One of the problems facing opponents of marriage equality is that it’s not as if straight people are being asked to give anything up when gay and lesbian couples want to get married. The lives of heterosexuals will just continue as before. The National Organization for Marriage, however, is ready to try to mobilize people into a state of inchoate fear with this ad designed to make you think that gay marriage is an urgent threat to your liberty:

The closest thing to a legitimate issue here seems to have to do with the Massachusetts public schools. Clearly, a state adopting a non-discriminatory marriage policy doesn’t actually force the state to teach non-discriminatory values in schools. But the two tend to go together. We not only don’t have Jim Crow anymore, but we teach people that racism is wrong. This is, it’s true, a big imposition on racists. And people who don’t like gay people can be legitimately concerned that the spread of gay equality will create an environment in which their children are less likely to share their own prejudices.

On the other hand, that’s all pretty tautological. But what’s the deal with the woman who says “I’m a California doctor forced to choose between my faith and my job”? What is it she wants to do? Does her faith prohibit her from giving medical care to gays and lesbians? That sounds like a pretty sick faith. And a clear violation of existing medical ethics anyway.

Apparently the White House is considering caving on the principle that carbon permits should be auctioned rather than given away. Given the political realities, I’m hardly shocked to see that compromise is in the air. But this, it should be said, is a really crappy compromise. The key thing to recall when this is described as a more “moderate” position is that you need to understand what the real consequences are. For that, you need to turn to this CBO analysis of the distributional consequences of some different options. Auctioning the permits and rebating the money is on the left, giving the permits away is on the right:

In terms of environmental goals, the giveaway plan can be made to work (it can also be riddled with loopholes and rendered unworkable, but that’s a separate debate). It, however, actually does have the negative consequences often ascribed to any serious carbon policy—it’s bad for the economic interests of the poorest 80 percent of Americans. Auctioning the permits and rebating the money, by contrast, is good for economically vulnerable Americans.

And note that there’s no advantage to the giveaway approach in terms of short-term economic growth. Either way, there’s a modest short-term macroeconomic cost in exchange for a long-term gain of a sustainable climate. The choice is between different ways of allocating the cost—you could make polluters and the wealthy pay, or you could make the vast majority of us pay.

This came up at yesterday’s transportation panel and the point is worth making on the blog. Whatever you think about the likely medium-term outlook for the economy and whatever you think about the future of transportation policy in the United States, the market for new auto sales is definitely going to perk up sometime reasonably soon. To see why, look at this chart Calculated Risk posted a couple of weeks ago showing how long it would take the current fleet to turn over at the current rate of sales:

This chart is produced by taking the total number of registered vehicles in the U.S. divided by the sales rate. The numbers we’re at right now are not only way out of line with trends, but they’re way out of lines with the basic realities of American life. People’s vehicles aren’t going to last forever, and for the majority of people the inconvenience of carlessness is going to outweigh their recession-driven desire to reduce spending. Note that the US population continues to grow, making this look even less sustainable.

J Street did a video attacking neo-fascist Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and those American Jewish groups who’ve decided to sell their principles out and become Lieberman apologists. James Besser has a worthwhile article touching on this incident and the entire Lieberman issue that includes this bizarre argument:

Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi, founder and president of The Israel Project, conceded that Lieberman, dramatically different from the suave, Americanized Netanyahu, is a lightning rod for many American Jews.

“Different can be scary,” said Laszlo Mizrahi, whose group works with media to present Israel favorably. “There were people who thought Barack Hussein Obama was scary because of his middle name.”

This is true. There were people who thought Barack Hussein Obama was scary because of his middle name. And there are also people who think Lieberman is scary because of his repudiation of the Annapolis process, his hostility to equal rights for minority populations in Israel, for his racist campaign tactics, and for his apparent criminal conduct. It’s not entirely clear, however, what the analogy between the two situations is.