I’m basically a libertarian in the Robert Anton Wilson mode; i.e. someone who likes nature and doesn’t hate taxes or poor people. Welfare doesn’t bother me but sending airplanes halfway around the world to kill a bunch of poor villagers does. With that in mind, let’s consider the issues:

Healthcare: I want a reliable, single-payer system that ensures everyone has access to reasonable health care. On this issue Ron Paul would’ve delivered exactly what Barack Obama has: absolutely nothing.

The economy: Keynes described the state of the economy we’re in 70 years ago. Massive government intervention is called for. However, that intervention should focus on shoring up people’s incomes and support systems, not the bonuses of Wall Street bankers. Here Obama may have actually done a little bit better than Ron Paul would’ve done. However, he hasn’t done nearly enough. This minor improvement is hardly justification for the continuing torture state endorsed by Barack Obama.

The environment: freedom stops at the next person’s nose. Pollution doesn’t. Regulating emissions and protecting the environment is a proper function of government. We need much stronger environmental regulations and government enforcement thereof. And once again, Ron Paul would’ve accomplished exactly what Barack Obama has: absolutely nothing.

Foreign-policy: this is the area where Ron Paul really shines. Barack Obama promised to close Guantanamo Bay. He didn’t. There is at least a reasonable possibility that Ron Paul would’ve actually shut the torture prison down by now. Barack Obama promised to get us out of Iraq within a year. He didn’t, and there’s no exit date in sight. Ron Paul would have the troops out by now. Barack Obama promised to expand the war in Afghanistan and kill more people, and this is one promise he delivered on. Ron Paul would not have done that.

The Supreme Court: Barack Obama’s one choice so far for the Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor, isn’t awful but neither is she great. Perhaps she’ll become another Earl Warren or Thurgood Marshall, but I’m not betting on it. I suspect Ron Paul would have nominated a candidate at least this good for the Supreme Court, though doubtless there’d be some differences from issue to issue.

Immigration: as a libertarian I believe in free and unrestricted movement of people. I see no reason whatsoever that anyone who wants to shouldn’t be able to walk across the border (any border) any time to seek work or for any other reason. On this issue, Paul is decidedly not libertarian. He seems to believe that freedom is only for native-born Americans, and voted for the erection of fences to restrict the freedom of movement of Mexicans. But so did Barack Obama. Recently, Obama has proposed cutting the funds for further extension of the border fence. However, I suspect Ron Paul would eliminate the militaristic checkpoints stopping all drivers in the Southwest. Again, I don’t really like Paul or his stand on the issue, but he’s not significantly worse than Obama.

Marijuana: Barack Obama claims to be okay with medical marijuana, but this is belied by the continued arrest and persecution of cannabis clubs in California and elsewhere. Ron Paul simply wants to legalize it. Advantage Paul.

Crime: Democrats have long been accused of being soft on crime, whereas Republicans have long been accused of being criminals. The last two administrations have proven both of these calumnies to be true. The Bush/Cheney administration was the most criminal in American history, and the Obama administration has completely let them off the hook. I don’t know if Ron Paul would have actually prosecuted the criminals in the Bush administration had he been elected, but he certainly couldn’t have done less than Barack Obama has.

I could go on with many other issues — freedom of choice, Palestine, government surveillance of citizens, welfare, etc. — but on issue after issue, Paul ranges from significantly better than Obama to no worse. When you get down to it, the only thing that Barack Obama has really delivered in the last year and a half is a slight improvement in credit card terms and a brief extension of unemployment benefits. By contrast, if Ron Paul had been elected, Guantánamo would be closed and we’d be out of Iraq and Afghanistan. That’s hardly an ideal scenario. The economy would still be in the toilet. Global warming would still be pushing us toward complete environmental disaster with no effective action from the government. Tens of millions of Americans would be without adequate health care. But how is that any different from the situation we’re in now? If the Democrats can’t deliver on Democratic issues like the environment, healthcare, and the economy, then we might as well vote for a Republican who would at least deliver on not torturing and assassinating people.

Actually looking at that list, it’s pretty clear where the Republicans stand on this important question. As long as the government’s helping out big business, Wall Street, insurance companies, and auto dealers, it’s not too much. But as soon as it starts trying to help individual folks trying to get by, then it’s too much and they’ll fight tooth and nail to stop it.

Morally, stealing is presumed to be wrong by most folks. When someone steals your car or your food or your book, you no longer possess it. You have lost the value of it. This is recognized as a harm, and most societies have rules in place to prevent this.

By contrast, when someone copies your book or music or software, you have not lost anything. You still have full use of the original item, and now there’s a new copy of the item in the world for the pirate to use too. The net wealth of the world has gone up. There is certainly not universal agreement that this is a bad thing. Even among those who hold that this is a bad thing because it deprives authors and publishers of royalties, or reduces the market for new creative goods, or just because it is illegal, it is not remotely reasonable to claim that copying a book is morally equivalent to stealing a book. In fact, most normal folks find the harm of piracy so innocuous that they pay it about as much attention as the laws against jaywalking.

When authors and musicians and editors rail against piracy by comparing it to stealing from furniture shops and grocery stores, they’re just ensuring that sensible folks tune them out. They’re clearly a little unhinged on the issue, and not thinking rationally. They’re attempting to equate the crime of piracy with a much larger, more serious crime. If you accuse someone of being a thief, that’s pretty serious. If you accuse someone of making a mix tape–well, is that even an accusation? More of a simple statement I think. On the scale of serious crimes, piracy should probably rank somewhat lower than speeding, and a little above parking in front of your own driveway. Piracy is not theft, and it shouldn’t be treated as such.

A democracy requires accountability, and accountability requires transparency. As Justice Louis Brandeis wrote, “sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.” In our democracy, the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), which encourages accountability through transparency, is the most prominent expression of a profound national commitment to ensuring an open Government. At the heart of that commitment is the idea that accountability is in the interest of the Government and the citizenry alike.

The Freedom of Information Act should be administered with a clear presumption: In the face of doubt, openness prevails. The Government should not keep information confidential merely because public officials might be embarrassed by disclosure, because errors and failures might be revealed, or because of speculative or abstract fears. Nondisclosure should never be based on an effort to protect the personal interests of Government officials at the expense of those they are supposed to serve. In responding to requests under the FOIA, executive branch agencies (agencies) should act promptly and in a spirit of cooperation, recognizing that such agencies are servants of the public.

All agencies should adopt a presumption in favor of disclosure, in order to renew their commitment to the principles embodied in FOIA, and to usher in a new era of open Government. The presumption of disclosure should be applied to all decisions involving FOIA.

The presumption of disclosure also means that agencies should take affirmative steps to make information public. They should not wait for specific requests from the public. All agencies should use modern technology to inform citizens about what is known and done by their Government. Disclosure should be timely.

–President Barack Obama

Read the rest in Freedom of Information Act

It’s starting to seem like Barack Obama actually gets it. I still want to see him prosecute the criminals in the Bush administration, but otherwise it’s starting to look like we’ve elected a good one for the first time in my lifetime. Fingers crossed.

The U.S. automakers are in trouble precisely because they have insisted on building gas guzzlers no one wants to buy any more, and have refused to make available smaller, more fuel efficient vehicles. Now that the market is spoken these socialists-for-the-rich want to give fifteen billion dollars to these companies so they can continue making heavy trucks and SUVs no one wants any more, and Bush wants to take the money from funds specifically allocated by the Energy Independence and Security Act to develop new fuel efficient vehicles the public might actually want to buy. This is state socialism at its stupidest.

The market has spoken. Consumers don’t want to buy what the automakers want to build, so let the big three go out of business. If the tens of thousands of consequent layoffs bother the so-called liberals in Congress, then allocate the money to the unemployed directly, or start a jobs program for something we actually need. How about a little socialism for the poor for a change?

For all the wingnut fears about a vast left-wing liberal agenda over the next four-eight years, it’s worth remembering that like Clinton before him, Obama is slightly to the right of Richard Nixon. In any other Western democracy he’d be considered somewhere from a moderate to a hard right-winger. That Obama’s considered a liberal is simply a measure of how far to the right this country has swung in the last 30 years. Not that this isn’t a victory, or an important one, but it’s small change in direction, not a large one.

When the story of this election is fully told, what I think we’ll realize is just how good a campaign Obama ran. Obama learned the lessons of the last two campaigns. If Dean or Kerry had run a campaign this well, Bush would have been out of office four years earlier. If Gore had run this well, W. would have been a minor footnote in history. Obama managed to avoid almost all the mistakes that have plagued the Democrats since 1980. Certainly, the stars aligned for him–an incumbent president with record low approval ratings, an economic crisis, an unpopular war–but Lord knows there were enough Democrats who could have blown even these advantages. Obama won because he ran the best damn campaign that’s been run in possibly ever. He organized and executed. Not only did he beat the Republican machine. He defeated the reasonably competent Clinton organization that had managed to win two presidential and two senatorial elections.

A few well-deserved raspberries: To Hillary Clinton, who claimed we should vote for her because she could attract racists who wouldn’t vote for a black man. To the pundits who said the Democrats were blowing their best opportunity in years by nominating a black man. To everyone who said young voters wouldn’t show up. To the old-strategy DNC hacks and new Democrats like Rahm Emanuel who wanted to continue the losing 25-state strategy. To all the wingnuts, especially the ones at Hillbuzz, who were predicting a McCain victory as late as this morning.

A few kudos: to the mainstream media for treating Obama’s campaign with the respect it deserved, and not deciding in advance that a black man couldn’t possibly win or even be serious about running, as they did with Jesse Jackson in 1984 and 1988. To Howard Dean for resurrecting the Democratic Party from the dead, and fighting in states the “realistic” Democrats had given up on. Keep up the good work. In 2012 I look forward to seeing a few more states turn blue.

The proof is in the winning: Obama was very likely the strongest candidate the Democrats could have nominated this year. McCain wasn’t the strongest possible Republican, but he was damn close. When the Democrats fight, and fight well, they win. Please proceed to ignore all the pundits who wanted you to lose, and will now shout about how Obama has to move to the center (by which they mean even further to the right) to govern. Ignore Republican threats of filibusters. Make the 70-year-old dinosaurs stand up through the night reading aloud from the Bible if they want to block real progress. You can outlast them.

Footnote: Wow, when McCain thanked Sarah Palin in his concession speech, there were actually boos in the crowd. I didn’t realize just what a big albatross she’d become for the McCain campaign. Even some of the McCain dittoheads don’t like her. Maybe we’ll get lucky and she’ll get the Republican nomination in 2012.

One more note: say what you want about the OC Register’s politics, they have better reporting of local election results than I ever saw in Brooklyn. In New York, you really had to work to find out who won the local school boards and state senate seats and such.

Of course they’re the statewide propositions. You’ve all heard about Prop 8, I’m sure, but there are 11 others on the ballot. In California various interest groups get together to buy laws with disinformation. For instance, T. Boone Pickens is pushing Prop 10, a measure to give about five billion dollars of taxpayer money to natural gas and trucking companies. Of course, if you phrase it like that no one would vote for it, so instead it’s disguised as an environmental measure. It isn’t. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. Prop 7 is another weird one that seems to be about the environment. This one I don’t really understand, but the Sierra Club says no, so I’ll vote against it.

Prop 5 is actually one I support: it tries to eliminate a lot of the nasty effects California’s draconian criminal code has has on folks around the state by reducing incarceration for non-violent crimes. Naturally it’s opposed by the corrections officers’ union, who won’t be happy until everyone in the state is either a guard or a convict. I’m usually pretty pro-union, but the corrections union out here is the best argument I’ve ever seen for keeping unions out of politics. Lobbying to put more people in jail as some sort of perverted jobs program is one of the most sick and twisted abuses of influence I’ve ever encountered. They’ve been doing it for years and now they’re doing it again with Proposition 6, which will take hundreds of millions of dollars away from schools, parks, and communities and give them to prisons. As a fiscal conservative, I believe we need to reduce government spending. However, Unlike the faux conservatives, I don’t believe law enforcement is exempt from cost controls. We spend way too much on prisons and prison guards, and we need to cut that. Step 1 is reducing the inmate population. Prop 5 does that. Prop 6 goes in the wrong direction. It is a massive welfare give-away to a special interest group.

Anyway, that’s just the tip iof the iceberg. There’s some good and bad on the ballot. I really look forward to being the first state to-fingers crossed–explicitly vote in favor of gay marriage. Once that happens, I expect these laws to be relegated to the dustbins of history, just like the miscegenation laws of the past. Within my lifetime I expect to see politicians who supported these laws become as disreputable as the Strom Thurmonds of the last century. But whichever way these elections go, it sure does make for an interesting election day.

In Irvine, we also get to vote on several city council seats in one of the ugliest, slimiest campaigns I’ve seen since I left Louisiana. I really don’t know much about the local politics here, but Sukhee Kang and cohorts have convinced me that under no circumstances do I want them anywhere near the levers of power. They have been running just the worst sort of deceptive smear campaign with fake newspapers, numerous half-truths about measures and opponents; and now the OC Weekly tells me they’ve been trying to finance their smear campaign with taxpayer dollars. My mailbox is filled with deceptive spam you’d have to a complete idiot to fall for. (Just how many complete idiots live in Irvine remains an open question that tomorrow should answer.)

Then of course I start to wonder why anyone would spend so much time, money, and effort to be on the council of a two-bit planned community like Irvine, and the only answer I can think of isn’t pretty. I can’t say I’m particularly informed about the local issues. I don’t even know what parties all these yutzes belong to (the elections are non-partisan) but I haven’t had this much personal distaste for local candidates since David Duke ran for state senate in my old home district (and coming from Brooklyn that’s saying something). Interesting times indeed.

Diament and other panelists cited a number of scenarios in which Americans’ religious rights might be infringed on when they clash with legal recognition of “interracial marriage.” They questioned if accommodations or exemptions would be permitted for religious adherents or institutions in the following situations, among others:

• County clerks who oppose issuing marriage licenses to interracial couples.
• Employees who disapprove of diversity training programs that endorse “interracial marriage.”
• Insurance company workers who do not want to sell policies or process claims for interracial couples’ partner benefits.
• Owners of small hotels and bed-and-breakfast inns who refuse to serve interracial couples.
• Lawyers who decline to provide estate planning for interracial couples.
• Psychologists and psychiatrists who refuse to counsel interracial couples.
• Doctors who will not provide some services, such as in vitro fertilization (IVF), for interracial couples.
• Religious colleges that will not open married student housing to interracial couples.
• Religious institutions that refuse requests from interracial couples to hold wedding receptions in their buildings.
• Christian bookstores and other parachurch organizations that decline spousal benefits for “interracial marriage” partners.

Original version here.

What’s next? Will Christians be complaining that their religious freedom is imperiled because they’re no longer allowed to burn witches at the stake or put heretics to the rack?

Proposition 98

• Yes 39.1%
• No 60.9%

Proposition 99

• Yes 62.4%
• No 37.6%

Prop 99 was actually weaker than I would have liked–I would have preferred a measure that banned eminent domain for private development, period, not just for owner occupied residences–but 98 was just over the top.

Of course now we get to miss the fun of watching the courts sort out the mess that would have resulted if both had passed, since they actively contradicted each other.

Yesterday I also got to try electronic voting for the first time. The machines here in Irvine had voter verified paper ballots, and I think they were a definite improvement over the mechanical machines I’ve used in the past (and never trusted). However user interface wise they were a disaster. You had to use a scroll wheel to move to the candidate of your choice, which was very nonintuitive. It was easy to miss a ballot completely, and hard to vote for only three candidates when you were allowed to vote for six. In fact, initially I wasn’t sure that was even possible. Write-in candidates had to be entered by scrolling the wheel around an alphabet to spell out a name. Surely we can do better than this?