Don't forget the war on drugs

Another liberaltarian issue where conservatives favor government action over personal liberty.

Another post from Professor Berman.

Legalization of marijuana

This is another issue where the liberals are on the side of liberty and the conservatives swallow their supposed hatred of government to oppose liberty.

Proposition 19 on the ballot in California in November addresses this very issue. It's currently behind slightly in the polls.

Here's a post from the Sentencing Law and Policy blog. Professor Berman is following this issue closely.

Cocaine/Crack sentencing disparity

This is an issue where the liberals are on the side of liberty and conservatives find a reason for heavy handed government involvement.

Here's a post on this issue from the excellent Sentencing Law and Policy blog.

Great quotes from Bruce Bartlett

So here's an interesting post from the Economist's Democracy in America blog. Mr. Bartlett is one of those that you might call a former conservative in today's political world. He's conservative, but since the Republicans have gone Tea Bag crazy and Mr. Bartlett doesn't just parrot whatever Mitch McConnell says, he's on the outs with the conservative powers that be.

I got a kick out of some of his comments and thought I'd share (any emphasis is mine)...

"Given the likelihood of Republican gains in the November elections and the strong Republican incentive to make the economy as bad as possible going into 2012, I don’t think it would even be possible to pass a stimulus package that was 100% composed of tax cuts—the only stimulus Republicans might support."

"I would add that I do disagree with the Republican fixation on taxation. Federal taxes as a share of GDP are at their lowest level in two or more generations—14.9% versus a postwar average of 18.2%. There is not one iota of evidence that the economy is suffering from excessive taxation and no evidence that the sorts of tax cuts favoured by Republicans—mainly tax cuts for the wealthy—would do any good given the nature of the economy’s problems."

"In my view, the Republican obsession with taxes is based on pure dogma, not analysis."

Question is "More generally, which party do you find more credible when discussing America's fiscal challenges?"

"The Republicans don’t have any credibility whatsoever. They squandered whatever they had when they enacted a massive UNFUNDED expansion of Medicare in 2003. Yet they had the nerve to complain about Obama’s health plan, WHICH WAS FULLY PAID FOR according to the Congressional Budget Office. The word “chutzpah” is insufficient to describe how utterly indefensible the Republican position is, intellectually."

"Furthermore, Republicans have a completely indefensible position on taxes."

"The Democratic Party is now the “adult” party in American politics, willing to do what has to be done for the good of the country. The same cannot be said of Republicans, who seem unwilling to do anything that would interfere with their ambition to retake power so that they can reward their lobbyist friends with more give-aways from the public purse."

Thanks Mr. Bartlett - that was fun.

Twenty to One?

So I've had a running discussion on politics with my best friend - ProfMondo - who happens to be as dedicated a conservative as I am a liberal. One of the points I've tried to make with him is that while both political parties and ideologies have their extreme views, the crazy on the Right is much more pervasive and accepted by mainstream political actors than it is on the Left. I think the point I made over in one of our back and forths on FB was that for every one politician that tries to appeal to his base by going to the crazy stuff (he cites 9/11 truthers as one such area of leftwing craziness), I could probably find 20 such politicians on the left. So I'm going to try and put my money where my mouth is. The rules of the game are going to be: 1) my definition of crazy; 2) the political actor should be a politician running for office or a high profile political pundit. We'll see how it goes...

And here's the first award (from TPM):
The TN Lt Gov who's one of the GOP candidates for Governor says, "Now, you could even argue whether being a Muslim is actually a religion, or is it a nationality, way of life, cult whatever you want to call it."

Liberaltarianism

I've had an idea kicking around in my head for a little while. Liberaltarianism. Not really an original thought, since various liberal bloggers out there occasionally bring it up. Here's a recent one from Matthew Yglesias.

The idea in Yglesias' post seems to be that many libertarians share some views with conservatives (low taxes, business friendly regulations, school choice, guns), but they also share other views with liberals (foreign policy, civil liberties, gay rights, drugs, immigration, abortion, torture and the death penalty). The inherent complaint is that the conservative/libertarian ideas get all the think tank money and media attention, while the liberaltarian issues don't get much play. I agree.

For a while now, I have considered myself a pretty straightforward liberal (for political purposes). At the same time, I've used the liberaltarian issues listed above as a club to beat the hypocrisy drum whenever my conservative friends want to stray over into the "Both parties are terrible; I'm for personal liberty" area. I think I'm going to keep doing that. Maybe even a little more. But I'm going to try and focus for a while on liberaltarian issues here. Not that I'm going to abandon my team - I'm still going to be a partisan Democrat. I just think I'll start pushing the liberaltarian thing a little bit and see if I can help that idea grow in my own modest way. In case you were wondering.

Inspiration

I'm getting inspired by the path taken by my best friend of many, many years - Professor Mondo. I abandoned this blog a while back for the ease and...ease of just throwing linx and moderately pithy remarks up on Facebook. I feel like I've got some less pithy, more substantive comments to make, so I guess I'll bring my act back here for a bit. More soon to follow.