Ian Underwood, Author at Granite Grok

The Kavanaugh Amendment

September 26, 2018September 4, 2018 Ian Underwood

stooges-at-blackboard

If the answers to constitutional questions are in the Constitution, then it shouldn’t matter at all who sits on the Supreme Court. We should be able to replace any subset of justices, and the same questions should get the same answers. They’re all looking at the same document, right?

You might be feeling some hesitation about that — doesn’t the Constitution have to be ‘interpreted’? But consider what would happen if it were announced that from now on, officials would be free to ‘interpret’ the NFL Rulebook in order to get any outcome they want, so that the result of any contest would depend entirely on who was doing the officiating.

There would be riots, wouldn’t there?

Make America States Again

September 26, 2018August 28, 2018 Ian Underwood

The 17th Amendment was supposed to solve a particular problem — the political establishment was thought to be exercising too much control over the selection of senators, making the process too susceptible to corruption. The idea was to fix that by taking control out of the hands of that establishment, and putting it directly into the hands of voters.

No, seriously. People apparently thought that would address the problem.

But as is so often the case in politics, the cure turned out to be worse than the disease. Without solving the the old problem, it created a new, and much worse, problem — one that has recently metastasized from the Senate to the House.

Legalize Failure

July 6, 2020August 25, 2018 Ian Underwood

Police in Wilmette, Illinois recently considered charges against a mother for letting her 8-year-old daughter walk the family dog around the block unsupervised. Predictably, a lot of people are reacting with incredulity. ‘How can something like this even happen?’ they want to know.

It’s very simple. It happens because we’ve made failure illegal.

Representative, or Role Model?

August 13, 2019August 21, 2018 Ian Underwood

As the discussion over Andy Sanborn’s Q Score heats up, I can’t help being reminded of Pete Rose, who — despite his singular accomplishments as a player — remains ineligible for the Baseball Hall of Fame.

To paraphrase former major league outfielder Jim Dwyer: The Hall of Fame is for baseball players. Heaven is for good guys.

If your goal is to win a game, or a series, or a title, who do you want on your team? The handsome, well-spoken guy with nice manners? Or the crass, hard-charging guy with the skills and the drive to get the job done?

Can comics save politics?

September 26, 2018August 19, 2018 Ian Underwood

censored

Recently I was discussing the latest Trump-related hysteria with a friend, who was upset about what he perceived to be a progressive double standard. Basically, he was arguing that in cases where Trump is just doing the same thing that Obama was doing, then Obama’s supporters ought to be willing to admit that they’re either both right, or both wrong. He thinks they’re not being consistent.

But I think they are being consistent, albeit in an unexpected way.

Party like it’s 1854

September 26, 2018August 17, 2018 Ian Underwood

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There’s a lot of discussion just now about Eddie Edwards’s decision to pull out of the first Republican Congressional District 1 (CD1) debate rather than sign a pledge to support the eventual primary winner.

Is he showing ‘character’, and ‘standing up for his principles’, by refusing to sign the pledge? That’s one way of looking at it. Another is that he’s indicating a basic misunderstanding of what a political party is for, and what it means to belong to one. He’s not alone.

Fixing schools: Is money really the issue?

September 26, 2018August 16, 2018 Ian Underwood

A phrase we heard a lot the other night at Andru Volinsky’s traveling show was ‘fix it’, as in: ‘Some states have fixed it’, ‘The legislature doesn’t have the political will to fix it’, and so on.

Which raises the question: Does something actually need to be fixed?

This needs to be asked, because whenever there is a conversation about reducing spending on government schools, we hear this argument: ‘New Hampshire’s schools are among the best in the nation’, the implication being that this is a result of our willingness to spend so much on them (about $15,300 per pupil, well above the national average of $11,800).

That doesn’t sound like something that needs to be fixed, does it?

How we’ll get a state income tax

September 26, 2018August 15, 2018 Ian Underwood

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I was in the audience last night at Richards School in Newport for Andru Volinksy’s dog and pony show on school funding in New Hampshire.

I got the chance to ask a question, which was, roughly: Is there any interpretation that the Supreme Court could come up with, that is so outlandish, so contrary to common English usage — like deciding that from now on, ‘green’ actually means ‘blue’, or that in Article 19, the word ‘all’ now means ‘some’ — that the legislature would be justified in saying, ‘No, we’re not going to listen to you’?

From Laurie List to Cop Blockchain

September 26, 2018August 7, 2018 Ian Underwood

cloud cabinet

Kudos to the Union Leader for using Right to Know laws to obtain a (heavily redacted) copy of the Exculpatory Evidence Schedule (EES), often referred to as the ‘Laurie List’, and for making the list available online.

This is a list, maintained by the Attorney General, of police officers around the state who have ‘credibility issues’ that would prevent them from being effective witnesses at trial.

If you take the time to look at the list, and at the procedures governing its use, it should quickly become apparent that there are several glaring problems that need to be addressed.

Congressional candidates, what is your plan?

September 26, 2018August 7, 2018 Ian Underwood

swamp

I mean, of course, your plan for dealing with the issues raised in the remarkable, and remarkably disturbing, Facebook series The Swamp.

For those who haven’t yet seen it, the series follows a group of idealistic, newly-minted members of the House of Representatives as they head to Washington, DC, to help drain the swamp. Spoiler alert: They drown.

Maybe it’s Sununu who should resign

September 26, 2018August 5, 2018 Ian Underwood

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On Friday, Governor Sununu called for the resignation of state senator Jeff Woodburn, saying:

[His] morally reprehensible, violent behavior has no place in public service, or anywhere else. Domestic violence will not be tolerated in New Hampshire. Senator Woodburn must resign. Immediately.

The problem, of course, is that Senator Woodburn has been accused of violent acts (including throwing a cup of water at someone’s face, and striking her in the stomach), but not convicted of anything. He says that he intends to fight the charges, which means that we must presume that he is innocent unless and until he is found guilty in court.

I would hope that, if the governor had given it a little more thought, he would have issued a somewhat different statement, like:

Three Steps to Smaller Government

September 26, 2018July 30, 2018 Ian Underwood

Here in New Hampshire, the Republican party — the ‘party of small government’ — controls both houses of the legislature and the governor’s office. But government continues to grow. Why? Because in order to actually shrink government, three reforms are necessary, and none of them are in place.

(1) Everything, including existing RSAs and agency regulations, must sunset after a reasonably brief period, like 10 years.

But gun control laws DO work

September 26, 2018July 29, 2018 Ian Underwood

Whenever anything bad happens that involves a gun, we can safely predict that two other things are going to happen shortly thereafter. The first is that some kind of gun control laws will be proposed. The second is that these proposals will be met with claims that ‘gun control laws don’t work’.

But the thing is, they DO work.

Searching Under the Education Lamppost

September 20, 2022July 27, 2018 Ian Underwood

On Tuesday, August 14, at 6 pm, there will be a discussion about school funding at Richards Elementary School in Newport. The discussion, which will center around a report created by the (recently shuttered) New Hampshire Center for Public Policy Studies, will be led by Executive Councilor Andru Volinksy, and John Tobin.

(You’ll remember them as the attorneys who helped the New Hampshire Supreme Court conclude that it is ‘essential to the preservation of a free government’ to give that government a monopoly on education… relying on a constitutional article that says it’s the government’s job to protect the public from monopolies.)

The RINO Virus (Part III, Recovery)

June 28, 2020July 25, 2018 Ian Underwood

Led by Marie Kondo, a wave of tidying up is sweeping the nation. People everywhere are going through their belongings, posing some simple tests, and getting rid of the items that fail those tests.

In Ms. Kondo’s case, the test is: Does this item spark joy? If it does, you keep it. If not, you thank it for being part of your life, and send it on its way (to a friend, or a thrift shop, or Goodwill, or the transfer station).

In the case of some ‘minimalists’, the test is: If you didn’t already have this item, would you buy it again? If not, get rid of it.

I think this latter attitude may be the key to getting the Republican party to regain its focus on its primary purpose: preserving the republic.

The RINO Virus (Part II, Cure)

June 28, 2020July 24, 2018 Ian Underwood

It seems that not a week goes by that we don’t hear conservatives and libertarians moaning, ‘Why did we bother to elect Republicans if they’re just going to _____?’

Republicans seem to have forgotten what a political party is for. It’s a way to focus time, effort, energy, and money so that they don’t get dissipated. It’s a way of saying, ‘Instead of chasing all these rabbits, and not getting any of them, let’s just chase this one’.

Ubitopia

September 26, 2018July 23, 2018 Ian Underwood

Suddenly, it’s everywhere. Lately I’ve even heard even libertarians suggesting that it might be a good idea to provide a Universal Basic Income (UBI) to replace the buffet of specific welfare programs that are now available to people who can’t afford things like housing (Section 8), heat (LIHEAP), medical care (Medicaid), food (SNAP), and so on.

This idea is a classic example of what Thomas Sowell calls ‘stage one thinking’, which is the apparent inability (or unwillingness) to appreciate that actions have consequences, and consequences propagate.

(Yes, I know that Milton Friedman advocated for a negative income tax, which is one type of universal basic income. But Friedman also advocated for income tax withholding, which has turned into what we might call ‘the opiate of the taxes’.)

The RINO Virus (Part I, Diagnosis)

May 29, 2020July 23, 2018 Ian Underwood

Years ago, a friend told me about something he calls the ‘baby test’. To take it, raise either arm straight up so your upper arm touches your ear. Bend the arm at the elbow. If you can make a 90-degree angle, you’re not a baby.

It occurs to me that there is a similar test for whether you’re a Republican, although it’s conceptual rather than corporeal. The test is simple. If you believe that it’s more important to achieve particular outcomes than to preserve a set of principles, you’re not a Republican.

Voting wrongs

September 26, 2018July 17, 2018 Ian Underwood

Imagine going into a meeting of a homeowner’s association and saying: I don’t own any of these units, but I stay here sometimes with a friend who owns one, so I should get a vote.

Imagine going into a meeting of the shareholders of a corporation saying: I don’t own any shares of this company, but I use your products sometimes, so I should get a vote.

Imagine going to a polling place in Canada on election day and saying: I’m not a citizen of Canada, but I go to school here, so I should get a vote.

These are all absurd, right?

Living wage, or MSRP?

September 26, 2018July 17, 2018 Ian Underwood

Every time I hear about a state (most recently Massachusetts) or city (most recently Seattle) raising the minimum wage to some unsustainable level, it makes me wonder what I would do if I ran a business in one of those jurisdictions.

The obvious responses would be to (1) move to a new jurisdiction, (2) hire fewer employees, (3) raise my prices, or some combination of those three. But there’s a less obvious response that I think I would try first.