Please touch my junk...

Today our hero gets all bell hooks up in this piece:

I suppose I agree with Kevin Drum about one aspect of the Transportation Security Administration namely that public outrage about the indignities it imposes seems to me to be 80 percent middle class white people not liking the idea of being placed in the subordinate position of a dominance hierarchy, 19 percent about yearning for America to adopt institutionalized racism as the lodestar of our transportation security policy, and maybe one percent about liberty.

Blah, blah, blah. The correct answer: It's 99% people being uncomfortable with government-employed strangers checking out their naked penises, boobs, vaginas, and butts. Everything else -- the calls for profiling, the blabber about liberty, all of it -- stems from this basic shyness. Are Americans dopey, cowardly, and probably homophobic for their shame-fueled anxieties? Sure! But so what -- distort the images and this whole thing goes away (except for the tinfoil-hat radiation crazies). Ydiot promises.

(And no, we're not sure what constitutes that last 1%.)

Today our hero boldly suggests a means by which a jurisdiction could rid itself of important services:

The income tax-deductibility of charitable contributions is, I think, more of a mixed bag than people generally realize but I think it does have a valuable role to play. But I wonder about the impact of these broader exemptions from taxation. Over and above the sort of revenue issues Dempsey is pointing to, when certain kinds of institutions are exempted from property taxes it can end up promoting very inefficient uses of land. Conveniently located space is a precious commodity, and there are widespread benefits to making sure that it’s generally occupied by high-intensity uses.

Because offloading churches, schools, and hospitals onto neighboring jurisdictions is a brilliant way of promoting the values of our hero's beloved New Urbanism. Imagine the possibilities: If you got rid of the FAA, too, children could commute to school on helicopters (no need to burden the pilot market with a "licensing" cabal, of course). People could stop going to the hospital for dire illnesses (think of the cost savings). Private popemobiles for every Catholic who wants to attend Mass in the next county over!

Echo chamber...

Today our hero:

I will say, though, that looking at any trade-related issues as a question of “China” versus “America” is always misleading. Industry employes just 27 percent of China’s workforce. Almost 40 percent of Chinese workers are laboring in agriculture, together producing only 10 percent of China’s GDP and thus being quite poor.

Subsistence farming doesn't count toward GDP, which is why we don't use percentage of GDP when we talk about poverty. We have also had this conversation one million times before, Matthew.

A modest proposal...

Today our hero throws poor people under the bus. The background: There's a large swath of land in DC that's open for development. It's adjacent to existing old homes. Our hero is mad because the people who already live there have a minor say in the development planning process:

Of course this is just one largish patch of land in one American city. But just about every single infill planning process in America suffers from the exact same bias. The views and interests of people who currently live nearby are represented, but the views and interests of the future-people impacted by the process aren’t. Consequently, each planning process is systematically biased toward permitting too-little development.

Was our hero really a philosophy major? You know, with thinking and stuff? On the one hand, the current residents are people who stand to have their lives substantially changed in ways they cannot control. They will have to endure construction noise, eyesore buildings, and thousands of inflowing Matt Yglesiases turning their neighborhood into a vomitous hipster shithole. Their lives will dramatically change, and there's little they can do to stop it. Somebody pass the PBR.

On the other hand, the "future-people" are a vaguely defined class who have a host of awesome, upscale available housing choices. Allowing neighborhood input in development means this group will have one of their thousands of housing choices slightly altered. Oh, the humanity.

(And lest we feel too sorry for the poor, disenfranchised upper-middle-class urban elites, it might do to remember that their interests are no doubt being at least slightly protected by the EXTREMELY WEALTHY DEVELOPERS who intend to sell them condos and lattes.)