Local Elections, Deja Vu

1. Voted in our local election. I spent several hours trying to figure out who was who and who I should vote for. I even read something about each of the unopposed candidates, most of whom were judges. One judge I had an ex parte motion in front of two weeks ago, so that was an easy decision. A few reflections.
1. Dean Worthen (former law school dean) used to say that the way to really get people mad it to tell them what they can and can't do with their property. From that you'd think that local elections would be the most contentious as that is where most property regulation occurs. In reality, though, we pay the least attention to them. There were something like 16 positions for republican delegates on my ballot, but only 2 people ran. Most appellate court judges ran unopposed (although I started to wonder if maybe you can't run against them.) It seems like there really is a lot of room to get involved and get influence in local politics.
2. Voting was particularly hard because I had to familiarize myself with local issues before I could vote meaningfully for the candidates.
3. The best politicians were the most mealy mouthed. I had to read between the lines on their websites to figure out what they really believed in. I say they were the best because it seems like some of the most vapid writing was on the most popular candidate's pages.
4. Non-partisan elections are STUPID! They simply are a way to obfuscate the political leanings of the candidates, which ultimately is all you want to know. I had to find my way to a questionnaire by the two supreme court candidates before finally finding some sort of indication of the judge's political leanings.
5. All my effort to be an informed voter is probably a waste of time. First, its just the primary, and I live in Oregon, so none of these people are likely to be elected. Second, as we know from public choice theory, my vote doesn't actually count.
2. In one of his books (and I think tv news stories) John Stossel argues that government mandating airbags is an unnecessary infringement on our freedom. Apparently if you're shorter than a certain height, an airbag actually increases the risk you will be killed in a car accident. He found a lady who was terrified of this risk, but couldn't legally buy a car without an airbag or deactivate the airbag. Obviously government has run amok!
3.  But then I got to thinking about the Tullock spike. An airbag makes you more likely to survive a crash. That means you are more likely to drive recklessly, and inflict externalities on others. And libertarians also believe in internalizing externalities. So now, I don't know what a libertarian should think about Stossel's example. Or maybe, it just further proves Stossel's point because airbags protect the vast majority of people, increasing their tendency to drive aggressively (but that would make his particular example a bad one).
4. It looks like the days of the federal government being limited to its enumerated powers are enumerated. My guess on why Justice Roberts joining the majority: he's thinking about the other myriads of government programs that could be challenged if he took too hard of a line of the commerce and necessary and proper clauses. This is, I think, just one of those areas where the jurisprudence is bowing to the political realities. Sadly, it looks like these cases were decided 70 years ago with the switch in time that saved nine.
5. I've seen Breyer and Scalia do this or a similar back and forth a couple of times now, but it's always interesting. Breyer's best arguments against originalism:
1. History is not always clear. (Scalia's counter: history is clear in some of the most controversial cases)
2. If we are looking at history, we should have 9 historians on the court.
3. Deriving neutral principles and applying them to today's circumstances is really hard.
6. A gathering backlash against the suns? or a marketing plan working perfectly?
7. Saw the movie De Ja Vue on TV Saturday. If you can buy into the premise, it kind of worked, but that's a big if. It also has one of those really bad, didactic scenes where the characters just blurt out every rule and premise you have to accept to believe the movie. Great movies doesn't do that.