Recently in Politics Category

California voters, if you want to see a proposal to restore marriage equality in 2010, sign the petition. We'll need 600,000 signatures to place it on the ballot.

This morning the California Supreme Court announced a decision in favor of Proposition 8. Under the twisted web that is our state constitution, voters may "amend" the document with a simple majority, whereas a two-thirds vote of the legislature is required to "revise" the constitution. All but one justice agreed that Proposition 8 constituted an "amendment" and not a "revision."

This is a huge blow to civil rights in the state. Not only has a 50% majority succeeded in stripping a civil right from a minority group, but the State of California has officially sanctioned a conservative Christian definition of marriage. This is a clear violation of the Free Exercise and Equal Protection Clauses of the U.S. Constitution.

I think churches should be free to define marriage within their congregations however they please. There are churches where gay marriage is accepted. They have just as much right to exercise that conviction under the law. The government and the state constitution is no place for this debate.

Kathy M. Kristof wrote an intriguing column in the Los Angeles Times this week. She asserted that CEOs need to cut their pay to save capitalism. The reason? Stockholder trust is eroding.

Kristof offered James D. Sinegal as the model example. As the CEO to Costco, Sinegal earns a salary of $350,000 and a bonus of no more than $200,000. Sinegal has refused raises, and Costco's board feels Sinegal is underpaid.

As investors lose trust in the management of publicly traded companies, investor capital will shift from stocks that pay a share of the profits (and losses) to company bonds that carry a contractual rate of return.

I hope our representatives in Washington will take a lesson from the financial problems that California faces. Our state, burdened with the expenses of our massive education and health care systems, is teetering on the edge of insolvency. Our State Controller, John Chiang, has been forced to delay payments to guarantee that the state has enough cash on hand to meet high priority obligations. Among other things, $2 billion in tax refunds will be delayed for 30 or more days.

This year-old video has been making the rounds again, most recently on Pharyngula. It asks an interesting question, "If abortion is to be illegal, what should the punishment be for women who have abortions?" Should the state impose a penalty, such as a fee or jail time? Should the woman be liable to pay damages to relatives or the father in a civil court? If no punishment is necessary, why should abortion be illegal?

I frequently see Democrats propose a significant increase in the minimum wage, also known as a "living wage," as a solution to what they see as the exploitation of the lower class. This would be disastrous. A price floor for unskilled labor has a multitude of negative effects on the very people it's meant to help. The minimum wage in the United States is close to the equilibrium rate for unskilled labor, but the following negative effects would become far more pronounced if the government mandated a significantly higher living wage.

• A minimum wage reduces the freedom of employees and employers. Just as a minimum wage tells the employer, "You may not hire employees below this rate," it also tells workers, "You may not accept work unless you can compete at this rate."
• An employee desperate for a job cannot undercut minimum wage workers. Minimum wage laws are regularly peddled in third-world nations as an instrument of discrimination to prevent minority groups from competing for jobs.
• Lower profit margins for employers encourage them to outsource jobs or switch to a business that does not employ low wage workers, thus decreasing the number of minimum wage jobs available.
• Employers pass higher costs to their customers by raising the price of services, which disproportionately increases the cost of living for the lower class.

A minimum wage benefits some at the expense of the least experienced and least productive workers. It renders the least employable workers unemployable.

If the goal is to improve the quality of life for the lower class, much more effective solutions exist. The best solution would be to reduce the supply of unskilled labor through voluntary vocational training programs. This would empower workers to take higher paying jobs while driving up the equilibrium rate for the remaining unskilled workers.

Heavy-handed government solutions that make more economic sense than a minimum wage include a negative income tax or earned income tax credit, both of which pass the financial burden to the entire society rather than the employers and customers of unskilled workers. A more radical proposal is a social security program of basic income.

Behold! United States Patent 7,466,536 was granted to EEStore Incorporated last month. Yes, that's 3500 volts. And yes, that's 31 farads. This is a capacitor.

Installed in an electric vehicle, an array of these capacitors could store 52 kilowatt-hours in a 282 pound box. That's 2.6 times the energy density of lithium-ion batteries, which would require a 752 pound box to store the same charge. Unlike a lithium-ion battery, this capacitor contains no toxic chemicals, will never explode, can be charged 60 times faster (with the right equipment), will not wear out after three years, and will keep a charge ten times longer.

Two advances in technology made this capacitor possible. The first was the application of integrated circuit screen-printing to create capacitors. The second and most important was the material used as the dielectric. Alumina-coated calcined composition-modified barium titanate has an amazingly high breakdown voltage of 610 V/µm at 85° C.

This capacitor has the potential to revolutionize the way we store energy in the very near future.

• It eliminates almost every disadvantage of the electric car and paves the way for electric buses, motorcycles, and tractors.
• Imagine laptop or cell phone batteries that outlive the device.
• You could buy all your household electricity at night when the rates are cheapest. Similarly, electric companies could make more efficient use of power grids by storing electricity near the consumer and discharging during peak hours.
  
• The biggest problem with solar and wind power has been the ability to store enough power for hours when the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow.

The largest disadvantage to this capacitor is the voltage required. Additional circuitry is necessary to convert to and from 3500 volts. In a car with regenerative breaking, for example, a converter is necessary to store that energy back into the capacitor.

This capacitor or similar inventions will change everything, and this is just the beginning. Giant leaps forward in solar panel technology are just around the corner too. I'm very excited about our energy future.

Phillip Dominguez, a 47-year-old gun enthusiast, was arrested on Friday after police at a security checkpoint near Los Angeles International Airport noticed 16 pistols, four rifles, hundreds of ammunition rounds, and an assault rifle in the back of his truck.

Dominguez claims he was heading to a shooting range in San Bernardino, 75 miles away, with a friend flying in from Baltimore.

Even more surprisingly, it is legal to drive a truck loaded with weapons to the front doors of an airport terminal. Phillip was booked on felony charges because he failed to transport his licensed assault rifle directly to the shooting range as required by California law.

Giles Bowkett of Ruby fame recently alleged that libertarian society is impossible because libertarianism assumes cultural conditions that can exist only with pervasive free education. And he's correct ... except in his understanding of libertarianism and education.

The libertarian position on education is simple. Greater quality and efficiency is best achieved by a wide diversity of choices. Parents should have the freedom to choose the best schools for their young children, and schools should be managed locally to promote greater accountability and involvement. Libertarianism does not mandate that parents pay all expenses for their child's education out-of-pocket, but it does require that parents have full control over the funds spent on their child's education.

Prior to the 1850's, there was no education system in the United States. Local towns and cities organized their own schools, which they funded through some combination of tuition and local taxes. There was no requirement that anyone attend school, so students spent far less time sitting in classrooms. Americans were nevertheless among the most educated thanks to a combination of apprenticeships, homeschooling, formal education, parents who understood the importance of raising productive members of society, and good old self-motivation. "Unschooled" did not imply "uneducated."

Giles Bowkett underestimates the curiosity and ambition of our children. Public schools of today resemble prisons and have many of the same problems. Compulsory public education traps children of low-income families in underachieving schools while forcing parents to pay for such schools through sales taxes.

Updated on January 12, 2009 10:50 PM to add citations.

Can anyone make any sense out of the conflict in the Gaza Strip? I've tried listening to news coverage of the situation. In the few broadcasts that attempt to be more or less balanced, both sides of the conflict seem equally obnoxious and unreasonable. A few points come immediately to mind.

1. It is never acceptable to indiscriminately fire rockets at civilian targets.
2. It is reasonable to restrict trade into a region that actively seeks weapons to shoot at you.
3. It is never acceptable to block food, water, fuel, and medical supplies to a civilian population.

I can't help but think that this situation could be resolved if the Israeli blockade would permit any and all humanitarian shipments into the Gaza Strip. Why doesn't this happen? Why do militants in the Gaza Strip continue to fire missiles when Israel opens humanitarian trade, as they did recently in November? Why does Israel feel compelled to block all trade if a single missile is fired? Wouldn't it be sufficient to block only the weapons and luxury goods until the missiles stop raining down?