Compromise

“The fellow who says he’ll meet you halfway usually thinks he’s standing on the dividing line.” -Orlando Battista

When you hear the top political candidates speak, one of the more common qualifications you hear them push is their ability to get compromise between democrats and republicans. What does a bipartisan compromise mean in America?  There are a few ways we break the deadlock.

• One is when individual representatives decide to sacrifice their convictions on the current issue in exchange for pushing through their own pet project they know would never fly otherwise. We call this pork.
• Another is to remove all the parts of the bill that are offensive to anyone, usually removing the taxes that will pay for the project, or the regulations on how it will be used.
• Or they can just spread panic and try to push it through under public pressure before realization and regret set in.
• Or they can just reallocate the money from something vital and force the other side to re-fund that (as seen with the Iraq surge, and California budget under Schwarzenegger)

None of these are helpful. The second example, splitting the difference, is what most often appeals to the public. This is like having each party with a hand on the steering wheel. The Democrats wanting to turn left, the republicans right; meanwhile the media is in the back seat rooting for the underdog.  We will hit the center divider every time.

 

There are ways to affect compromise that aren’t dirty. An example would be this plan put forth by Bob Ingles. He proposes starting up a carbon tax (democrats want), but offsetting the tax by reducing taxes elsewhere, such as income taxes (republican opposition evaporates). I’m a fan of taxing problems to fund solutions. Pollution is a much bigger problem than income.  If we give the free market incentive to clean up, they will do so. Since this is as much a behavioral issue as a technological one, I would consider it progress. Imperfect progress (for much the same reason as traffic cameras), but still far better than the business as usual methods of compromise.

Speed Camera Pimping

It looks like people are now taking advantage of this new, guilty until proven innocent folly in order to hurt their rivals. ‘Speed Camera Pimping“, as it is being called (Plate Cloning in Europe) is the act of putting a printout of someone else’s licence plate on your car and then intentionally zipping through red lights in order to rack up tickets. The city has a conflict of interest in this case since it is far easier for them to continue to accept these vast revenues than to solve the problem.

Why does religion seek out a place in government?

Religions seek to grow. Those that didn’t have long since perished, each silently disappearing and forgotten; a natural selection on a cultural scale. It is not so much the focused intention of a motivated individual as it is the sum of its followers, all shaping their lives around a belief system that is so acculturated into their being as to be inseparable, each trying to prevent those around them from falling into sin by steering them down a path to salvation.

By venturing out of the realm of souls and into the real world, religion becomes subject to its rules. It is not free to go to the airport in a veil, to sacrifice heathens upon a mountain top, or to occupy land simply because it is holy. It is a double edged sword. The theology in power gets their god entrusted on our money, their morality made law, and the security of not having another religion in their place, yet they must accept women into their leadership, silence their hate for rival gods, and provide marriage ceremonies for gay couples.

Promethius

“The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one.”
Einstein, Albert

I once read a science fiction book in which mankind had discovered the means to travel the galaxy. They discovered life to be commonplace, and found thousands of civilizations, but none much more advanced than our own, just burned out worlds. After much study they determined that once a society reaches the technological point where the average citizen possessed the knowledge to create a weapon of terrible destructive power, some nut would use it.

When the second amendment was drafted in 1791, about the closest one man could likely come to a massacre with a gun was to fire a musket into a crowd and then stop, pack some powder etc. for a firing rate of about three rounds per minute. The second amendment was drafted, not as most people seem to believe, to protect hunters and shoot burglers, but rather to keep the power in the hands of the people should they need to rise up against oppressive rule.

Today, we find ourselves somewhere in between these two times. The reason for the second amendment still stands, perhaps stronger than when it was written, but weapons have evolved to the point where one person can easily conceal weapons capable of inflicting hundreds of casualties. How should we deal with this problem?  The obvious answer would be to limit the potential lethality each citizen is allowed to bear. The problem is, making something illegal doesn’t make it go away. According to the department of justice, 80% of gun crimes are committed by people who had come by the guns illegally. I think whatever efforts we make, it is imperative that rather than hiding from the technology,  we embrace it for the good it can do. You can’t uninvent fire, you can only use it and prepare for its misuse.

Should felons be allowed to vote?

“An individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.” – Martin Luther King Jr.

Why not? What are we afraid of? Are the axe murderers going to muster up enough of a coalition to legalize axe murdering? The only way felons would be likely to change the system is if they were with the majority. The most common response I hear is that voting is a privilege, and those people should lose it for doing something illegal. I think Dr. King would disagree, especially considering the disproportionate percentage of felons who are minorities, and are now silenced. Preventing them from voting only serves to make them feel like they are no longer a member of the society, to resent it, and in the end to work against it. One quarter of our inmates are in for drug offenses. Caging them as punishment for addiction, cutting them off from our democracy, and then setting them loose in the middle of it does not strike me as an optimal policy. There are only two states currently allowing felons in prison to vote, and only 13 that allow it after you have done your time. Thank you Vermont and Maine.

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