My ranting about various things. (Actually, seriously, I try to present facts and logic and solutions rather than just opinions.)

Please send any reasoned disagreements to me. This page updated: February 2007

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Extra-Terrestrial Intelligent Life section
Campaign Finance section
Unions section
The Death Penalty section
Courts section
Politics Of Sex section

My Terrorism page
My Delusions page
My Manned Space Program page
My Drugs page
My Taxes page
My US FederalGovernment page
My Israel and the Palestinians page
My USA Health Care System page
My Guns page
My Consumption and Energy page
My Electronic Voting Machines page

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Extra-Terrestrial Intelligent Life

I generally accept the probability calculation that Extra-Terrestrial Intelligent Life (ETIL) probably exists, given so many planets per star, so many stars per galaxy, so many galaxies in the universe, chance of life on each planet, chance of life being intelligent, etc.

But, by a similar calculation (so much space between habitable planets, so much time to cross that space even at the speed of light, finite lifetime of any civilization), the probability of us ever contacting ETIL is almost zero. It's very unlikely that ETIL exists near enough, in both space and time, for us to have any contact with it.

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Campaign Finance

I don't like public financing of political campaigns because:

• Why should taxpayers pay for this ? Supposedly, it keeps office accessible to poor candidates, but when is the last time you saw a poor candidate with a chance to win ?



• The rules are written to exclude independent and non-party candidates.



• Just encourages candidates to spend more.

Attempting to regulate "soft money" and PACs and such has just led to complexity and abuses.

My proposal:

• No public financing of political campaigns.



• Anyone can spend any amount they like to promote any issue or any candidate.



• All spending on political issues or candidates is taxed progressively (i.e. the more they spend, the higher the tax rate). The first $100K of spending is taxed at 0%; the next $100K at 10%, the next $100K at 20%, and so on.
  
  One big problem with this: the Supreme Court has ruled that taxing political spending by a candidate is infringement of their right to free speech.
  
  I say the Supreme Court is wrong; political speech via money to gain power (office) is not covered by the First Amendment. It's more like "commercial speech" (advertising), which already has less-protected legal status.

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Unions

Unions and union contracts should be able to:

• Control workplace safety-related issues.



• Mandate communication about worker rights (rights provided by law).



• Provide spokesman/ombudsman functions (liaison to management and government).

Unions and union contracts should not:

• Mandate pay or promotion structures (seniority, etc).



• Mandate staffing levels (except where safety-affecting).



• Control hiring practices (closed shops).



• Force workers to pay any but minimal dues.

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The Death Penalty

I used to be in favor of the death penalty:

• Some people do such bad things that they deserve death.



• Some people do such bad things that society shouldn't waste any more resources on them.



• Society kills lots of people indirectly, through choices it makes; I don't see how killing some deliberately (with due process) is much different.

But the more I learn about our justice system, the more it seems arbitrary and corrupt:

• Politicians and prosecutors pushing to extremes to prove that they're "tough on crime". They've lost any commitment to "justice".



• Laws that criminalize certain things (marijuana, private sexual behavior, flag-burning, etc) irrationally.



• Laws (such as unlimited imprisonment of terrorism suspects, Congress exempting itself from laws, military exempted from environmental laws, etc) and law-enforcement behavior ("blue wall of silence", excessive force, etc) that fly in the face of the consistent rule of law.



• Judges motivated by ego or political positions.
  [I had personal experience with this one: I was on a jury in a case where the judge did everything he could to "punish" one side's lawyers, because they had appealed and gotten his decision overturned in a big case the previous year.]
  Also, the more I read about the Supreme Court's operations (as in "Closed Chambers" by Edward Lazarus), and the confirmation hearings of potential Justices, the less respect I have.



• Longstanding indications of racial and/or class discrimination, in the death penalty and other areas (such as penalties for cocaine versus crack).



• People getting convicted through bogus testimony (therapists inventing recovered memories, children coaxed to imagine mass Satanic abuses, etc).



• Known problems with lineups, eyewitness testimony, jury behavior, etc. And refusal by the justice system to study them scientifically and improve them. See "Under Suspicion" by Atul Gawande in Jan 8 2001 issue of The New Yorker.

All of this makes me less inclined to trust the system, especially with the ultimate penalty.

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Courts

Ways to improve the court/trial system in the USA:

• At the end of a trial, the jurors and lawyers should fill out a questionaire, rating the performance of the judge and the court in general.
• The jury should be given the paperwork explaining the charges and jury instructions at the start of the trial, instead of just before they start deliberating. That way, they can listen for the right things during the trial, and better understand what is going on.
• Jurors ahould be allowed to ask questions during the trial, maybe by passing written questions to the judge, who then chooses to answer them or ask them of the witness, or tell the juror why their question is misfounded. This is better than letting the jurors carry their misconceptions or unanswered questions into the jury room.
• Police lineups should be changed to reduce mistaken eyewitness identifications.
  article from Memory Loss and the Brain
  Gary Wells homepage

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Politics Of Sex

I'm struggling to understand why we approve of certain sexual practices and outlaw others. Maybe it's a struggle to understand where moral codes come from.

Why are these things illegal or considered immoral?

• Homosexuality.
• Polygamy.
• Prostitution.

I think these reasons have been given for making them illegal or considering them immoral:

• They're "not natural".
  
  But being "natural" does not mean something is "good". A shark eating your child is perfectly natural; does that mean it's good ? Arsenic is "natural"; does that mean it's good for you ? Hurricanes and viruses are "natural".



• The Bible or Koran or Talmud or whatever says they're wrong.
  
  But where did that judgement come from, and why ? Maybe you believe those books come from God, in which case there's no basis for further rational discussion. But I think those books were created by people who had an interest in preserving the status quo (their own power and lifestyle), and wanted to force other people to obey them and act the way they wanted them to.
  
  And there are lots of other things in the Bible that we choose to ignore or gloss over; why choose these items to be so forceful about ?



• They're immoral.
  
  But where do moral codes or ethical codes come from ?
  And they change over time: for much of USA history, slavery was considered moral. After that, racial segregation and discrimination were considered moral. At times, child labor was moral. Wife-beating was moral.



• They're bad for society.
  
  They could be bad in that:
  
  
  • They counteract desired social policies.
    
    For example, if we want population growth, homosexuality (if it were a choice) might keep growth lower than it would be otherwise.
    If we want to minimize the number of single males, maybe polygamy tends to act against that.
    If we want to preserve marriages, maybe prostitution tends to break up marriages.
    But I think I could argue against each of these propositions.
  
  
  
  • They tend to be associated with other crimes and disease.
    
    But I think that's mostly due to their outlaw status. If prostitution were legal and regulated, disease and abuse would be much easier to prevent.

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