The Madness Grows

Friday, the state of Michigan sent a memo to 35,000 of its 53,000 workers instructing them not to come into work on Monday because they are being temporarily laid off until such time as a budget is passed. This is reasonable as you don't want to have people come into work if you can't pay them, but there's a problem. Union contracts require at least twenty days' notice of impending layoffs to give those workers time to prepare (one of the good things unions have been able to procure for their members). Several hours after the temporary layoffs were announced, the Civil Service Commission failed to enact a rule change that would have enabled the governor to follow through on the announcement. Granted, it's not like this is something that sort came out of the blue, so workers have probably been preparing for this eventuality for some time, but the governor's failure to put herself in a position to deal with the looming shutdown by temporarily laying off non-essential workers in a manner consistent with the contract the state has signed with its workers' unions is yet another example of how her governance of the state has been utterly inept.

Governor Granholm is bound and determined to advance policies which continue to prevent Michigan from dealing with its severe economic problems (highest unemployment rate in the country) for the sake of protecting the interests of her union backers, and now she's willing to let the government close down in order to secure these aims. The sad thing is that the tax increases the governor wants to impose aren't even necessary for the fiscal health of the state. What's more, if the state wanted to save another $194 million, it could move its employees into Health Savings Accounts.

In her 2006 State of the State address, Granholm said that, because of her economic policies, we'd be blown away (this after four years of the state economy tanking on her watch). So far, she's being proven right, though not in the way she probably had in mind.

Once More Into the Tank

Michigan's government is on the verge of shutting down because an agreement cannot be reached on whether to simply cut spending or raise income taxes as well. Governor Granholm and her Democrat allies in the state legislature contend that the income tax must be raised to overcome the $1.75 billion shortfall. Republicans feel that the budget can be balanced through spending cuts alone, and the Mackinac Center for Public Policy has a way to do it. Of course, shutting down the government should save money too. Shut everything down for a couple weeks, and that should clear up that pesky budget shortfall. Granted, this will make for some difficulties, but it might not be all that bad.

Michigan is in the tank economically, and raising taxes will only make things worse, not to mention making things harder for a lot of people struggling to get by as it is. Republicans should stick to their guns and resist the siren song of increased revenue through increased taxation. Michigan's government is highly inefficient, and it needs to straighten itself out, streamline its spending and bureaucracy, and not pursue a short-sighted tax increase that in the end will only serve to hit Michigan's citizens in their pocketbooks and create a disincentive for businesses to invest in the state. In this environment, the consequences of a brief shutdown are better than the consequences of a tax increase that is, for all intents and purposes, unnecessary.

Why Do They Hate Us?

Is it because of our foreign policy, as many on the left and some paleoconservatives assert? Is it because of our liberty and/or decadent lifestyle, as maintained by many on the right? No. Al Qaeda hates the West and wages jihad against it because the West is not Muslim.

Jean-Francois Revel once said that "Democratic civilization is the first in history to blame itself because another power is trying to destroy it." Al Qaeda recognizes this and uses its propaganda to convince the West to direct its blame for the present unpleasantness inward on itself instead of blaming those who actually perpetrate terrorist attacks. Is it merely a coincidence that, say, al Qaeda's propaganda vis-a-vis Israel lines up nicely with those elements of the left for whom Palestine is a cause celebre as well as paleoconservatives like Pat Buchanan? Is it any coincidence that al Qaeda's condemnations of Western decadence line up nicely with the criticisms leveled by many social conservatives (among whom I would number myself)? Irrespective of whether or not these criticisms have merit on their own, al Qaeda's purpose in issuing these proclamations is to cause people in Western society to turn their attention from the real enemy, al Qaeda and the various other Islamofascists, and make the disparate factions which make up Western society waste their energy fighting each other instead of fighting the forces waging open war on the West with terrorist tactics.

The West has been horribly divided since the Reformation (and Christendom since Rome and Constantinople split in 1054 A.D.), and its energies have largely been expended with internal conflicts that have had devastating consequences, especially for Europe, culminating in two World Wars and the Cold War. True, great political, economic and technological progress have been made, especially within the last hundred years, but this progress has masked a crisis of truth, not to mention the demographic crunch that threatens to undermine the most advanced nations in the world. Simply put, the West has enough problems as it is. We can scarcely afford to let al Qaeda propaganda exacerbate the divisions that threaten to undermine our efforts to deal with the threat posed by al Qaeda and their ilk.

45 Million Uninsured? Maybe Not.

Mark Steyn takes a closer look at the numbers.

Want the Government to Fix Health Care?

What if government is the problem? The CATO Institute's Michael Cannon explains.

Abortion and the New Eugenics

Dissent magazine has published a fascinating piece by Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow on a rift emerging between two factions of the abortion rights movement: those who believe reproductive rights include the right to determine the genetic makeup of your children and those who, for a variety of reasons, don't. That such a divide exists is no surprise, but what makes the piece interesting is the attempt to dissociate abortion rights from eugenics, though it is ultimately unconvincing.

Though the argument is eloquent and largely well-reasoned, it falls apart on two points. The first is the apologia for Margaret Sanger's views on eugenics. For those who are unaware, Margaret Sanger was the inventor of the birth control pill and the founder of Planned Parenthood who propagated views on eugenics that are, frankly, odious (see the piece for one example). Tuhus-Dubrow essentially asserts that Sanger didn't believe what she said, only advancing these views out of political expedience, while not providing any hard evidence in support of this assertion. It may well be that this is correct, but Tuhus-Dubrow gives no reason to accept this as so.

The other area where Tuhus-Dubrow's argument is falls short is much more interesting because it goes to the fundamental divide between the pro-abortion and pro-life factions. Tuhus-Dubrow writes

Many feminists are troubled by sex selection, but fear that regulating any aspect of reproduction could jeopardize abortion rights.

The relevant legal infrastructure adds another complication. The court decisions that uphold rights valued by progressives could also afford protection to the right to design babies. This applies to all of the major cases affirming the right to contraception and abortion: Griswold and Roe, but also Eisenstadt v. Baird (1972), which recognized the right of unmarried people to use contraception, and even Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992), which allowed some restrictions on abortion but reiterated the essential right of people to make decisions regarding reproduction. Further, Lawrence v. Texas (2003), hailed by the left for striking down sodomy laws, dramatically limits the ability of government to restrict personal decisions “absent injury to a person or abuse of an institution the law protects.” Although progressives welcome these freedoms, the implications for the unfettered use of reprogenetic technologies are disturbing. (Of course, the recent decision in Gonzalez v. Carhart raises questions about the durability of these liberties under the current Supreme Court.)

Legal issues aside, in the court of public opinion reproductive rights may be conflated with a libertarian view on genetic technologies. University of Texas law professor John Robertson has defended the use of reprogenetic technologies on the grounds of “procreative liberty.” His argument goes like this: people have the right to procreate; sometimes the choice whether to procreate depends on the qualities of the prospective offspring; therefore, enhancement must be permitted (although he endorses limited restrictions). British author Nicholas Agar, in his recent book Liberal Eugenics, writes, “The eugenics defended here [is] primarily concerned with the protection and extension of reproductive freedom.” Thus can the concept of reproductive choice be appropriated and abused.

The first and least controversial task for pro-choice activists, then, is to make it very clear that the rights for which they have fought are fundamentally different from the right to determine the genetic makeup of offspring. Whether the latter right is legitimate or not, it is not the same as or an extension of the former. Pro-choice activists have struggled for women’s freedom to control their own lives and bodies, not to control the lives and bodies of their children . (emphasis added)

This is where pro-choice activists go wrong and why, in my mind, the link between abortion and eugenics cannot be severed in good faith, only shoved into the background. It is certainly true that the pro-choice movement seeks to give women "freedom to control their own lives and bodies," but where pregnancy is concerned, a woman cannot control her own life and body without controlling the life and body of her unborn child. If, as Tuhus-Dubrow argues, it is wrong for women (or men for that matter) to determine the genetic makeup of their children because it is wrong for them to control the lives and bodies of their children, then it is also wrong for them to terminate their pregnancy because terminating the pregnancy by its very nature involves exercising the ultimate control over the lives and bodies of their children by killing them. Thus, the case for abortion rights Tuhus-Dubrow seeks to preserve cannot be preserved without simultaneously securing the case for designer babies.

This'll Help Michigan's Economy

GM workers have gone on strike. According to UAW President Ron Gettelfinger, the talks broke down over the issue of job security. Not being privy to the details of the negotiations, I don't know what changes GM wanted to make to the contract that would have made it easier for them to fire workers, but from what I've heard about workers in GM plants getting away with, GM needed some leeway here. I've heard stories of workers leaving work several hours early to go to a bar and having a co-worker punch them out at the appropriate time. Oftentimes it is so difficult and costly to fire workers who perform their jobs poorly that it is less costly to keep them on than to fire them and replace them with someone who will do the job well.

Now, it certainly reasonable for the UAW to protect its workers from arbitrary and/or unjust firing, but in order for GM to once again become the class of the automotive world, it must have the flexibility to ensure that it can hire the most effective and efficient workforce possible. The two must be balanced, and right now the scales are tilted heavily toward the UAW to the detriment of GM, its shareholders, its consumers, and its workers.

Potentially Bad News on The Diplomatic Front

Japan is looking to increase its economic presence in Iran. Of course, with diplomatic gestures like this, how could Japan do otherwise?

This Is News?

The pope is opposed to abortion. Certainly the Holy Father's speech was newsworthy, but the headline gives the indication that the content of his proclamation of what has been Church teaching from the beginning was somehow unexpected. What's next? Shock that the pope believes the bread and wine offered in the Mass are transsubstantiated into the Body and Blood of Christ?

Still, it was good to read this quote:

"It was in Europe that the notion of human rights was first formulated. The fundamental human right, the presupposition of every other right, is the right to life itself," he said in an address at the former imperial Hofburg Palace.

"This is true of life from the moment of conception until its natural end. Abortion, consequently, cannot be a human right -- it is the very opposite. It is a deep wound in society."

It's also kind of funny to see Reuters' biases in plain view in the following quote:

The average birth rate in the European Union is down to about 1.5 children per woman, raising fears that an ageing population will not be able to finance pensions systems.(emphasis mine)

Some European countries have adopted, or plan to, incentives to encourage couples to have children, to try to reverse trends where couples have fewer children and begin families later. Experts say high housing prices are partly to blame.

Here in the States, politicians talk about how children are our future (true, even if it sounds tacky), but in Europe, it's become "Children fund our pensions." And of course, high housing prices are more of a disincentive to having children than, say, the astronomically high taxes in most of Europe.