not enough money for everything we want, a normal family cuts not only luxuries but even necessities that can be deferred. But not the Massachusetts Legislature. they couldn’t possibly do without, say, the Quinn bill, a boondoggle that gives raises to cops for going back to school, yet the programs are essentially diploma mills—no real school work required—and results in law enforcement officers getting lifetime raises of 10, 20, or 25 percent. Raises that also inflate their eventual pensions.

Or, for example, studying the winter moth caterpillar. I could be convinced to see the value of studying this pest so we can prevent infestations… when we can afford it. But right now even $150,000 is too much to pay.

How about something potentially even more devastating, like $850,000 for homosexuality indoctrination programs in public schools? On Friday, MassResistance reported that funding for these programs had been cut from the budget, but then later updated the report to say that amendments have been filed—at the urging of the homosexual lobby—to restore the funding. I won’t lie to you: Even in the best of times this is a bad use of money, but now, there is no excuse for it. Morally, we can’t afford it ever. Financially, we certainly can’t afford it now.

But the tax-and-spend crowd have forgotten what it means to do without. They have become gluttons at the taxpayers’ expense and blindly propose new taxes that will force us ever deeper into an economic depression to satisfy the lobbyists’ and pressure groups’ desires to re-engineer our society at any cost and to keep the money spigot flowing to their political friends and campaign funders.

It’s time to say No. But has the Massachusetts taxpayer had enough? Can anything wake them from their slumber before it’s too late?

 

The trouble with the Boston Globe

Speaking of Boston newspapers, the blog The Liberty Papers writes about the recent and ongoing troubles of the Boston Globe and opines that it’s not just another victim of the general decline of the newspaper industry and the economy, specifically, advertising revenues. No, the author of the piece, says the Globe’s problems go much deeper than that.

In fact, he says, the newspaper’s advertising revenues have been declining much faster than other newspapers in the region, including it’s sister publication with The New York Times Co., the Worcester Telegram. And the same thing goes with a decline in the subscriber base.

In 2008 the Globe’s average weekday circulation fell to 350,605, down from 382,503, or 8.3 percent [since 1992 when it was purchased by the NYT]. Sunday circulation fell 6.5 percent to 525,959. The competing newspapers for the Boston Area, the Boston Herald, and the Patriot Ledger (and to a lesser extent, a smaller local paper, “The Enterprise”), are doing alright… as much as any newspaper is anyway. Both are down about 4%, HALF the decline of the Globe; and counter to the general trend in the newspaper business (actually in most any business) of the second and third papers in a market (which they are) losing more circulation in a downturn than the market leader.

Then the question becomes, Why is the Globe doing so much worse? His conclusion may surprise you. In fact, he says, the Boston Herald and Patriot Ledger remains somewhat conservative newspapers (or as he describes them, “moderate center left” and “moderate center right”, which is pretty conservative in Massachusetts), even as the Globe has gone more and more hard left ever since being purchased by The New York Times Co. Well, that matches the liberal population in Massachusetts, right? Not quite, he says.

Massachusetts has a reputation as a very liberal state, and Boston a very liberal city; and to an extent that’s true. Certainly it is reflected in the states voting record, and much of it’s congressional contingent.

However, regarding Massachusetts as a liberal stronghold, fails to take into account the true nature of the states liberalism.

The vast majority of the Boston area is blue collar, and low level white collar, union, catholic, old line northeast democrats; with a significant minority of what we used to call Boston Brahmin democrats (rich, socially and politically conservative on a personal basis; but they support liberal politicians to seem “progressive”, to make sure “the right people” run things, and because democrats are easier to buy off).

Outside of the immediate Boston area, Massachusetts is basically politically identical to western Pennsylvania. It’s union Democrats, and center right Republicans; pro gun, pro hunting, pro business, and anti-leftist. Hell, still today, Western Massachusetts, and the adjoining parts of Connecticut and New York, are the firearms manufacturing capital of the western world.

It’s a very interesting perspective and probably not far off. I’ve found in one-on-one conversations with folks, especially older folks, that it’s not that they support very liberal social engineering and wealth re-distribution, but that they’re still stuck in the idea that the Democrats are the party of the average guy versus the fat-cat elite Republicans. But the fact is that you’re as likely to find liberal Republicans and liberal Democrats hobnobbing in the cities, while more conservative Democrats and Republicans find common ground outside the cities. This is why the liberal elites on Beacon Hill couldn’t possibly allow same-sex marriage to come to a general vote of the populace: Because they knew that they’d lose the vote before they had the chance to indoctrinate the populace sufficiently that two men or two women can be married and to think otherwise is bigoted. They needed time to let the Kennedys and their ilk indoctrinate the those one-time Reagan Democrats into the new reality.

Yet, perhaps the Globe outpaced the populace and went further left faster than the people could be brought along. Oh sure, the glitterati and the politicians that the Globe is supposed to cover have all come out of the woodwork to lament the possible loss of the newspaper. But the people have been voting with their pocketbooks for years, dropping their subscriptions to the newspaper with every bizarre anti-Bush screed or anti-Catholic editorial cartoon. Herald columnist Howie Carr has gleefully filled up not one but two recent columns full of the Globe’s follies, including some shoddy reporting in which the desire to advance a liberal cause resulted in retractions because they just didn’t get the story right. After a while, the people began to notice.

Will it be the end of the world if the Globe shutters its doors? Competition is always better for the consumer, so I’d prefer two healthy competitors in this market to one, even if the one I prefer was the winner. On the other hand, if the business can’t offer a product that the consumer wants, then let another take his place.

Photo credit: Flickr.com user gwbstr. Used under a Creative Commons license.

 

$800 million is not enough for Boston public schools?

Parents of students in Boston public schools are protesting plans to bypass the city’s school system when handing out federal “stimulus” funds. They claim the schools are underfunded:

Parents spoke of how their kids’ schools, already depleted of arts teachers and librarians and lacking modern facilities, will be further crippled by the $812 million budget that the Boston School Committee approved Wednesday. The package calls for eliminating 536 education positions, including 212 classroom jobs (134 teachers and 78 teacher aides).

So, they’re spending more than three-quarters of a billion dollars and they’re talking about cutbacks and how it “cripples” the students’ education. How much should we spending? What are we spending all that money on? And yes, even though I don’t live in the city of Boston, I said “we”: the city school system—like all public school systems in Massachusetts—receives an enormous amount of money from the commonwealth.

The Boston public school system has 56,000 students. That means they spend $14,500 per student each year. In 2006, the average per-pupil spending in the United States was $8,287. Massachusetts spent the third most of any state at $10,693. Yet Boston spends $14,500 and that’s not nearly enough! In national achievement and accountability assessment, Boston falls short of the standard in nearly every category.

Parents say the schools are falling apart, the athletic fields are crummy, the textbooks are old. Let’s set aside the fact that Massachusetts has had an unprecedented boom in school construction in the past decade or so—maybe Boston has been left out of that a little—where has all the money gone?

Back in 1994, Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby identified the culprit: “In the Boston system, 40 percent of the budget never gets to the classroom; it is absorbed by the School Department bureaucracy.” If you look at this story about 2008’s budget woes for the school district, you get the sense that the percentage never improved: The fact that there are 80 unfilled jobs in the bureaucracy available to be cut indicates how much bloat there really is in the system.

(On a side note, in 1996 Boston Mayor Tom Menino called school reform his top priority and said in his January 17 State of the City address: “I want to be judged as your mayor by what happens now in the Boston Public Schools. I expect you to hold me accountable. … If I fail, judge me harshly.” The schools are still a mess more than a decade later. Voters have never held him accountable.)

What we see here is that government is the worst entity for educating our children because in an environment without accountability and a free rein to dump money on cronies and pet projects and ideological indoctrination, actual education suffers. It also shows that the standard metric of per-pupil spending is meaningless when it comes to measuring the effectiveness of schools. Yet spending money is about the only tool most politicians have.

Which is yet another reason we’re going to homeschool our kids. I just wish I wasn’t wasting my taxes on schools that don’t educate other peoples’ kids.

Photo credit: Flickr user kevindooley. Used under a Creative Commons license.

Dodd isn’t the only double-talker on AIG bonuses

A friend notes on the Dodd matter covered in the previous post that Sen Chris Dodd wasn’t actually part of the conference committee that prepared the bill that included the language that bonus contracts—such as those paid out by AIG—must be honored. So why is he falling on his sword? Maybe he lobbied for the provision, but who is he protecting?

All you have to do is look at the six Democrat who were signatories to the conference report. (Recall that no Republican voted for this report and that the bonus-contract enforcement provision was snuck into the conference report.): For the House, David Obey, Charlie Rangel, and Henry Waxman. For the Senate, Daniel Inouye, Max Baucus, and Harry Reid. (Download this PDF of the second half of the bill and page all the way to the end for the signatures.)

Which one of these guys did the deed and won’t ‘fess up now?

 

Dodd, White House pushed law for AIG to honor bonuses

Barack Obama was outraged—outraged!—that AIG executives were getting $400 million in bonuses after the US taxpayer bailed out the company with $170 billion—Billion!—and after it posted $60 billion in losses last quarter.

And yet AIG says that it was contractually obligated to pay these bonuses—never mind whether those were ridiculous contracts to begin with because Democrat Sen. Chris Dodd—at the urging of the White House— pushed a law requiring companies receiving bailout money to honor those contracts.

On Tuesday, Dodd denied knowledge of the amendment and then on Wednesday, he backtracked and said he thought it was just “innocent modifications,” blaming the amendment on “staffers” working with Treasury Department officials. And now he claims that even though many of the bonuses were awarded to AIG executives living in his state, he had no idea that AIG would benefit from the amendment and enrich his constituents. At this point, we can’t believe anything he says.

As for Obama, this is just more Hope and Change. As in after Obama’s economic policies are fully enacted, let’s Hope the American taxpayer is left with more than some spare Change.

 

Does Bill Clinton not know basic reproductive biology?

CNN’s medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta—who, let’s remember, was on a shortlist of potential Obama nominees to be surgeon-general—interviews Bill Clinton on embryonic stem cell research and Obama’s policy change to allow federal taxpayer funding.

First, note the slanted, softball question that Gupta proposes: “Is this always going to be as divisive of an issue as it is now? Is this going to be the abortion of the next generation? Or are people going to come around?

Aside from the unintended pun—Yes, this is the abortion of the next generation, i.e. we are aborting the next generation—see how Gupta tries to present embryonic stem cell research as having nothing to do with abortion. You can’t have embryonic stem cells without first aborting an unborn child! But also see how he says pro-lifers need to “come around.” One “comes around” when one wakes up, when one sees reality.

When Clinton responds, he appears to be lacking in knowledge of basic biology. Some have taken that as evidence of ignorance, but I think it’s demonically clever. Clinton says: “If it’s obvious that we’re not taking embryos that can ... that under any conceivable scenario would be used for a process that would allow them to be fertilized and become a little babies ...” Is Bill Clinton really ignorant of the fact that embryos are already fertilized? That they are in fact already little babies in the process of being born? I don’t think so. I think this is yet another cynical attempt at spreading ignorance and trying to convince the general public that embryos are genetically unique and differentiated human beings in the process of development to the point where they can survive outside their mothers’ wombs.

This is not unlike the partial-birth abortion lie perpetuated by pro-choicers who claimed that no more than 1,500 of these horrific procedures were performed in the country each year. In fact, key figures in the abortion industry later admitted that to be a blatant lie that under-counted the procedure by an order of magnitude.

From celebrities to journalists to politicians, we’re told over and over again that we’re just obstructionists who would rather protect a clump of cells out of some misguided principle than help “real” suffering children just waiting for the medical treatments that will come rushing out of medical labs like a torrent once federal funding is assured. And yet, it has been shown again and again that not a single viable treatment has emerged from research on embryonic stem cells, research that has relied on billions of dollars of private funding as well as public funding from states and foreign governments. Meanwhile, adult and cord blood stem cells continue to provide treatments for diseases, yet don’t get nearly the attention or funding.

And now they have resorted to misdirection, obfuscation, and perpetuated ignorance to get the American people on their side and convince, once again, that pro-lifers are benighted medievalists who abhor science and want to enslave the world with unwanted pregnancies and religion.

[Thanks to Kelly Clark for sending the link. She has similar thoughts on this incident.]

Why is Obama trying to kill charities?

The Red State blog also notices that Obama’s reduction of the charitable tax deduction will negatively affect charities in this country and concurs with my supposition of the motive:

With this proposal, President Obama is saying as directly as it can be said that the federal government is better able than private citizens and the charities they support to decide how these donation dollars are best distributed. Conservatives, by contrast, believe in the principle of subsidiarity — which in this instance means that charity is best performed at the most local and immediate level possible, and by “mediating” institutions rather than large, distant, and bureaucratic ones. This is not an abstract doctrine; it is based on the accumulated wisdom of the ages.

My take on this from a couple of days ago.

 

Obama’s charitable deduction reduction hurts us all

As part of his proposed 2010 budget, President Obama trots out the old liberal playbook and takes a few more whacks at the “rich”, i.e. those who make more $250,000 per year. I put that in quotation marks because that category includes a very large proportion of the small business owners in this country, people who pour much of what they earn into their businesses and also into our society through charitable giving. They are not the enemy to be be denuded of property on which we, the “lower classes”, stake a claim out of jealousy and pettiness.

One element of the Obama budget’s attack on the “rich” is the reduction of the deduction for charitable giving. This will have an impact on many people who aren’t the so-called “wealthy” class. That’s because philanthropy by the wealthy is a backbone of charitable giving in this country. Yes, every gift matters, from the widow’s mite on up to the multi-million dollar gifts. But it’s those large gifts, the ones typically given by those in the top tax bracket, that often have the most far-ranging impact. Think of the hospitals whose emergency rooms or surgical centers or pediatric wards were paid for by large single donations. Think of the food pantries who raise support from many folks because a philanthropist offers to match every donation up to the tens of thousands of dollars. Think of the university laboratories researching disease cures, paid for by the generosity of wealthy alumni. Yes, those gifts of $10, $50, $100, or $1,000 given by the vast majority of people make up the bread and butter income of those charities, but it’s the very large gifts that enable the extraordinary actions of charities.

And while I can’t go into detail in this area—because I work for the fundraising office of an archdiocese—let me tell you that every parish, every diocese, every parochial school will likewise be affected by this. What happens to the Church’s presence in the world when generous donors can no longer afford to give?

That’s right, they can’t afford it. If you look at how the wealthy are already penalized for their earnings, you realize that if they want to sustain their legacy through their own companies and their families, if they want what they have built to survive beyond themselves, they rely on provisions within the ever-more byzantine tax code to offer incentives to support those charities.

So why would the liberals want to undermine such charitable giving? It’s not just the fact that so many of the leading Democrat politicians actually don’t give generously of their own wealth—think of the revelations of John Kerry’s minuscule charitable giving before he began looking at running for president or the Clintons’ infamous itemizing of their gifts of underwear and used shower curtains to charity. Or even Barack Obama, who gave much less than the national average to charity before he began his preparation for running for president in 2005. And these are all people whose income puts them among the ranks of the wealthy they so disparage.

No, it goes even deeper into ideology. Such an attitude betrays the big-government mindset of liberals who are convinced that only government funding—and thus oversight and control—can properly fulfill the role that charities have always filled. Even now many charities subsist to a large degree on fat government contracts to provide social services. So why should the wealthy be free to direct their own wealth to the charities for which they have an affinity, or which they believe do the greatest good, or which uphold the values they profess themselves, when the liberals could control all that money through government spending priorities. And when they control the money, they can push forward their efforts to re-engineer society to their own liking and ideology.

The reduction of the charitable giving deduction for the “wealthy” will have negative consequences for all of us, not just the wealthy, just as class warfare based in greed and jealousy will continue to erode society’s bonds and raise more fractures and fault lines.

Photo caption: An illustration of James 1:27 via Wikimedia Commons. Used with permission.

“Gold-plated” solar-powered trash cans: Stimulating the economy?

Barack Obama’s pork-filled so-called stimulus bill is so full of big government waste, you could spend all day documenting it. Here’s one example from Massachusetts. How about nearly $22 million for solar-powered trash-compacting garbage bins for state parks. These modern marvels cost $3,600 each.

How many jobs are going to get “stimulated” by this boondoggle? The Mass.-based company that makes employs 23 people, although they bins are actually assembled in Vermont. Will we double the number of employees? that would be $1 million per job. What a bargain.

Oh, but the state hacks behind this plan claim that we’ll also be saving money.

BigBelly Solar trash compactors are designed to do more than prevent litterbugs, state officials said. A solar-powered battery compacts the rubbish, cutting fuel costs by decreasing how often state workers must pick up the trash.

And how much in gas savings are we expected to believe are going to be realized from having to empty these trash cans half as often? How many years will it take to recoup the cost of buying, installing, and let’s not forget maintaining (fixing broken ones, replacing dead batteries, etc.) $22 million worth of this “shovel-ready” project?

I’m beginning to think “shovel-ready” doesn’t refer to projects ready to spring into action once they’re funded. I think it refers to how much b** has been shoveled to convince us that this stimulus bill was a good idea. Apparently, not enough for some of us.

Photo credit: BigBelly Solar

When the GOP has diversity, it’s cynicism

While the Boston Globe offers the expected simpering praise of President Obama’s speech to Congress last night—for example, the reporter speaks of his 60% approval rating as a strength against Republicans when the rating really has seen a precipitous decline since his inauguration; a Republican would not get the benefit of that doubt—the coverage of Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal’s Republican response ended with an astonishingly biased attack on Republicans with no concomitant alternative view. This is how the article ends:

“What makes him so appealing to Republicans is he’s an Indian-American representing a Southern state,” said Louisiana State University professor Robert Mann, who evoked the party’s recent election of its first African-American leader. “A lot of it is the same reason they elected Michael Steele their chair: They’re looking to push out in front any bit of diversity they can dredge up.”

Because, of course, non-white people are just figureheads in our party, pushed forward by those fat cat, white men in backrooms to hide the real ugly bigotry of the GOP. Could you imagine a Republican academic getting away with saying that Obama was dredged up by the Democrats to burnish their claims of being the party of diversity? No, there would at least be another sentence offering a rebuttal from the sympathetic point of view.

We’re 36 days into the official transformation of the Fourth Estate into an arm of the White House press office. And the umpteenth day of the mainstream media being unabashedly biased toward liberalism.

 

Arnold: Drop your principles; embrace mine

The headline says it all here: “Schwarzenegger to Stimulus Opponents: Economy More Important Than Principles”. For some people, perhaps some politicians, so-called “principles” are merely malleable positions espoused for the purpose of scoring political victories, easily jettisoned when the shifting tides of politics dictate. But for the rest of us, principles are closely held beliefs, based on considered cogitation, that define our approach to the world as a reality.

In other words, if they really are principles then they are not in conflict with what we truly believe to be the best way to, in this example, fix the economy. Principles are supposed to be our fundamental approach to the world.

What we can do with less of are political games of one-upmanship designed to elevate the players and score media points. You know, like attacking your supposed fellow-travelers in your party for favorable quotes in the media.

 

Tax-free trash: an update

When we moved to Holbrook last November, I wrote about how I considered the town’s solution to the expensive problem of trash disposal to be quite fair. At the time, homeowners paid what was essentially a consumption tax on the trash. You could throw out as much trash as you needed, as long as it was all contained in special bags that cost $3 each. In addition, recycling was included, but you had to separate paper from plastics and put them in paper bags and tie up cardboard with strings. It was kind of a pain.

Then at the end of the year, the town changed the deal. They lowered the price of the bags slightly and instituted a per-household fee because they weren’t raising enough money to pay for the cost of trash disposal. (The town had passed an ordinance a couple of years ago that trash disposal had to pay for itself, not rely on other taxes.) So the bags went down from $3 per bag to $2.10 per bag, but we now have a $240 annual fee. Based on our household’s consumption, that would raise our cost for trash disposal by $150 per year. Not a devastating amount, but I could find other uses for that $12 per month. Still, I wasn’t so motivated that I was actively seeking alternatives.

But the alternative came to me. Last Saturday I found a flyer stuck to our door advertising a local independent trash hauler. They would supply two 96-gallon bins, one for trash and one for recycling. The recycling is single-stream, which means no more sorting and bundling. Everything goes into the bin. They pick up every other week, trash and recycling on different days, and pick-up is not affected by holidays, except when it falls on the actual holiday itself. (This year it’s just July 4 that’s affected.) And the best part? I would pay a little less than I did under the old town-run system before they raised the prices. Plus I get a lot more convenience.

... [P]roving in the process once again that in most areas of society private enterprise can provide a superior product/service at a competitive price over government’s efforts.

Of course, I called on Tuesday and signed up right away, proving in the process once again that in most areas of society private enterprise can provide a superior product/service at a competitive price over government’s efforts, which usually have little incentive for cost-cutting and inefficiency. After all, when government needs more money it just raises taxes. Except in this case, there is an escape hatch for the taxpayers.

I do recognize that the reason they can’t cover costs is that people like me opt out of the system, thus placing the structural costs upon fewer shoulders. But what they don’t recognize is that they provide no incentive to keep us from leaving the system. They provide an inferior service at a higher cost because they make me subsidize a bunch of people who get abatements as well as the inefficiencies inherent in any government bureaucracy.

The best part is that the town just signed an agreement with a company that wants to set up a regional trash transfer station with a rail-link in town and part of the agreement is free trash and recycling pickup for all residents, plus a huge annual payment-in-lieu-of-taxes to the town’s coffers. So if all goes well, in 2 years, I switch to the no-cost-to-me service and save the $300 I’m spending on private trash disposal. Until then, I’m looking forward to a good relationship with the private company and not having to worry about special trash bags and sorting my recycling.

Photo credit: Flickr user feministjulie via a Creative Commons license.