GF council turns right
It looks to the City Beat that the Grand Forks City Council has shifted a bit to the right.
Last night, during discussions of two new laws, newly elected Council member Art Bakken explicitly questioned whether new regulations would have the desired impact. (Maybe "right" is the wrong description. "Libertarian" is probably better.)
The first law discussed was the the one requiring bartenders to receive training on false IDs. Bar owners are afraid it would cost too much and do little to reduce binge drinking. They also feel it would shift responsibility to them rather than punish the real culprits: kids using fake IDs. Bakken appeared to agree with the bar owners. His predecessor, Dorette Kerian, favored the licensing law.
The second law discussed was the one requiring owners of single family homes who rent them out to get a license. The law was proposed to curb the wild partying and chaotic parking in the UND neighborhood. Bakken said he's not necessarily opposed to the law but he wants the council to, in six to eight months, examine whether the law had worked. Kerian favored the law, too.
I don't want to suggest a humongo shift, since Bakken is only one new member. The other new member is Mike McNamara. But I see him as a conservative in the law-and-order mold and that's a little different from the libertarian mold. (That's just a hunch. We'll see if I'm right or not.)
What I did notice, though, was the balance shifting on the bartender licensing law. Initially, there were three council members who questioned its effectiveness: Council members Doug Christensen, Hal Gershman and Curt Kreun. The other four varied from cautious to supportive. With Bakken, though, that makes four out of seven council members.
I also noticed Bakken's skepticism of new regulations. He mentioned that, as the owner of a trucking firm, he finds that some laws intended to enhance safety on the road comes at too high a cost for businesses.
Last night, during discussions of two new laws, newly elected Council member Art Bakken explicitly questioned whether new regulations would have the desired impact. (Maybe "right" is the wrong description. "Libertarian" is probably better.)
The first law discussed was the the one requiring bartenders to receive training on false IDs. Bar owners are afraid it would cost too much and do little to reduce binge drinking. They also feel it would shift responsibility to them rather than punish the real culprits: kids using fake IDs. Bakken appeared to agree with the bar owners. His predecessor, Dorette Kerian, favored the licensing law.
The second law discussed was the one requiring owners of single family homes who rent them out to get a license. The law was proposed to curb the wild partying and chaotic parking in the UND neighborhood. Bakken said he's not necessarily opposed to the law but he wants the council to, in six to eight months, examine whether the law had worked. Kerian favored the law, too.
I don't want to suggest a humongo shift, since Bakken is only one new member. The other new member is Mike McNamara. But I see him as a conservative in the law-and-order mold and that's a little different from the libertarian mold. (That's just a hunch. We'll see if I'm right or not.)
What I did notice, though, was the balance shifting on the bartender licensing law. Initially, there were three council members who questioned its effectiveness: Council members Doug Christensen, Hal Gershman and Curt Kreun. The other four varied from cautious to supportive. With Bakken, though, that makes four out of seven council members.
I also noticed Bakken's skepticism of new regulations. He mentioned that, as the owner of a trucking firm, he finds that some laws intended to enhance safety on the road comes at too high a cost for businesses.
posted by Tu-Uyen at 10:46 PM
17 Comments:
Ah, the fun of labeling left and right.
I'll be bold enough to say that the two title are now completely worthless and simply represent an idea that one clings to for support.
Left-winger can mean socialist, it can mean transparency, atheist, it can mean pro-union. Right-wing can mean pro-military, fascist, pro-business, religious.
Well, then, where do atheist, pro-business, tree-hugging, fascists end up?*
Where do hawkish, devoutly Christian, strict-constructionist types end up?**
There are so many combinations that can exist that I cannot see how left-wing or right-wing can bear such prescriptive definitions. Resultantly, the entire, two-party, electoral system is effectively worthless, and the real races exist at the parties' conventions.
* Intended to be Hamilton
** Intended to be Jefferson
(please excuse any historical inaccuracies and simply correct my mistakes)
This may be a little off topic, but picking up on Councilman Bakken's comments on regulation: It seems like ever since Bush came to power, regulation of any kind has become a dirtier word than the safety problems it is designed to correct: Mine safety, FDA, clean air, clean water. At what price human life, health and dignity?
Ah Peder, poli sci terms don't work outside of academia. People don't always understand the labels. I had to look up strict constructionism to figure out what that was.
Anyway, right and left are labels that still sound unbiased. I wouldn't call anyone a fascist or authoritarian, even though that's essentially the opposite of a libertarian. It's okay to call someone a fiscal hawk but what's the opposite of that? Socialist. Not a good label in this country.
Anonymous,
Dignity has no place in modern society except within selfish circles. I'll probably be grilled for saying this, but I think it's true.
The other two, I will say, are not in jeopardy - at least within the United States. Our country took many steps from the rise of Theodore Roosevelt to ensure safety and wages for our workers, and we largely accomplished those goals after Eisenhower. However, further steps were taken after Eisenhower, culminating in Carter's administration, and many nationwide feel that we still need to rollback those "reforms," for they hurt the bottom line and restrict economic freedom.
It's all a matter of attitudes, but clearly the situation is not so dire as it was at the turn of the century or during the Great Depression, and resultantly, even major airlines with their labor struggles rarely strike (a commonality before Franklin D. Roosevelt and now practically obsolete) and starvation is far from reality for nearly all (unlike the turn of the century, where one's life was always in jeopardy).
And since things are not so dire, we're trying to find that point of efficiency. Remember calculus? Finding maximums and minimums? Well, if Carter represented the height of socialism and, say, Grant represented the low, then George W. Bush would represent somebody just above the inflection point, attempting to bring us closer to it.
"I had to look up strict constructionism to figure out what that was."
Tu-Uyen, don't hate me because I'm smart. :)
But on a slightly more serious note, I understand that contempt for the term "socialist" is still unfairly present. From the first days the word was coined it was given a negative meaning, and I wish it wasn't. While I happen to favor libertarian politics (globalization = the answer), I have always been a socialist sympathizer, and I am surprised that even today socialist is such a scorned term.
On a bit of a tangent: before anyone brings up Norway as a success story for socialism, remember that Norway is one of the most homogeneous states in existence with a low population and exorbitant oil revenues from state-run oil companies. So Norway doesn't count!
I'll trust you're right on your historical perspective but I see recent mine accidents, the rolling back of environmental regulations and the administration's negating the effects of human activity on global warming and wonder if we value the sanctity of life above that of corporate profits and re-election.
I think Peder thinks too much. We may have to address this later, if the mood suits.
"From the first days the word was coined it was given a negative meaning, and I wish it wasn't."
'From each according to their ability, to each according to their need.' Utopia, eh?
Good Ol' Boy:
Curmudgeon indeed!
ec99:
Utopia for one is not the same Utopia for another. And for that reason, I will return to my example of Norway, where nearly everyone in the country is exactly the same. To further my hyperbole, they are all blond-haired doctors and lawyers that speak twenty-eight languages including Far Eastern and now-forgotten African languages. With that remarkable union of identical people, socialism can thrive and can be Utopia. In the United States, where diversity is omnipresent (except in North Dakota, of course) Utopia is a million different ideas. In Norway, Utopia is one thing. Here, a million.
I like the Marxist quote there, ec99. Did anyone else catch that? I'm sure it appeals to lots of people, at least on the surface..
It's amazing how many people are convinced that socialism can work if only the right people were running it. And surprise! they're the right people!
I've often thought that socialism was instituted in Norway because all the conservative Norwegians came to North Dakota.
Ec99: We have a state bank and a state mill, what are you talking about?
Anyway, strictly speaking, socialism is an economic system where the government controls the economy or key parts of it. It doesn't have anything to do with who's in charge and if they're voted in or not ("And surprise! they're the right people!") In this strictly economic context, you don't call people that oppose socialism conservative (as in "conservative Norwegians") -- hahahaha -- you call them "liberals."
" socialism is an economic system where the government controls the economy or key parts of it."
Which, in the Norwegian model is characterized by confiscatory income taxes as a means of redistributing the wealth and running the welfare state. Quite a different scenario from ND and its refusal to fund its own insitutions. And, although the bank and mill are state-owned, they actually turn a profit. Amazing!
So what if they turn a profit? It's still socialism. Your conservative Norwegians went and formed the Non-Partisan League, which, according to Wikipedia, "advocated state control of mills, grain elevators, banks and other farm-related industries in order to reduce the power of corporate political interests from Minneapolis, Minnesota." In other words, the state bank and mill were meant to compete directly with private enterprise. Not at all conservative in the modern understanding of the word.
When a government enterprise actually turns a profit it is amazing. BTW, not all Norwegians supported the NPL nor the UFO. As for the NPL, shouldn't it have changed its name when it allied with the Democrats?
That should have read NFO.
Agreed.
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