Monthly Archives: April 2010

Tom Martino’s ‘Hot Button’ Earth Day Rant

Business, Culture, Economics, Environment, Government Regulation, Media, Multimedia, Theory and Ideas

I just happened to come across this wonderful rant from Tom Martino concerning Earth Day and environmentalism. For those of you who live outside the Denver media market, Tom Martino (a.k.a. ‘The Troubleshooter’) isn’t a political commentator per se but a consumer advocate with both a radio and TV show (similar to Clark Howard, but unlike Howard he does endorse products and services).

So what’s getting this apolitical consumer advocate so worked up concerning Earth Day?

Answer: the fact that the environment has become a Left/Right political issue. The Left uses the environment to ‘fear monger’ citizens into accepting bigger government while some on the Right dismiss the need to combat pollution altogether. Isn’t there a middle ground?

 

Martino hit on two main points about improving the environment which bear repeating: environmental education and technology. I know first hand that the construction industry’s big mantra right now is ‘sustainable design.’ Engineers, architects, MEP professionals, contractors, and designers at every level are receiving training for LEED certification to make their designs more energy efficient and better for the environment. Being LEED certified helps these individuals become more marketable in a very difficult economy (I’m considering receiving this training myself) and nearly every new building design has a LEED rating or some sort of sustainability rating.

The latest CAD and BIM software packages have better tools to calculate energy use, water use, emissions, and the overall carbon footprint of the building in the construction phase as well as the overall expected life of the building. There is definitely a market demand for efficiency in these designs; one does not have to buy into man made global warming or be of a particular political philosophy to realize the benefits (both from an economic and environmental standpoint).

The market plays a role and yes, sometimes reasonable government regulation does as well. Who among us would like to return to a time when automobiles had 12 mpg or less and belched giant black clouds of smoke? One only need spend a few minutes behind the tailpipe of one of these cars* to appreciate just how clean burning modern engines are. It’s in the auto industry’s best interests to make their vehicles even more fuel efficient and cleaner burning, not because government demands them but because consumers demand them.

Perhaps Earth Day is a political day but it doesn’t have to be. I tend to believe there are a good number of people out there who have a similar view of Earth Day, the environment, and environmental policy as Tom Martino who just happen to not be as outspoken as he is. It’s definitely nice to hear someone verbalize and broadcast what many of us are already thinking and is certainly a message worthy of recycling.

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Stephen Littau
http://fpffressminds.blogspot.com/

Ron Paul And Rudy Giuliani Still Sparring Over 9/11

Election '10, Foreign Affairs, Politics, Republicans, The Surveillance State, War on Terror

In one of the early Republican debates in the 2008 election cycle, Ron Paul and Rudy Giuliani sparred over the September 11th attacks and the role that U.S. foreign policy choices may have played in inciting the attacks:

On Iraq, Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, the Libertarian candidate for president in 1988, stood alone in railing against the decision to go to war, comparing it to a quagmire he said engulfed U.S. troops in Vietnam a generation ago. “We don’t go to war like we did in Vietnam and Korea, because the wars never end,” he said.

When Paul later suggested that terrorists attacked on Sept. 11, 2001, because of what he described as America’s 10-year campaign of bombing in Iraq, an angry Giuliani demanded that he retract the statement.

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard that before, and I’ve heard some pretty absurd explanations for September 11,” Giuliani said.

Paul refused to give in, saying that terrorists react to the United States’ actions in the world. “If we ignore that, we ignore that at our risk,” Paul said.

Here’s video of that exchange from nearly three years ago:

That Giuliani-Paul exchange figured prominently in an ad that Trey Grayson ran several weeks ago in an effort to paint Rand Paul as a 9/11 truther.

Now, the battle has been joined again.

Today, Giuliani endorsed Trey Grayson, and issued this statement:

“Trey Grayson is the candidate in this race who will make the right decisions necessary to keep America safe and prevent more attacks on our homeland. He is not part of the ‘blame America first’ crowd that wants to bestow the rights of U.S. citizens on terrorists and point fingers at America for somehow causing 9/11,” Giuliani said.

He continued, “Kentucky needs a Senator who understands the threat posed by our enemies abroad. I witnessed firsthand the destruction and loss of life our enemies can cause. Like me, Trey Grayson knows we must stay on offense against terrorism, and he supports using all the essential tools we have in that fight, including monitoring the conversations and activities of suspected foreign terrorists as allowed by the Patriot Act. He is a fresh face that Republicans can trust to best represent their values – both on national security and fiscal responsibility – in Washington. Kentuckians could not elect a better Senator than Trey Grayson.”

Congressman Paul responded with a statement of his own:

The Neo-Con establishment is pulling out all the stops to beat Rand.

First, Dick Cheney endorsed his opponent. Next, Rick Santorum. And today, Mr. Big Government Republican himself is slithering into the race.

That’s right. Rudy Giuliani has stuck his beak into Rand’s race, endorsing his opponent and blaming Rand for being part of the “blame America” crowd. Disgusting.

Especially since Giuiliani is still committing the same willful distortion that he was guilty of three years ago:

Did Paul really say that American foreign policy was to blame for 9/11 ? Personally, I don’t think so. What he said was that American foreign policy was a contributing factor to the formation of the forces that now seek to destroy us.

And Andrew Sullivan contends that Giuliani openly lied about what Paul said:

Giuliani, interestingly, openly lied about Ron Paul’s position on 9/11. Paul specifically did not make a statement, as Giuliani immediately claimed, that the U.S. invited 9/11. I rewound to double-check. It was the Fox questioner who ratcheted up the stakes on that question, not Paul. Paul demurred on a specific answer and switched the question to the general issue of blowback. As to who’s right, the answer is both. Bin Laden – still at large and operating within the territory of Pakistan, an alleged ally which Cheney recently visited – both justified the 9/11 attack on those grounds but has a theology that doesn’t require such a casus belli. But now he doesn’t even need the theology. We have, alas, made more terrorists by our bungling in Iraq than Bin Laden could have dreamed of just six years ago.

That, I think, is the point that Congressman Paul, somewhat inarticulately, was making last night. American intervention and adventure-ism in the Middle East, which has been marked mostly by a history of bungling and backing the wrong guy 9 times out of 10, has helped guys like bin Laden recruit from among the Arab masses.

Another Rudy-Ron battle ?

I know who I’m putting my money on.

Doug Mataconis
http://www.belowthebeltway.com

Quote(s) Of The Day

Quote of the Day

First, Megan McArdle:

I am a big fan of roundabouts, and wish that America used more of them in place of intersections or interchanges. Unfortunately, because we don’t have a lot of roundabouts here, drivers don’t quite get them, and they tend to behave very aggressively–particularly, for some reason, those coming off of K Street.

Hmm, I wonder what that reason could be. Could it have to do with the attitudes of the type of people that spend most of their time there?

Next, The Big Picture, with the apt title “‘Recovery’ Bypassing Small Businesses”:

The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) released its monthly Small Business Economic Trends (SBET) survey, and the outlook for small businesses is still not good. The NFIB counts its membership at about 350,000 small businesses.

I think Ron Paul has the key to understanding that one.

Brad Warbiany
https://thelibertypapers.org/

Abortion Is Not Libertarian — Or Conservative Or Liberal

Abortion, Human Rights, Individual Rights, Privacy, Reproductive Rights

In libertarian circles, the abortion issue is a thorny one, for the same reason as in the general political spectrum: it depends on a priori beliefs outside those of a political philosophy.

It comes down to two different potential mutually exclusive beliefs:

  1. The intrinsic “human-ness” of a fetus begins at conception, or viability, or wherever you define — but nonetheless prior to birth.
  2. “Human-ness” begins at birth.

It’s a near-universal belief, whether libertarian, conservative, or liberal, that humans have certain rights. Libertarians nearly always define these as “negative rights”, i.e. freedom from external restraint or infringement. Liberals typically extend this significantly to “positive rights” or the common good, i.e. everyone has a right to an education, a square meal, health care, etc, and individuals may have some liberties restrained (i.e. income taxes, etc) in order to ensure provision of those positive rights for others. Conservatives, as far as I can tell, more define such positive rights as the ability to live in a stable, moral, traditional society, and are willing to curtail liberties (such as drug use, prostitution, etc) that threaten the wider societal “stability”.

But either way, they all believe that individuals have rights and murder is wrong.

If you believe the first proposition — i.e. that a fetus prior to birth has innate “human-ness” and thus human rights, to allow for that innocent “child” to be killed is murder. While there may be needs from time to time to balance rights of one against rights of another (i.e. when health of the mother is threatened, perhaps), one might side with the mother, but that would be considered a justified moral tragedy, not a dispassionate and lightly-considered “choice”. To someone who believes proposition 1, Roe v. Wade is an abomination, as no amount of privacy justifies murder.

If you believe the second proposition — that a fetus prior to birth has no innate rights, then you have no issue with abortion. At that point the fetus can be considered an invasive and unwanted growth inside ones body, and the removal of such is entirely at the discretion of the mother, as it is her body and thus her choice. To infringe on her personal privacy is thus immoral and not the purview of government.

The belief in the first or second proposition is not covered by any moral theory of libertarianism that I’ve come across. Thus, if you define your view of abortion as a logical outgrowth of the rights the fetus does or does not have, you can impart that a priori belief into libertarianism.

As with all beliefs, there are a lot of people who have gut instincts but have never put in the hard thinking to really boil this down to proposition 1 or 2, and then accept the consequences thereof. Most tend to choose a pro-life or pro-choice position and then try to work backwards to justify it in arguments… But then that’s true of most political debates — the average layman incorporates a lot of subconscious values into his/her belief system, and then chooses the political party that “feels” right based on those subconscious values.

But I personally think that the entire debate over abortion boils down to whether one believes proposition 1 or proposition 2. That is fundamentally not a libertarian, conservative, or liberal belief — regardless of the fact that there’s significant overlap between religions who believe proposition 1 and conservatives, and many secular and liberal folks who believe proposition 2. Believing proposition 1 and allowing abortion is philosophically inconsistent, and believing proposition 2 and disallowing abortion is a violation of individual freedom of the mother.

It’s as simple as that.
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Brad Warbiany
https://thelibertypapers.org/
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