Archives for March 2013

We all think that what we believe is right. We’ve been taught principles of right and wrong all our lives. We’ve thought about what the principles mean and we’ve decided which narrative of morality we believe is right. Sadly, most of us want something else, too. We want others to endorse our view of morality.

The whole issue of gay marriage has become a battle between two sides wanting to “make a statement” about right and wrong — and forcing others to go along with them — rather than finding a legal solution that respects everybody’s rights. This battle is fierce enough that passionate people on both sides aren’t really interested in a principled solution to get government out of the marriage business. For those people, it’s a social battle to force “society” to endorse their position.

On the surface, the issue seems to be about how everyone can be treated equally by the law while respecting individuals’ very different beliefs about the underlying issue of homosexuality. If that were truly the only issue to deal with, we have a solution. Eliminate marriage licenses and get government out of the business of deciding what a marriage is. But that’s no longer what this is about. Here’s what the two sides really seem to be saying:

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Why do people seem shocked to find out that if you give people incentives not to work, many of them are going to take advantage of that if they can get away with it?

This American Life has an episode this week about the explosive growth of the $200-billion-a-year federal disability program, but the reporter and host seem shocked that people could be doing what the system gives them incentives to do. Even after an hour of reporting — in which there was discussion of poverty, job prospects and more — there wasn’t any mention of the simple economic fact that people do what they have incentives to do.

This episode is reported by NPR’s Planet Money, and the reporter seems to be going out of her way to come up with as many semi-legitimate excuses for the problem as possible. Overall, she sounds like a progressive liberal who’s confronted with evidence that a progressive government program doesn’t work — and she’s trying to avoid offending other progressives by pointing that out.

(Other progressive are offended, though. The left-wing organization Media Matters for America has blasted back at the allegedly “error-riddled story.”)

The piece goes to great lengths at times to attempt to explain away the problem as a simple matter of poor people turning to the disability program because they have no other choices. What the reporter doesn’t seem to understand is that people react to incentives. If they’re going to starve or be homeless in the place where they are (with the skills they have), people tend to find a way to do something about it — whether that entails migrating or learning something new.

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A speeding ticket isn’t normally that big a deal for a politician, but a traffic stop turned into a publicity nightmare for New York state legislator Steve Katz last Thursday.

When a state trooper pulled Katz over for going 80 mph in a 65-mph zone, he noticed the smell of marijuana coming from inside the car. When questioned, Katz turned over a small bag of what appeared to be weed. He was charged with possession of marijuana and released, because the trooper didn’t think Katz was impaired.

The bigger issue — and the one that’s made it a national story — is that Katz is a Republican state assemblyman who’s “railed against illegal drugs,” according to the local newspaper in the area. In addition, he voted last year against legalizing medical marijuana.

In other words, he’s the typical politician who’s telling a mainstream audience what it wants to hear and voting the way his voters want him to vote.

Predictably, this has turned into a story just about his obvious hypocrisy. While that’s certainly the case, the real story is that voters don’t know their legislators — because those legislators tell voters whatever they want to hear in order to get elected and stay in office.

I’ve mentioned before that when I worked in politics, I didn’t ask each client which issues he wanted included in the campaign material I produced for him. Although the client certainly reviewed material before it was printed, the issues were almost always the ones that I selected — and I wrote exactly what voters wanted to hear. That’s just the way politics works.

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