Author Archives: dunster

Matt Drake for Supervisor

Matt Drake is a good friend of mine from MIT. He’s running for office in San Francisco. I’m sure that of my millions of readers at least a few thousand live in his district. Check him out. I endorse him as very smart, a good listener, and a straight-shooter. He’s the type of person that, even when you disagree with him, you respect him and his opinions. I trust him. What else could you ask for, right?

His website: http://www.mattdrake2006.com/

A post about his debate earlier this week: http://www.sfist.com/

The libertarian Wing of the Democratic Party

I ran across an interesting piece published by Cato last week. Andrew Sullivan linked to a post by Markos Moulitsas, the writer for the Daily KOS (a flagship blog of the left-wing, if you’re not a follower of political blogdom).

The thrust of his argument is that libertarians once found a home in the Republican party, but parties and politics have changed, and libertarians can/should/are finding a new home with the Democrats. Like a lot of Moulitsas’s writing, it has enough truth to make an interesting read, but too much wishful thinking on his part to really carry the argument.

The truth of his essay is in the libertarian frustration with the Republican party. Bush has spent more money, by any measure, than any president since Johnson in Vietnam. Libertarians grind their teeth over that statistic, and find themselves feeling nostalgic for Bill Clinton, a weird feeling they experienced before. On top of the spending, you add personal liberty issues: Patriot Act, domestic surveillance, the phone record database, Terri Schiavo, and gay-baiting legislation. Libertarians distrust the “imperial presidency” that Bush and Cheney have tried to implement. Last but not least, libertarians tend to be isolationist or pacifist, and do not approve of the Iraq policy. Libertarians have a lot of reasons to abandon the Republicans.

The essay falls down when it tries to make the case that the Democrats are the new libertarian home. He defines the “libertarian democrat” as someone who is afraid of the power of the corporation, someone who needs the government to help with the corporate threat. But 500 words later he analyzes the Microsoft anti-trust case and determines that “The market worked on its own.” If the market works, a libertarian asks, then why should libertarian democrats need government protection? The libertarian concludes that the government is still the problem, not the solution. Democrats are still a party of big government.

Moulitsas badly wants the Democrats to win, in 2006, in 2008, and beyond. He has correctly identified that the Republicans have a constituency that is disaffected. He’d love to pick off those voters for himself. What he hasn’t done is made the case that his party is the new libertarian home. I suspect that most libertarians will do what I’m doing. We’ll pick and choose among candidates with good policies, and wait for a mainstream party that isn’t confused about what a libertarian is.

ITAC meeting

Arlington Information Technology Advisory Committee. October 19, 2006 at 6PM, 2nd floor conf room of Town Hall Annex.

YouTube

Is it 1999 all over again, with money chasing ideas without a viable business model? Or a brilliant move towards dominating the next generation of media?  Quote via the New York Times: “If you believe it’s the future of television, it’s clearly worth $1.6 billion,” Steven A. Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive, said of YouTube. “If you believe something else, you could write down maybe it’s not worth much at all.”  Not much more to say than that.  We’ll have to wait and see.

Hacking the Nikon S7c

Antonio pulled off a fairly neat hack of his new camera. Now, because of an integration with our “auto-tabblos,” his camera can wirelessly pipe his photos directly into a tabblo. It’s sort of like “live-blogging” but it’s a photo-blog.

I can see this being totally cool for travel, among other things. Go to Starbucks, upload your photos, grab a coffee. Travel. Go to internet cafe, upload your photos, travel. Go to hotel, upload your photos, travel. Go anywhere with a Wi-Fi connection, upload your photos, travel. The uploaded photos are emailed to the auto-tabblo.  It’s an up-to-date  travelogue you can give your friends and family.

Motion

Two kinds of motion here for you: the sun and the cars. This “moving” tabblo would be entered in the moving contest if I was eligible (I work here, of course).

Feel free to make a variation of this tabblo. There are a few dozen more photos in my lightbox. I took them all tonight from the office window here at Tabblo.

See my Tabblo

Thou Shalt Not Speak Ill of a Fellow Taxcutter

Barbara Anderson (of the Citizens for Limited Taxation) is not a Republican, and neither is Christy Mihos. They are both unenrolled voters. And, they share a dislike of higher taxes.

Unfortunately, despite their shared beleifs, Barbara Anderson has launched several attacks on Christy Mihos. Since the state primary CLT has written four Mihos attack pieces, but only one against Deval Patrick. Anderson thinks that Mihos is a threat to Kerry Healey and thinks that Healey is the one that should win the governor’s office.

Ronald Reagan wrote the 11th Commandment: “Thou shalt not speak ill of another Republican.” He was right, as far as he went, but he should have gone farther. I’m not bold enough to write a commandment, but I’m willing to suggest a corollary: “Thou shalt not speak ill of another taxcutter.”

I believe that Anderson is doing herself and her cause a disservice. Her attacks on Mihos weaken her own positions by proxy. I hope she returns to doing what she does well: advocating for a smaller government.

(I’m fully aware that this post runs the risk of violating my own advice. The thing is, I often agree with CLT and have supported them in the past. I’m hoping that these words find the sweet spot of constructive criticism while avoiding the nasty side effects of an attack.)

Working Hard

Sometimes, a picture is worth a thousand words.

union protest

I’m not sure what this guy or his union is protesting. (Do protesters usually wear headphones?) He doesn’t seem too upset, whatever it is. And neither were the people actually working on the new homes behind him.