Spitzer exposed as a John: Why Does It Matter?

New York Governor Elliot Spitzer has been caught hiring a prostitute. At first glance this is a huge news story: a big-state governor who built his career on busting unscrupulous bankers and taking on organized crime is implicated in a prostitution inquiry.

I’m amused because this is yet another in a string of politicians who rail against the ‘ills’ of society getting caught partaking themselves. While this isn’t exactly the same as the anti-gay Senator Larry Craig getting caught in a public restroom sex sting, it’s pretty high up there. Spitzer has made a name for himself championing the nanny-state when it comes to financial matters, suing banks and financial companies whose customers got screwed because they didn’t read the fine print. Now the nanny-state apparatus has caught itself another one of its proponents. I find the hypocrisy humorous.

Now don’t take this the wrong way: I am in no way condoning the practice of prostitution. I find any institution that forces or otherwise coerces women and underage girls (and some men and boys) into involuntary acts absolutely and unequivocally abhorrent. However, I also find irksome the blanket rule that two consenting parties of legal age cannot exchange money for certain services because some people don’t think it’s proper.

If Spitzer goes down for this it should be because he committed an illegal act when his entire career has been spent focusing on the rigid upholding of the rule of law, not because he violated the puritanical sexual mores of our society.

P.S. I also think Larry Craig’s bust was bogus. While engaging in sexual acts in a public place should be illegal, I am fairly wary of making it illegal to signal one’s interest in engaging sex acts, especially if there is not explicit evidence that the acts will happen in public. Otherwise it should also be illegal for men to hit on women they meet in a bar, or for women to wear very revealing clothes to nightclubs.

recession – n.

The gerund of the verb to recede. The most common usage today is in reference to the current state of the economy. I.E. ‘7 out 0f 10 people think we’re in a recession.’ Well 7 out of 10 people are ignorant. There is a specific definiton of a recession:

Definition: two consecutive quarters of falling real gross national product.

I.E. when the economy RECEDES in two consecutive quarters. 6 months of declining GDP. GDP is not declining. It is not even stagnant. It is growing. It is not growing as fast as it was when it was buoyed by unsustainable consumer spending fueled by ridiculously lax credit standards, but it is still growing. And we may well enter into a recession during 2008, but WE ARE NOT IN ONE NOW. Anyone who tells you otherwise doesn’t know jack-shit about economics.

Mortgage Pain and Bailouts

I saw a great satirical article quoted at My Money Blog the other day (original article) about how we need to bail out people who bought bigger SUVs than they could afford and are now facing repossession. Unfortunately in today’s America this is not so far outside the realm of possibility that one of the commenters didn’t read carefully and thought the article was serious. The money quote:

“After all”, said President Bush, “it would not be American for us to live within our means and be responsible for our own financial decisions. Those who failed to spend themselves deeply into debt should pick up the tab to keep real Americans riding high.” (emphasis added)

Now I will admit that this mortgage mess has implications beyond people losing homes they couldn’t afford in the first place: the fact that Citigroup is having solvency issues resulting from mortgage-backed securities losses means trouble for the broader economy, not just subprime borrowers. Now that real estate prices have dropped and many people who financed more than 100% of the value of their house are underwater on their mortgages (and therefore unable to refinance at a lower rate) we have a problem. These “real Americans” borrowed irresponsibly and are now paying the consequences for it.

The most common form of bailout I’ve seen is an interest rate freeze for ARMs that would otherwise adjust upward. The certain lawsuits from the holders of securities notwithstanding, this leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I’m generally opposed to the Government unilaterally modifying legal contracts to which citizens are party, especially when such modifications come solely at the expense of one of the parties involved. I know there is probably going to be some kind of relief, but hopefully in the spirit of keeping the credit markets open in this country, not to bail out people who bit off more than they could chew.

And that’s the hypocrisy of the Bush Administration. For years we’ve heard about personal responsibility, and how we need more of it. But that has to include taking responsibility for mistakes. It’s not responsibility if the government intervenes every time something goes bad. I applauded when shareholder suits against banks and brokerage houses were thrown out in the aftermath of the dot-com bubble burst earlier this decade. If you take a gamble and lose you shouldn’t expect the government to give you back your money. Just learn from your mistakes. Do I feel sorry for people facing foreclosure? Of course. Should the government take my money, and the money of millions of other taxpayers to bail these people out? No. They made their bed, and now they should lie in it.

Perhaps some regulation will come about regarding the verification of income tactics that were used to put these people in houses in the first place. That I would support. But the government shouldn’t bail out people who took big risks and lost;  it encourages people to take more huge risks in the future, knowing they won’t have to pay the consequences if it goes bad.

Voters turn down spending, higher taxes

Both here in Washington and in Oregon some big ballot measures just failed (as well as around the country). The most notable are Proposition 1, a huge transportation expansion measure, and a SCHIP-like bill in Oregon. Additionally, several other measures failed all over the country. There are numerous explanations for why each measure failed, the NY Times attributed the failure of the Oregon healthcare initiative to deceptive advertising opposing the measure that was financed by Big Tobacco. What the Times doesn’t mention is that the tobacco companies opposed the measure by portraying it as a “blank check” for the government.

The NY Times uses the opportunity to decry the role of money in politics, since supporters of the measure could only send 25% of what opponents could. This logic doesn’t hold, however, when you look at the fund raising and spending done for and against Proposition 1 in Washington. Proponents spent far more money than the opposition and the measure still failed. Along with it, a state constitutional amendment requiring a portion of revenues be put into a hard-to-tap “rainy day fund” passed, a measure requiring a 2/3 majority to raise taxes also passed, and a measure to reduce the threshold from 60% to 50% to raise school taxes looks like it will fail (not all votes have been counted yet).

For me it looks like people are asking the government for more fiscal restraint as voters were unwilling to approve massive bills that could raise money for any number of projects. Personally? I opposed Proposition 1 and I’m glad it failed. My main problem with it was that it lumped too many things together. Want to build a light-rail system to supplement I-5? Sure! Put it on the ballot by itself and I’ll vote for it. But don’t try to lump in a massive expansion of 405 that will encourage suburban sprawl and do very little to help reduce gasoline consumption or CO2 emissions. More roads mean more cars, not less.

The bottom line for me? There are many reasons why certain measures passed and certain measures failed, but I think that they all revolve around the fact that voters are getting more and more skeptical of expanding government spending, especially in non-specific bundles, and the higher taxes that go along with it. I would have voted for a measure to expand light rail, and against one to expand freeways. But because they were lumped together I could do neither. I’m sure some people would have voted the opposite way. But at least we’d know which projects have popular support and which don’t. But asking for billions for a laundry list of projects turned out to be too much to ask.

Academic Ethics?

I was reading an op-ed in the WSJ yesterday (subscription may be required) about the unwillingness of academia to study its own ethics while devoting significant time and money to studying and reviewing the ethics of other professions. The money quote, from a list of ethical issues posed by the author:

In accordance with what principles may a university bar ROTC from campus because of the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell policy” concerning homosexuals, while inviting to campus a foreign leader whose country not only punishes private consensual homosexual sex but is the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism, and who himself denies the Holocaust and threatens to obliterate the sovereign state of Israel?

This raises serious questions about the integrity, academic honesty, and motives involved in both Columbia’s decision regarding ROTC and Ahmadinejad. Why is this acceptable? Unfortunately academia is completely isolated and universities like Columbia who engage in this type of intellectual dishonesty will continue to receive far more applications than they can accept, simply because of their name. How long until people start voting with their feet against things like this?

Let the Media Fairness Doctrine stay dead

There has been talk recently, mainly among democratic lawmakers, of reviving the Media Fairness Doctrine in an effort to combat “conservative dominance” of the broadcast media, particularly talk radio.  Without going into the constitutionality of the doctrine I believe it is unnecessary and counter-productive for democrats to be spending their time on this.  The MFD was basically put aside during the 1980’s when cable became a larger player in television because now people had more choice in the stations they watched.  The whole purpose of the MFD was to make sure that opposing viewpoint could be heard because of the very limited choice people had in their media sources.  It was put aside in the 80’s because it was no longer necessary.  A few large firms could no longer dominate the airwaves.

In today’s word of almost infinite media choices what possible reason could we have for bringing the MFD back?  It’s not like there are two or three major broadcast networks keeping liberal opinion off the airwaves.  The reason conservative opinion is so pervasive on the radio is because people listen to it.  There simply isn’t enough demand for liberal talk radio or else it would be just as big as Rush Limbaugh.  Remeber Al Franken’s now defunct Air America?  It’s off the air because no one listened to it, not because of a vast conservative conspiracy to stymie public debate.  The Media Fairness Doctrine was put in place during a time of limited broadcast access and news sources to make sure multiple opinions were heard.  In today’s world of blogs, cable news, and RSS readers the MFD is simply unnecessary.