I Feel A Rant Coming On
I've posted profusely on Twitter and/or Facebook. I used to be much more visible on Facebook, but part of the problem was I would write these long beautiful comments no one would read and/or I would find trolls just crapping all over it with ad hominem attacks. It's not that I have a thin skin--I really don't really need or want the approval of these trolls. I once posted a sweet photo of my beautiful redhead niece hugging me. What people didn't know was this photo was taken by my middle brother at the post-funeral reception in honor of my father. I really didn't feel well, over and beyond the recent loss of my Dad. I did have something to eat but my stomach was churning. My grandniece noticed me sitting alone and spontaneously came over to me and give me a gentle sweet hug, a bright ray of sunshine on a very bad day.So a lot of trolls were speaking nonsensical trash, like how she better watch out, or I would eat her, too, or speculating she was my daughter (not in a complimentary way). I didn't mind it when they were calling me fat, but lay off the little girl with a heart of gold, who is not responsible for her uncle's "crackpot views". I pulled the photo from my profile.
And I've had my share of battles with fellow libertarians. Many libertarian portals, like Reason and Cato Institute, were positively giddy over the legalization of "gay marriage"; I was appalled by a central court trumping traditionally locally enforced marriage law, which violates the localization principle. I felt the more principled position was one of privatizing marriage.
And if and when Cato Institute posts pro-immigration pieces, the Trumpkins and alt-rightist trolls crawl out of the woodwork to hit and run anyone posting a favorable comment. As a libertarian, I'm rather used to being a lone wolf, but few of us apparently have the stomach for taking them on. Well, I do, but I don't have the time or patience to ward off hundreds of brain-dead alt-righters.
Twitter is a different platform. It's very difficult to get your message across in 140 characters or less. Still some of my tweets have done spectacularly well. For example, over the past month, I've had 7 tweets with over 1000 impressions (2 of them yesterday) and probably dozens of others over 100. I still struggle with maintaining civility when I deal with "progressives" or alt-righters; I still want to lash out with "retard", "idiot", "fascist", etc. I really don't want to obfuscate my message with crude name calling. I'm not trying to defend that use of language, and I don't doubt I've lost Twitter followers over it. But usually I'm pairing it with a point I'm trying to get across. Why use the terms, then? I liken it to something like Cher's slap across the face in "Moonstruck": "Snap out of it!" Also, I get a huge amount of satisfaction when leftists are totally confused over the application to "fascists" to themselves. They consider it a popular pejorative to hurl at right-wingers, think it's self-evident that the Germans and Italians were right-wingers. But if you look at them, they subordinated the individual to the State--and the business/industry to the State. They favored social welfare; consider, for instance, this Wikipedia extract on Mussolini:
By 1925 the Fascist government had “embarked upon an elaborate program” that included food supplementary assistance, infant care, maternity assistance, general healthcare, wage supplements, paid vacations, unemployment benefits, illness insurance, occupational disease insurance, general family assistance, public housing, and old age and disability insurance.[14] As for public works, “the Mussolini’s administration “devoted 400 million lire of public monies” for school construction between 1922 and 1942, compared to only 60 million lire between 1862 and 1922.[15]It's difficult to argue xenophobia/immigration restrictions are distinctively right-wing; recall that Bernie Sanders claimed that "open borders" was Koch brothers' conspiracy. And government controls of the economy can come from the left or the right in the counterproductive pursuit of economic security or social justice, whether we are talking trade or monetary manipulation, infrastructure investment, etc.
There were a couple of topics yesterday that set me off: (1) voter fraud and (2) people "losing" their healthcare on an ObamaCare repeal. I need to discuss these matters in more than a soundbite. (Yes, I am aware that I could write a passage and then attach it as an image to a tweet.)
I ran into an exchange with a bleeding-heart progressive furious over the Trump Administration's attempts to address voter fraud at the federal level. which he regarded as intentionally discriminatory towards lower-income people, perhaps homeless, not owning a registered car, the whole discussion of disparate impact. Disparate impact is different than disparate treatment. Disparate treatment is what most of us would regard as intrinsically discriminatory, e.g., a black child living in the same apartment building as a similar-age white child cannot attend the same public school because of a government-based segregation policy.
Now suppose the same white child attends a private school costing $10,000/year. The school is willing to accept the black child, but his lower middle-income parents don't have $10,000. Is it fair that the black child might be stuck at a lower-rated public school? Perhaps not. But then life can be "unfair". When luxury car dealers raise prices, they price me out of the market. Trump could probably buy a fleet in different colors without breaking a sweat. I work as hard or harder than Trump. Why is it fair he can buy a fleet and I can't even afford one? The prices have a disparate effect based on one's income. It's not really that the dealer is deliberately trying to prevent me from buying a car; for one thing, he's accruing costs for unsold vehicles on his lot. It's insane for him to sell me the car below his costs just because it's easier for me to finance.
As Chief Justice Roberts pointed out, the answer to discrimination is not to discriminate. For example, most engineers are male. (Let me point out that I have a niece-in-law who is an engineer.) This is not necessarily evidence of discrimination against prospective female engineers. Women are not assigned by the State into professions. There may be gender-based differences in preferences. I know my middle brother had his sights on becoming a chemical engineer because he could make a lot of money. And he was right. I set my sights on being a professor. I could make a comfortable living as a professor, but I had students who would make more 3 years after graduation. So my brother and his wife have always lived in the biggest, best house in the family, they take annual vacations and own a timeshare in Mexico. I think he's vested in two pension systems if and when he decides to retire. Am I jealous? Hell NO! I remember how hard he had to work as an undergrad at Texas. He owned a house in east Texas while I could barely make my rent payments as a UH graduate student. My attitude has always been, good for him! If anyone deserves success, he does; I'm proud of and happy for him. I despise the Politics of Envy. My engineer brother and (our) nephews can't figure out why I didn't do the same; I certainly had the aptitude. The answer is that I had non-financial career goals and preferences. I loved being a professor, despite all the petty politics; I loved lecturing, researching, and service; I was very good at those activities, not that university evaluation schemes recognized my efforts.
The problem here is that statistics are basically sliced and diced to fit the leftists' agenda, and any difference is seen as the result of intentional or subconscious discrimination. Nonsense! If women are disproportionately attracted to lower primary school education, why would it be fair to implement a policy of minimal male representation? It may well be we would shut out more talented women just to enforce an arbitrary quota. It's not up for us to say, "You silly women, instead of going into this low-paying profession, you could make far more as engineers." That's elitist and condescending.
We should have serious safeguards against fraud. And yes, the progressive troll rolled out his predictable tired argument that all these studies "prove" the actual incidents of fraud are negligible. That's just nonsense from an even casual reflection on disputed elections in American history. These purported studies simply don't obtain sufficient data, never mind control for variations in voting laws. Even comparisons before/after voter ID laws shouldn't assume that any difference is due to the voter ID law; for example, blacks didn't turn out as much as when Obama headed the ballot. And it doesn't make sense that we require more evidence of identity in cashing a check than in ensuring the integrity of our elections.
So the progressive troll is afraid that ensuring the integrity of our elections with more rigorous rules will deprive more marginal residents of their right to vote. It would be one thing, for example, if the homeless were not allowed to vote, but there are ways for the homeless to register. I think these numbers (of missing voters) are grossly exaggerated, not unlike the numbers of people with preexisting conditions denied insurance. Early ObamaCare was actually a test case where those who could document they couldn't get insurance locally qualified for the PCIP program: max enrollment? Less than 115K. In a country of 320M. And THIS is what the Dems are using to try to blackmail the country into this unaffordable monstrosity of ObamaCare?
Which leads us to the final part of my rant. Moderate Republicans are freaking out that voters will punish them if they are seen as throwing people out of healthcare policies. Let's point out that there are already exceptions to the mandate for financial hardship and skyrocketing premiums under ObamaCare. Hospitals already couldn't turn away patients on ability to pay for emergency care (not that turning dying people away is that great for publicity). Catastrophic care would cost a lot less, if it was an option, and people would quickly take to more frugal spending of (say,) health security account money for goods and services. We could liberalize cross-state insurance pools, self-insuring entities, allow for a more transparent market in terms of prices, etc. The point is if we allowed a more cafeteria style approach than an overengineered plan that confounds insurance with normal expenses, we could see more people insuring or getting health benefits. What the GOP needs to do is improve competition among providers, and there are a ton of ways to get there, including occupational licensing reform, elimination of certificate of need, interstate providers of catastrophic-like health plans. If you free the market, the healthcare providers will come.
