Secular Right

Tax Cheats Become Italy’s Public Enemy:

In addition to banning cash transactions, the effort has included an ad campaign comparing tax evaders to parasites. There have been headline-grabbing controls focusing on stores, hotels and restaurants in affluent Italian cities. For good measure, tax officials have also been stopping luxury cars and asking drivers to show their licenses, along with their most recent tax returns.

This sort of behavior on the part of public officials is not going to happen in the USA. We have “rights.” But, I think those rights can only exist because the USA has enough social capital that the government receives a sufficient amount of taxes from an honest citizenry. Rights are not abstractions or axioms, but derive from concrete realities.

In the wake of the conference, where I presented my own vision for conservatism from the perspective of an atheist/secular humanist:

– The audience was overwhelmingly, but not exclusively, Left-liberal

– The age distribution was bimodal. There was a minority of students around the age of ~20, and many older people around the age of ~65.

– The attendees were overwhelmingly white. There were a smattering of African Americans, I was one of two South Asians, and both of us had to represent all of Asia from what I could tell.

– These demographic notes are of interest because secularism increases monotonically down the age distribution. So the bimodality is peculiar, though explainable (e.g., these are the two age groups with the most time to go to conferences).

– Additionally, Asian Americans are more secular than white Americans. In particular East Asian Americans. But none attended the conference.

– After my presentation several people approached me, some of relative prominence within the “secular community,” and admitted that they agreed with the “conservative position on immigration.” Some from a population growth perspective, and some from a law & order perspective.

– The talk was well received, and to my surprise Ron Bailey’s argument for libertarianism drew more audience ire. My surprise was due to the fact that I positioned myself as firmly not a liberal, while Ron implicitly argued that libertarianism is just a variant of liberalism.

– I had great discussions with young progressive/liberal students who were totally amazed to meet someone outlining conservative positions (e.g., the coherency of the nation-state, the value of collective identities, etc.) in a manner comprehensible to them. There are two major things that I think are notable in this:

1) A great deal of elite mainstream political discussion is not Left/Right but insider/outsider. I tend to take an outsider position, and this is appealing to populist progressives. When viewing the “other side” people naturally emphasize the insider aspects of their enemies and the outsider aspects of their own coalition. Both the main street Left and Right therefore have a selective hostility toward elites.

2) But at the level of the masses the discussion tends to be cartoonish. Many of the people I met only knew non-elite conservatives in the context of their family, and political arguments obviously degenerated into insults which are easy to dismiss (many of them were dissenters from the religious and political norms of their extended families).

A California assemblyman wants to ban food trucks from parking close to schools, on the ground that the vast majority of them peddle fattening fast foods to school children.   The foodie community in Los Angeles is up in arms, because the proposed regulation would hinder their access to the cutting-edge food trucks which have exploded in the city over the last decade. 

“It’s a shame the state would … deny people the opportunity to do what they are passionate about,” said . . . an administrator at a local charity. “So many of the food trucks are doing such good things with fresh foods and ingredients.”

I’m just going by the seat of my pants here, but how many of those incensed gourmets are all for environmental or banking regulations to counter corporate greed?

California might have to decide between saving the desert tortoise and promoting its anti-global warming agenda: a major solar power project in the Mojave Desert keeps disturbing the ancient reptiles. 

BrightSource has spent $56 million so far to protect and relocate the tortoises, but even at that price, the work has met with unforeseen calamity: Animals crushed under vehicle tires, army ants attacking hatchlings in a makeshift nursery and one small tortoise carried off to an eagle nest, its embedded microchip pinging faintly as it receded.

. . .

The company made its first concession to the tortoise during planning, giving up about 10% of its expected power output in a redesign that reduced the project footprint by 12% and the number of 460-foot-tall “power towers” from seven to three.

BrightSource also agreed to install 50 miles of intricate fencing, at a cost of up to $50,000 per mile, designed to prevent relocated tortoises from climbing or burrowing back into harm’s way.

The first survey of tortoises at the site found just 16. Based on biological calculations, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service issued BrightSource a permit to move a maximum of 38 adults, and allowed a total of three accidental deaths per year during three years of construction. Any more in either category and the entire project would be shut down.

The limit put the company under enormous pressure, as more and more tortoises began cropping up and BrightSource’s project came closer to the federal thresholds.

At least it’s not the Kennedy’s objecting to windmills off their Nantucket compound, but the tortoises may be almost as well-connected.  Nuclear power, anyone?

According to the New York Times, many states are delaying creating the health insurance exchanges mandated by Obamacare, waiting for the outcome of the constitutional challenge to the law.  In the meantime, we get such delusional claims about the act as the following:

Proponents, including Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York, a Democrat, say the exchanges will simplify the purchase of insurance and cut costs by increasing competition.

Has there ever been a federal government initiative that has “simplified” anything?  Has Cuomo never seen a Medicare form?  Indeed, in the next breath, the Times goes on to note:

The complexity of the computer systems needed to verify eligibility, enroll consumers, calculate subsidies and connect the exchange to state Medicaid agencies has slowed work in some states.

As for increasing competition, why not just allow the purchase of insurance across state lines?  And drive down costs by removing the tax benefits for employer-purchased insurance. 

I actually support in theory the mandate to purchase insurance, since I am fed up with paying for emergency treatment for people too irresponsible to insure themselves, and I see little difference between mandated car insurance and mandated health insurance—in most places, having a car is virtually a necessity of life.   But however defensible the idea of mandated insurance, the bureaucratic quagmire that it will unavoidably spawn renders the concept a nightmare and something that no realist about government can possibly support.